Conman (17 page)

Bluffing. Surely bluffing?

“G’night,” Jane said with a kiss, lowering the baby into the bed and snuggling back down, body squirming to track down the warm spot.

One more day.

“Sleep well.”

Bluffing. Bluffing about having us killed.

Killed
? Was that what she said?

I sat up and watched 02:13 become 07:00.

Ooze-a-silly-daddy-den.

“Is … is everything all right?” I yawned, wiping gunk from my face and licking the early oily film from my teeth. “You seem –”

“Move it,
aaairse-hole!
” Henry bellowed, slamming the horn down with a piercing blare and pulling the Bedford van sharply into the oncoming Wednesday morning traffic. Behind me, I heard boxes tumbling over, clanging against the rusty shell. “No,” he spat, revving aggressively, the van lurching forward three angry feet at a time. “Everything’s not
awlroit
. Everything’s shot to –
aairse-hole!
Getcha fuckin’ pommie wreck outta my
– and the cabin vibrated again with the blare of the horn.

One clammy hand on vinyl seating, the other gripping the dash, I quickly decided to leave my I-Spy suggestion for another time and contented myself with a game of Hanging-On-For-Dear-Life.

“Bloomsbury’s off,” Henry said, pulling away at speed, throwing me back against the seat. More boxes tumbled behind us.

“What?
Off
? But – ?”

“Fuckin’ estate agent screwed us. Got all his dates ass about face, the bloody idiot. We were meant to –
aairse-hole!
Learn to fuckin’
droive!
Meant to have delivered all this shit last night. Got there to find balloons on the door and a lounge full of students dancin’ to Abba and painting their Doc fuckin’ Martens. Said they had another month on the lease.”

“A month – ? Shit, so what
happens
… God sorry, what happens now?” I yawned. Christ it was early. I pumped down the passenger window to get a little air between my ears.

“Well Julio is about ready to walk. Says the whole play’s jinxed, what with your lady friend stickin’ her oar in and –
move it
!” Henry pulled the van off the roundabout, grinding the gears, north onto Fulham Road, “and Christopher acting like some first year novice. This Kensington move of his is a bad idea. A baaaaad fuckin’ idea.”

“Kensington? What’s Kensington?”

“A baaaaad fuckin’ idea. Liable to get us all pinched.”

“No, I mean what – ?”

“Christopher wants to use a Kensington pad for the final play. In place of Bloomsbury. That’s where we’re going now.”

“And this new place is definitely empty?”

“Empty? HA! Not –
move it! C’mon! Shift yourself!
Not exactly empty, no. Hold tight.”

A quarter of an hour later, the glass front of Imperial College flashed with the reflection of a tense young Australian face and a pale, terrified British one as the van whipped past and swung wide off Kensington Gore. We slowed, crawling through the quiet curling avenues behind the Royal Albert Hall.

Henry was right. This was a very bad idea.

“Here we go,” Henry said, rolling to a halt with a squeak. “Through the purple door, first floor, flat six. I’ll check the back. Go.”

I clambered out into the chilly stillness, wind whipping between the cavernous mansion flats either side of the street, winter sunshine glinting off the high attic windows. Henry, his broad surfer’s frame squirming in a revolting navy suit, heaved open the van rear doors and tugged out a battered burgundy briefcase.

“Go. C’mon, whatcha waiting for?”

What I was waiting for, in all honesty, was the squawk of
megaphones
, the whoop of sirens, the thump of overhead helicopters and the immediate arrival of a vanload of short-haired men with Kevlar on their chests and overtime on their minds. But I made do with just shrugging nervously and pushing through the purple door into the echoing tile of the ancient flats.

I slapped up the cold stairwell. The place had a hospital smell, a sick, stale antiseptic odour like bedpans and lino. Hands clammy, heart throbbing loud and fat in my ears, I reached the dark wood door of number six. The smell was stronger, sharp and yellow, biting my eyes. I knocked gingerly, the door swinging open with a creak. I held my breath and stepped through. I could hear a voice. Croaky. Sick.

“He-hello?” I said, moving inside slowly.

“… Yes, I-I am afraid you have me banged to rights there
m-my
yankee friend. Sorry, excuse –”

A dry hacking cough spluttered from the room at the end of the bare hall.

“Urgh, God. I did indeed have an accomplice lift the garment from the store during the fracas and deliver it to me … If I could, Mr Grayson, I would …”

More groaning slithered out into the hall.

