Ivory (16 page)

“
What’s this?”

“
No, no, no. It’s not how it looks. I had just finished it, I
was so pleased with it I hung it there so I could see it in a
better light.”

Jenny planted
her hands on her hips, bowed her head and shook it to herself.

“
It’s not how it looks.” His hands pulled desperately at his
hair and he trembled with his wracking tears. “I LOVE YOU!” he
roared. The outburst startled Jenny, and she seemed shocked at his
disintegration, but she still shook her head in denial.
“
I do, I do
, I
do
,” he chanted continually, swaying on
legs buckling under him.

Jenny charged
over to the teak roll-top bureau in the nearest alcove, probed
through the mess of papers within and pulled something out, she
returned to the painting. “You might care Martin, you just might.
But it needs to be demonstrated from time to time. You just don’t
show it. You have let our relationship, our family slide in
priority.” She held a paper knife to Ivory’s painted face as if she
was holding her hostage. “Choose then. Choose me, your kids or this
girl, and your art. Give us everything that you try and channel
into them!”

“
What?” Martin asked, shocked out of his breakdown. “Get away
from that painting.” Martin’s voice was calm but edged with a
menace that frightened him in its conception. “That is unfair! It
has taken every ounce of my being to create that! I have finally
got my art back.”

“
An interest and passion you should have been using on me and
the kids, and at what cost?” Jenny kept the blade level with
Ivory’s face. “CHOOSE.”

Martin
trembled, he needed Jenny, he needed the painting, he was confused
and suddenly unsure which choice would lead to saving the painting.
Jenny needed to be away from the canvas. With the work out of
danger he could think things through more clearly and then he could
decide. Martin stepped towards the painting to get between the
blade and the canvas, but he suddenly realised she had read his
action as a move to save the portrait. Jenny drew her arm with the
blade back, ready to slash at Ivory’s face. He had seconds to save
his work.

Jenny flew to
one side before he realised he had actually knocked her in that
direction with the back of his hand. There was pain in his upper
thigh and he pressed his hand against it. The paperknife had caught
him as her arms had flailed out to save herself. He pulled his hand
away briefly and found his palm smeared with blood. Jenny was
seated on the floor between the sofa and the bureau with her back
against the wall. She sat, stunned for a few moments, before she
clambered awkwardly to her feet. Speckles of blood marked the crest
of her cheek bone from where his strike had broken her skin.

“
I’m so sorry. I panicked. I didn’t know what to
do.”

Jenny snatched
at her hand and threw something at him. Her wedding band hit him
hard in the face under his eye and clacked off the coffee table
onto the floor. She shoved Martin aside and disturbed his wound,
the fresh shock of pain buckled his leg and he stumbled, his calf
muscle hit the sharp corner of the coffee table and he fell
backwards. For a fleeting second the images of his leg wound and
the glass coffee table competed in dominating his mind. King’s
injury. King’s fate. Martin fell backward clutching desperately at
the air in terror.

Martin landed
heavily on the carpet. The coffee table beside him. Winded from the
impact he lay there, unable to move and listened to Jenny slam the
front door closed behind her as she left him. His eyes fixated on
the portrait of Ivory that towered above him like a deity in
judgement. He wanted to hate Ivory, but the only hate he had was
for himself.

He needed to
be free of her. Destroying the picture was out of the question. It
had resurrected his talent. It was finished though, and there was
no excuse to see her again. They had hardly developed a
relationship during their time together. Not enough validation to
ingratiate himself in her life any further, or her in his. Ivory
was gone and out of his life, as he surely knew she would be, yet
he had allowed his time with her to come between his marriage and
his family.

He wondered if looking at the portrait of Ivory be a
substitute for Ivory herself, or whether he c
ould bring himself to buy Ivory’s time as a companion.
Considering all the things she would have had to have done in her
past, companionship would be innocent. She may even grow to like
the time with him, appreciate the money and not having to degrade
herself. What would he do with that hour? Sixty minutes of time,
three thousand, six hundred seconds of gaping emptiness and an
unrelenting call he still wanted to deny.

