Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (7 page)

Chapter 14

Next
morning, Aubrey reacted badly to the news.

He clutched
his throat and gave a stifled scream. Then he gave an un-stifled scream, which
nearly burst Mrs Hathaway’s eardrums. He staggered back from the breakfast
table and ran out of the kitchen into the living room-gymnasium where he
continued to bounce uncontrollably off the furniture and equipment like a
foul-mouthed ping-pong ball that has just been fired from a howitzer.

‘I ain’t
goin’. I ain’t fuckin’ goin’. No way, Ho-say - whoever the fuck he is. I’m a
fuckin’ goner. I’ve ‘ad it. ‘E’s ‘omicidal. ‘E’ll make fucking mincemeat out of
me - an’ you. I’m fuckin’ toast, I tell you. Fuckin’ toast. He’ll make fuckin’
mincemeat outta my balls and have ‘em on toast.’

Mrs
Hathaway stood quietly watching this extraordinary performance from the door of
the kitchen. She assumed, quite wrongly, that Aubrey’s culinary references were
down to the fact that he hadn’t eaten any breakfast. And it was such a good
breakfast too - scrambled egg and steak - just like the astronauts have before
they go on their missions. Although she assumed, quite rightly, that what she
had to do this morning was going to be a lot more dangerous than whizzing round
the earth and having to cope with unimaginable toilet facilities.

Mrs
Hathaway decided to call a halt to Aubrey’s antics when he tried to unzip her
punch bag and get inside. Entering this perceived refuge had proved more
difficult than he imagined. When she reached him, Aubrey was hanging upside
down with one foot in the bag and the other waving helplessly in mid-air. She
started to wonder whether the vindaloo-chana bhuna projectile vomit option
would have been a lot easier.

With the
help of a rather benign
Kyusho pressure
point on Aubrey’s neck, she calmed him, helped him up to the kitchen table, and,
after cutting his steak into little pieces, managed to get him to eat up all
his breakfast.

It occurred to her the
pressure point might not have been
too
benign,
as Aubrey seemed to have forgotten everything about his panic attack, including
the impending appointment with Charlie. She decided to leave it that way.

*

At 10 minutes to 10
o’clock, the cab pulled up outside Charlie’s office building. As he had been
throughout the journey, Aubrey was staring out of the window, happy and silent.

This was not good,
thought Mrs Hathaway as she paid the fare. Aubrey didn't even show signs of
recognising the building where he must have been many times before.

At five to 10, they
were in the corridor, close to Charlie’s door. There was no reception. People
just went straight in, and from what Aubrey had said, sometimes, if they were
lucky, they came out again.

She bent down and
looked into Aubrey’s battered eyes.

‘Aubrey?’

‘Yes?’ he said
vaguely.

She had to act. More
Kyusho, but this time from Manual Two. She pinching the back of Aubrey’s neck
and placed her hand on his forehead. Then after three seconds, she rapidly
withdrew both hands, at the same time. It was supposed to cure headaches, and
was the only thing she could think of. The manual said do it three times. After
the third time, she got a result.

‘Shit!’ cried
Aubrey. ‘Th-th-this is Charlie’s office!’ As he turned to sprint off down the
corridor, Mrs Hathaway grabbed his collar and tie and twisted tightly. It was a
move she’d learned from a course entitled,
How
to use your opponent’s casual clothing as a weapon.
It worked. Aubrey stood
to attention, and his expression pleaded for oxygen. She relaxed her grip, and
made a mental note that doing these moves on a real person was different from
doing them on the course, and maybe she ought to try and go easy on the level
of attack she used - at least, as far as Aubrey was concerned.

She turned and
knocked on the door.

‘Mr Sumkins, this is
your 10 o’clock appointment.’

A surprisingly
cheerful voice answered.

‘Come in, come in. Let’s
get acquainted.’

She opened the door.
It was a room she knew well. A huge office with expensive oak panelled walls
and a creaky Singapore fan.

Charlie was obsessed
with Ealing Comedies from the late 1940s and 1950s, and regularly dressed as
characters from the films. Anyone who so much as smiled at his outfits would
soon have that smile removed, possibly with an industrial grinder.