I peered around the first door. A bedroom. Average-sized, tidy. There was, however, something unplaceably not quite right about it. Feeling a frown settle between my eyebrows I pushed further on. On the right, a second door. I eased it open. Bathroom. I let my eyes drag over the glass and tile.

“You –
cough hack splutter
– sorry, you can check with who you like Mr Grayson …”

Chewing the inside of my cheek, I moved softly down the hall, mouth and eyes full of the tight antiseptic pong. It was horrible. The smell of death and cleaning. I confidently expected to turn the corner and find weeping widows, coffee machines and a gift shop selling lilies and throat sweets, but I didn’t. What I did find, however, was a small through-lounge kitchen-diner arrangement and a pair of red underpants in a large Perspex box leant up against a sideboard.

Oh, and a Christopher, laid out wearily on a couch under a blanket. Unshaven, head bandaged, eyes closed, face pale, murmuring weakly into his mobile phone.

“You do that. I-I’ll speak to you later …” he coughed, wiping his feet on death’s doormat, exhausted at the effort. “Uhh-ntil then,” and he closed the telephone, letting it drop to the carpet. Christopher breathed deep and slow, chest rising and falling.

“Hello?” I said softly. God, was he all right?

Christopher opened his eyes wearily, focusing about the room until he found me. He licked dry lips and smiled.

“What ho!” he said clearing his throat noisily. “Gahhh! Yuck,” and he flung back the blanket and sprung lightly to his feet, snatching the phone from the floor. He was dressed in some natty red jim-jams and a plaid dressing-gown.

“You … you all right?” I asked.

“Righter than a ninepence worth of right-handed, right-wing, right-thinking rain dear fellow,” he twinkled, slapping me on both shoulders. “Got to lie down. Affects the sound of the larynx. Henry not with you?”

“Here!” Henry yelled from the hallway, struggling in with a large cardboard box, his briefcase slung on top. “Cor, don’t ya think you’ve overdone it with the bleach? You can smell it on the street.”

“I’ll open a window or two,” Christopher said. “It should have faded just enough to be clinging by the time Grayson gets here.”

“I’m gonna say it
again
,” Henry sighed.

“Henry dear, it’s the only –”

“This is a very,
very
bad idea. Won’t you let me ask around, talk to – oof, give us a hand mate –” and I helped him stagger the box over to the kitchen worktop. “That’s it. Let me talk to some people? Find an empty place?”

“Grayson is all ready on his way.”

“You called him?”

“Just got off,” Christopher said, waggling his phone.

“
Big
mistake,” Henry muttered, brushing down his suit and heading off for another box.

Christopher and I unpacked the first one, piling starchy linen and rough grey towels onto the kitchen counter.

“
Very
surprised to hear from me was Mr Grayson.
Very
surprised. Crosser than Good Friday on Golgotha too, of course, but there we are.”

“That’s what Laura said. She called me last night. From some club.”

“Upper Grosvenor Street. Our Henry was three tables away. Quite a temper our American friend’s got.”

“Said he was going to track you down? Have you killed?”

“I certainly hope so,” Henry said, bustling in with another box, this one full of tubes and surgical tape.

“Henry’s right. His anger is vital to the plan after all,” Christopher smiled. “Henry dear, you bring the drip?”

Henry flapped out a tatty checklist and jogged back out,
slamming
down the staircase again.

“So what did he say when you called?” I asked.

“Well once I’d listened to him yell about
tearin’ out mah eyebawls
and
fuckin’ with the wrong cowboy mister
and other delightful family favourites, he calmed down long enough for me to explain my sorry situation. I admitted I was indeed a con artist, which of course he’d figured out already –”

“What with him getting his hands on your tricksy briefcase?”

“Quite,” Christopher said. “He resumed with verse two of his
Tearin’ out mah eyebawls
number for a bit, naturally. Anyhoo, I calmed him down, apologised for dragging him all the way from Kansas to buy a forgery. Explained it was nothing personal and what-not. And I admitted, somewhat reluctantly, that it had been I too who had been behind the underpant smash-and-grab yesterday.”

“How did he feel about that?”

“Understandably irked,” Christopher said. He began to break down the empty cardboard boxes, stacking them in the kitchen. “Especially as Pete did such a good job of pegging him as an accomplice. Anyway, I explained to him I’d been trying to kill two birds with one stone – meeting him at the shop for the exchange so I could take a gander at the security – but that I hadn’t
foreseen
getting clunked about the head by two acne-pocked borstal cases on the way.”