Without Jenny
and the kids he had a sense of freedom that terrified him, like a
caged thing released into the great outdoors. Had he been freed to
become his father? To become King? No. He had to stay away from
Ivory. He had let his obsession end his marriage, his family. He
would stay away from her. Get a counsellor. Pursue Jenny again. Be
a husband. Be a lover. Be a father.

The phone rang
and startled him, scattering his strengthening resolve. He
struggled up from the floor and slumped onto the sofa and snatched
the phone up from the side-table. A familiar but unexpected male
voice greeted him. Martin’s hope that it would be Jenny plummeted.
It was Richard. There was stress in his voice.

“
Ivory is in trouble.”

Chapter T
hirteen

Martin relaxed
into the driver’s seat of the Focus and surveyed the boarded houses
of Arven Road and the grey rusting railway bridge that crossed it.
The few streetlights that actually worked burned with a brilliant
futility against the night that draped the front’s of the houses
and swamped the overgrown gardens. The orange light that puddled
beneath the lamps illuminated those small areas but made the
surrounding shadows thicker and impenetrable. Occasionally a girl
or a lone man would cross the islands of light or could be picked
out of the dirty orange gloom by a movement in an alley or doorway.
King’s flat, blackened with soot that stretched up from broken
windows, was a husk filled with destruction that stared back at him
accusingly. Martin knew King was dead but Martin had an unnerving
sense that the danger and vice lurked beneath the paving slabs and
in the cracked facades of the buildings as a malevolent
presence.

“
King’s flat was torched. Might have been the girls
celebrating King being out of their life, might have been pimps
from rival patches. Whoever King fought with that night did
something a lot of people had only dreamt about. He was only one
man, but by all accounts he was a mad bastard with connections that
he could call on if he had trouble.”

Martin
listened as Richard explained that it had long been expected that
King had paid thugs to rough up the girls in the area, kind of a
racket so that they would welcome his protection and pay the
necessary price. Some of the same thugs were sent by King when the
girls played him up.

With King out
of the way the girls had found they could earn more and work less
without King’s increasing protection money and threats of violence
if they failed to pay up. However, King’s protection had also gone
and several girls near the area had gone missing, suspected to have
been swiped by an Eastern European sex gang who kept their girls as
prisoners in underground brothels pocketing all the money for
themselves. The girls no more than slaves. Richard had learned from
a transvestite lad who sometimes worked Arven that other pimps were
reputed to be fighting over the territory and the girls were being
drawn into the ensuing fights. Richard’s source had warned that the
European gang were planning on taking King’s best girls in a swoop
that night. Ivory would be at the top of the list.

Martin had
agreed that they should warn Ivory, but doubted there was any
urgency as he had paid her for three hours of her time that day and
thought that would have made her all the money she would need that
day, especially now that King would not be taking a cut of it.
Despite this rationalisation Martin had dressed his wounded leg and
driven here, picking Richard up on the way. He had to be sure of
Ivory’s safety. Martin had suggested driving to her house to warn
her, but Richard had insisted they drive to Arven as any wasted
time was time where Ivory could be vulnerable if she was on the
street. They had waited for an hour, and they had agreed that if
she didn’t arrive soon then Richard would wait for her at Arven and
Martin would drive around to her home, just to ensure that they
found her.

“
You know, some people think Ivory killed King?”

Martin
couldn’t look at Richard. “I doubt that!”

“
Who knows, under the right circumstances we are all capable
of things we would never ordinarily consider.”

Martin
certainly had been.

A blue Ford
Transit van crawled down the road and parked in the shadow of the
bridge leaving only the rear clearly visible. The doors were
battered and scraped and the dirty windows were plastered with
carrier bags from within.

“
Trouble?”