Today, he was
dressed a Donald Houston, who starred as
David 'Dai Number 9' Jones
in the 1949 film,
A
Run for your Money
, directed by Charles Frend. The film was about two Welsh
miners who win a trip to London. Charlie was wearing a long mackintosh, a
rumpled suit with a leek sewn on near the top pocket, a cream, soft-collared
shirt, a tie and a cable-knit V-neck pullover.

Mrs Hathaway walked
slowly towards Charlie with her hand behind her back. That hand still had a
firm grip on Aubrey’s collar and tie, and she manoeuvred him so he was hidden
from Charlie’s view.

‘Take a seat, my
dear,’ smiled Charlie. And, in the same pleasant tone, added, ‘And dump the
little shit on the stool.’

She let go of Aubrey
and he scampered to the stool, which was where he normally sat when being
grilled by Charlie.

‘You noticed?’ she
said, with a faint smile.

‘Noticed?’ said
Charlie in a much more aggressive tone. ‘Noticed? What do you fink I am - an
amateur?’

He pressed a button
on his desk and part of the oak panelling slid back to reveal around 30 CCTV
monitors.

‘I’m better
protected than Fort Fuckin’ Knox. I saw you getting’ out of the taxi. I saw you
in the lift. I saw you doin’ that head-patting thing. I saw the pox-ridden
ferret start to panic. If you’re within 100 yards of this building, I know
exactly what you’re doing. This isn't your fuzzy,
Crimewatch
was-that-a-human-being-or-a-dog type TV stuff. This is
state-of-the-fuckin’-art, high-definition cameras and monitors. So don’t try
any fuckin’ subterfuge with me darlin’.’

When he had
finished, there was a lot of spit on the top of his desk.

‘Right,’ said Mrs
Hathaway, ‘let’s get down to business’.

‘My thoughts
exactly,’ said Charlie.

And that said, he
put his hand in the desk drawer and pulled out a handgun, complete with silencer,
and aimed it straight at Aubrey.

Chapter 15

As Charlie’s gun
reached the horizontal, Mrs Hathaway was in like a flash. In fact, you could
say she was in like three flashes. First, she shoved her little finger of her
left hand down the end of the silencer. Second and third, she, simultaneously,
shoved the index finger and second finger of her right hand as far as she could
up Charlie Sumkins’ flaring nostrils.

She looked straight
into his eyes and spoke with a surprising amount of authority, considering the
position she was in.

‘Before you pull the
trigger, Charles, I want you to look very, very carefully at my cleavage.’

This was an offer
even Charlie didn't get every day. He thought for a second. What had he got to
lose? He’d have a look,
then
pull the
trigger.

But it wasn’t going
to be
that
easy. Neatly tucked into her
V-necked dress was a piece of paper with ‘READ ME - OR YOU’RE DEAD’ written in
black felt-tip pen.

Charlie reached out
for the paper with his left hand. As soon as he had it in front of him, she
jerked his nostrils forward and down, so he could get a good view.

Mrs Hathaway’s
secret weapon had a greater impact than she could ever have expected.

‘Fud me!’ gasped
Charlie. ‘Where de fuddin ‘ell did you det dis?’

His right hand
dropped from the pistol, which was left, for a moment, hanging off her little
finger.

‘Where de fuddin
‘ell did you det dis?’ repeated Charlie, his eyes wide in amazement.

She lowered the gun
carefully to the desktop.

‘Where de fuddin
‘ell did you det dis?’ mumbled Charlie as if in a trance.

Taking advantage of the
fact that Charlie was, no doubt temporarily, on the back foot, she removed her
fingers from his nostrils.

‘Aubrey. Could I
borrow your handkerchief?’

Aubrey slid off his
stool and walked towards her, holding out his hanky. Each step squelched and it
was obvious that, during the exchanges of the last 30 seconds, he had, quite
understandably, wet himself.

She took the
handkerchief.

‘Go to the bathroom
over there, and dry yourself,’ she indicated with a glistening index finger.

‘It should be nice.
I only cleaned it a couple of days ago. Use the hair-dryer in the bottom
left-hand cupboard.’

Aubrey squelched
off.

‘And leave the door
open. I want you to hear everything we say.’