“Which I guess Grayson figured was no more than you deserved?”

“Quite-ola, dear chap. Here, let’s move this onto the sideboard there,” and we ferried the tubes and tape into the lounge.

“Henry said this is
your
flat?” I asked, peering about the … well, about the nothing very much really. Apart from a few starter pieces of Conran basics – couch, sideboard, bed, bin, broom – the place was bare. Not a single personal item to jazz it up a bit. No photos in the bedroom, no soapdish on the sink, no nick-nacks, bits or, for that matter, bobs. Minimalism schminimalism, this was perverse.

“I know, I know,” Christopher said, sensing my bewilderment. “Home is a place to rest one’s head. That is all. Once you start down the road of the thousand-pound couch and the two
thousand
pound hi-fi, you suddenly find you’re a smug little
so-and-so,
up to his Banana Republic khakis in insurance and paranoia. Just the kind of chappie people like me like to take for their bankroll in fact.”

“But it can’t be wise, can it? Bringing Grayson
here
?”

“It’s insane,” Henry interrupted, appearing in the doorway with a long steel drip, trailing tubes and tape, a green first-aid box under his other arm. “Goes against a cardinal rule.
Never shit where you eat.
”

“Ahhh, too true my antipodean chum. But you are forgetting another valuable maxim –
don’t let incompetent Bloomsbury estate agents screw you out of the opportunity to fleece greedy fat Yanks out of half a million pounds.
An oldie, but a goodie I feel. Now I explained to our man Grayson that I
had
every intention of taking delivery of the said underpants and selling them abroad – probably Japan. But poor me, if I hadn’t collapsed late last night in a pool of blood. Tch. Those borstal boys and their heavy handed thuggery. Done my poor skull more harm than we thought. Ahh, which reminds me. Corn syrup?”

“Check,” Henry said, tossing a heavy can from a box across the room to him.

“Splendid. This’ll give Grayson the impression I’m at death’s doorknob. Dripped up, croaky and dying. Stuck here with a fortune’s worth of stolen underpants. Doped up to the eyes. Unable to travel. Private nurses bleeding me dry. It’s no wonder I’m eager to halve the underpant’s price for a quick –”

The Archers
began to rumpty-tump from Christopher’s
dressing-gown
pocket. He flipped out his phone while Henry and I fetched the last boxes from the van. We returned a sweaty minute later to find Christopher pacing and flapping in his gown.

“Henry, get your stuff together. Grayson’s on the move.”

“Now?”

“That was Julio at the Waldorf. Grayson’s just booked a cab for Brigstock Place. Leaving in thirty minutes.”

“Awww fuck it,” Henry spat, dumping the box with a thud and grabbing up his briefcase. He flipped the catches and began to double-check a load of yellow papers. “What’s his damned hurry?”

“Calm down, deep breaths. We’re prepared for this. Grayson asked me to give him a few hours’ grace to make a decision. He’s obviously going over to the shop to talk to Pete, make peace, find out if there’s any heat. Just earlier than expected is all.”

“Sounds like an act three beginner’s call for Mr Furious Insurance man,” Henry said, slamming his case.

“Exactly. So go, go, go,” Christopher flapped.

Henry went went went.

“And keep the van out of sight!” Christopher called down after him from the rusty window.

“Shouldn’t I … ?”

“No no, I need you here young man,” Christopher said, patting my arm in a fatherly manner. He led me back into the lounge where the garage-sale medical gear lay strewn about. “In about thirty-five minutes, if Henry does his job, Grayson will, ahem,
accidentally
overhear exactly how much our underpants are worth. He’ll realise that I, on my sick bed, out of the loop, in my dying desperation, have vastly undervalued the item and he’ll be over here like a shot to close the deal …”

“Before the nine o’clock news blabs about record-breaking Beverly Hills auctions …”

“And I double my price. Quite. Now give me a hand with these blood bags dear fellow.”

The next half hour or so passed as anxiously as I suppose you’d imagine.

Between minute-by-minute telephone updates from Brigstock Place, Christopher and I dressed the flat with the bottles,
bandages
and bric-a-brac of the recently pulverised, splashing a bit more
Domestos X-tra Pungent
about the mansion stairwell for good measure, all in all giving the ‘store’, as I suppose I should put it, a convincing ambiance.

Whether it would be convincing enough to make Grayson believe a bed-ridden Christopher was a dying thief willing to part with his final touch at a knock-down price, we wouldn’t know until it happened of course. We could but cross our drip-feeds and hope.