Richard
shrugged and they both watched the van. The engine idled but it
didn’t go anywhere. The darkness made it difficult to tell if
anyone got out or in through the cab doors.

Ten minutes later a battered red
Nissan Bluebird
T12 cruised up
behind the van. Ivory stepped out of the car straightened her dress
and coat down around her legs and pocketed a roll of money into her
coat pocket. She offered the driver a warm smile through the window
but when she straightened, it withered and her bland blank face
returned. She had a face for punters.

Martin turned
to Richard and told him that he would go and warn Ivory. He
returned his attention to Ivory’s position and the rakish driver of
the Nissan leapt out of the car, rounded the front and threw his
arms around Ivory. He gripped his hands together at her chest and
pinned her arms to her side and shouted something, the rear doors
of the Transit were thrown open and a bald barrel of a man jumped
down from the back to receive their captive.

“
Come on!” Richard growled as he leapt from the car and hit
the road running. His large feet clobbering the street.

Martin fumbled
with the door and clumsily lurched out after him, but was stopped
dead by his seat belt. The momentum of Richard’s rally was lost and
he unceremoniously dropped back into his seat side-saddle fashion.
He stubbed the button frantically and flailed his way out of the
belt and jogged awkwardly after Richard, his injured leg protesting
and his heart jack-hammering in his chest as he sped, terrified,
into uncertainty.

Richard
startled him by suddenly roaring out; “Police – STOP!” as a battle
cry. It worked to startle, panic and caution the pair that had
Ivory. Without adjusting his speed Richard entangled with the
gangly attacker, his momentum carrying the three of them scuffling
up against a wall, the attacker and Ivory forced to steady
themselves from tumbling over into the garden.

The large man
launched himself with surprising speed and hooked a meaty arm round
Richard’s neck. Martin could only watch from his distance as
Richard’s attacker twisted sharply around and peeled Richard from
the lanky man and bent him over into a headlock. Richard recovered
his wits quickly and stamped a boot down on the man’s trainer. It
had little effect but Richard was not deterred and rained down a
series of snappy stamps on the man’s foot. The fat man eventually
snatched his foot away and Richard took immediate advantage of his
imbalance and lurched forward. The man was immediately overbalanced
and forced to loose his grip as he steadied himself against the
doorframe of the van. In that split second of weakness Richard
tugged himself free and planted three jabs into the man’s face
sending him tumbling backwards onto the floor of the van.

Although the
tall man still held Ivory from behind, Ivory had leant her body
against him and used her legs to push herself into him and pin his
lower half against the wall. His struggle against her and to keep
his balance afforded her a chance to break from his grip. Martin
ran towards them but before he could reach them Ivory retaliated
against her attacker. With an unnatural agility she abruptly
doubled over, her hair flicking forward, then snapped back as if
her waist were a spring-loaded hinge. Her hair whipped the air and
the back of her skull destroyed the man’s nose and lips. Clutching
the bloody pulp he reeled back, arching over the wall and offering
his fleshy groin up to a blow that she delivered with her elbow. He
doubled up and tumbled over the wall and out of sight.

Ivory stepped
away from the struggle as the image of calmness. Richard froze
before her, transfixed by her like a deer caught in headlights. The
large man leapt out of the van behind Richard with a length of
brutal metal pipe brandished in his thick fingers.

Martin slammed
into the van door and carried it closed with his momentum against
the man’s knees. A garbled scream echoed from within the van,
followed by a loud thud as he crashed down onto his back.

“
I think. We should. Get. Out of. Here.” Martin panted,
breaking the moment of standoff between Ivory and Richard as she
suddenly associated Richard with Martin. “We heard. Something was
going. To happen tonight. And that you might. Be in danger,” Martin
answered her frown. Richard seemed incapable of speech and was just
staring at Ivory. Possibly in shock from the skirmish, but with his
unblinking stare at Ivory, Martin was unsure.