She felt confident
in handing out these instructions and taking time to clean herself up, because
Charlie was still looking down at the paper in disbelief. He was quietly
repeating his mantra, but this time with clearer nostrils.

‘Where the fuckin’
‘ell did you get this?’

She took the pistol
and silencer, made sure the safety catch was on, and popped them into her
handbag.

‘Nice choice,
Charles - 45 calibre Heckler & Koch 23 with Evolution silencer - but we
wouldn't like this to go off bang and frighten anyone would we?’

Charlie didn't look
up. He just shook his head slowly from side to side.

‘Where the fuckin’
‘ell did you get this?’

His voice was almost
a whisper now.

Mrs Hathaway decided
it was time to slake Charlie’s thirst for knowledge.

‘Interesting isn't
it? 20-odd years’ old, and it can still stir the emotions.’

Charlie’s head
snapped up. He was back on the front foot.

‘Where the fuck did
you get this, you fuckin’ bitch?’

‘Now, Charles,’ she
said, calmly. ‘May I remind you of three things. One: I’m a lady. Two: I’m not
used to that sort of intemperate language. And Three: I’m the one with the gun
in her handbag.’

She opened her
handbag and looked inside.

‘Oh yes, there it
is. I
hadn't
imagined it. You know
what women are like! Heads full of air!’

She laughed, but the
steel in her bright blue eyes let Charlie know she wouldn't hesitate to blow
his brains out, if needs be.

‘So, let me answer
your question with another. Do you remember Delores, the lady you had an
intimate relationship with about twenty years ago? Sorry, I only knew her as
Delores. I never knew her second name.’

‘Neither did I,’
said Charlie. ‘Strange really, we were on the go for about eight years. If this
desk top could talk!’

‘Quite,’ said Mrs
Hathaway. ‘Well, Delores and I use to meet up for a chat at the canteen on the
second floor.’

‘There ain’t no
canteen on the fuckin’ second floor.’

She gave him a
disapproving look, patted her handbag and Charlie repeated the sentence without
the expletive.

‘There
was
a canteen 20 years’ ago. If you
remember, you closed it down, and re-opened it as a cinema showing pornographic
films.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said
Charlie, eyeing the handbag, carefully.

‘As I was saying,
Delores and I became good friends. You
know
- an occasional chat over tea and a nice piece of cake.’

Charlie didn't know
- he’d never had an occasional chat over tea and a nice piece of cake with
anyone, ever. But he nodded.

‘Well, one day, she
came in looking really worried. She had this envelope with some test results
you’d asked her to pick up from the doctor’s.’

‘And?’

‘She was worried,
you know - that it might be something - well, serious. So I suggested she steam
the envelope open and check, just to put her mind at rest. So we got the
canteen kettle…’

‘OK, OK,’ said
Charlie, impatiently.

‘And there was
nothing serious at all, just a report saying your sperm count was zero.’

Charlie’s head
slumped onto the desk.

‘Delores was so relieved.
She began to cry, so I suggested she went to the Ladies to freshen up. She left
the test results behind and I did something dreadful. I don't know why, but, in
those days, do you remember, we had one photocopier for the whole building, and
people had to come down to the canteen to make copies?’

Charlie dropped his
head to the desk and began to moan.

‘I know I shouldn’t
have, but I had a funny feeling that, one day, it might be useful if I had a
copy. I’ve never done anything like that, before or since. I put the original
back on the table, and when Delores reappeared, she put it in the envelope,
resealed it and went off as happy as could be.’

Charlie raised his
head, and started fiddling with the end of his leek.

 
‘So, where’s all this goin’?’

‘Well, I have good
reason to believe your associates, Vlad and Vic, have instructions to dispose
of poor Aubrey, here.’

Aubrey had returned
to his stool, where he sat, hands on knees, looking morose and not fully dried
out.

‘Well, yeah. Sort
of.’

Mrs Hathaway was not
in the mood to be messed about.

‘Don't bandy words
with me Mr Sumkins. If I hit you with this handbag, something might go bang.
Did you, or did you not, order them to - what do you people say - rub him out?’

‘Well, yeah. Sort
of.’

‘I’ll take that as a
“Yes”.’

‘Now,’ she
continued, ‘I feel it’s my duty to ensure that that doesn't happen. So here’s
what I’ve done. Yesterday, I visited a solicitor and gave him a large envelope.
Inside the envelope, were 40 smaller envelopes, each containing an explanatory
letter and a copy of your test result. The letters were addressed to leading
crime reporters, news reporters and billiard hall owners, all over London. The
solicitor has instructions to post all the individual letters immediately if
Aubrey or I were to die in mysterious or suspicious circumstances.’

‘So,’ said Charlie,
trying to brazen it out, ‘I got a nothin’ sperm count, big deal.’

‘Yes, but, at the
moment, no one knows. What they
do
know is the rumour you’ve been spreading for twenty years, that you’ve fathered
over 50 children during that period, but the women are so scared of you, or so
hopeful of regaining your sexual favours, they don't even mention it.’

She looked him
straight in the eye.

‘I believe across
the global criminal community, you are known as Chuck the Fuck.’

‘What bollock brain
told…’

Mrs Hathaway went to
pat her handbag.

‘What inconsiderate
person told you
that
?’

‘Mick and Jim from
Implosion Productions.’

‘The
bastards
!’

She went to pat her
handbag, again.

‘Oh, give me a
break. “Bastards” ain’t
too
bad.’

‘Alright.’

‘Those
bastards!
’ shouted Charlie.

Then, in a more
confidential tone, ‘‘Ere, them two ain’t, like, part of this letter-sending-out
deal are they?’

‘No,’ said Mrs
Hathaway, quietly. But inside, she was shouting Yes! Yes! Yes! Charlie had, for
the first time, acknowledged there was a ‘deal’ on the desktop.

‘As you know,’ she
continued, ‘reputation is everything in international crime.’

Mrs Hathaway made
the statement with absolute confidence, and hoped to hell she was right.

‘And if other
criminals get to read in the papers that you have a zero sperm count, or the
rumour-mill gets going, your Chuck the Fuck image will destroyed in no time at
all. They’ll start thinking what else has he been telling porkies about. Maybe
he isn't as tough as he makes out, and maybe we can get some of his business,
or, if he’s
that
much of a pushover,
we’ll take it all. You could be in for a very rough and dangerous ride.’

Charlie hung his
head, and she breathed a discreet sigh of relief. She’d guessed, and got it
right.

‘So,’ said Charlie,
looking up, ‘you're lookin’ for a deal. I cancel the contract on Aubrey…’

‘And me.’

‘Why you?’

‘Well I’ve just
stuck two fingers up your nose and confiscated your favourite pistol.’

Charlie shrugged by
way of acknowledgement.

‘OK.’

‘So, there will be
no attempt on our lives. Nothing at all. And in return, the letters will gather
dust at the solicitors.’

 
‘You got it,’ said Charlie, miserably.

‘Excellent,’ said
Mrs Hathaway. ‘I think that brings this meeting to a very satisfactory
conclusion.’

She turned to Aubrey
who was still sitting on his stool looking damp and unhappy.

‘I think it’s time
to go, Aubrey.’

Aubrey stood up
carefully, adjusted his trousers and trudged behind her to the door. She opened
the door, stopped and turned to Charlie.

‘You know,’ she said
with a sigh, ‘I think Delores really, really loved you.’

Charlie looked up
quickly with a threatening expression - an instinctive reaction which he used
to start any communication. But within seconds, the tense face muscles relaxed
as memories came flooding back.

 
‘I think so too,’ said Charlie almost to
himself. ‘I think so too.’

He sighed, his eyes
filled up, and a little tear ran down his gnarled, unshaven face to join the
partially dried spittle on the desktop.

He sniffed, pulled
out a handkerchief, blew his nose loudly, readjusted his leek and, with a wave
of his hand, indicated he would be alright.

Mrs Hathaway sniffed
too, and acknowledged the wave.

Then she left, with
Aubrey in tow.

But Aubrey didn't
just follow. Far from it. He stopped at the threshold and whirled round to face
what was now a tear-stained, emotionally vulnerable Charlie.

Grinning from
damaged ear to damaged ear, Aubrey blew Charlie a huge raspberry, followed by two
extended, highly animated, middle-finger salutes, before slamming the door and
skipping off to join the newly acquired love of his life.