Personal Protection (12 page)

“If you can manage to call back for a couple of hours this afternoon, we have a possible Principal who wants to talk Personal Protection with you. It doesn’t look like the hours will
clash with the ones you’re putting in on Spink’s behalf.”

“You waited to spring that on me till now?”

“Sometimes I like to watch you squirm.”

“Cheers! What time?”

“If you could be back here by four?”

“No problem.”

He gave me the once over.

My job means I go through a lot of clothes. I have to buy three suits, same style, same colour, so I can mix and match jackets with pants as they get ruined. I never have to worry about wearing
last season’s fashions. Nothing I have lasts that long. Because I was fixing up Tori’s flat, today I was wearing jeans.

“I take it this is a suit and tie job?”

“That might be appropriate. It’s the local Liberal Democrat MP.”

“Bloody hell! He isn’t exactly Mr Popular! I know why he thinks he needs a bodyguard. But his politics don’t conflict with mine… All right, I’ll be
here.”

“One more thing. Are they paying you at this club?”

“The going rate for bouncers, yes.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

I told him.

“You’re worth more than that!”

“Thanks. When I’m doing more to justify it, I’ll ask for a raise. For now I think it’s important to be ‘one of the boys’. The manager knows if they employ us
to find the nut or nutters it won’t be cheap. I’ve suggested all the girls involved ante-up towards the fee. He’s promised to put it to them tonight. Besides, staying on as a
bouncer for long wouldn’t be very good for my health.”

Bouncers in this town are run by the small-time equivalent of the Mob. Independents get muscled out. Permanently. It was only because I was filling in for Leon Spink that I’d been left
alone. Apart from the knife thrower. I hadn’t mentioned the incident to Dean. But that bouncer and I were going to have words.

I started collecting up the tools, wire, sensors and alarms I needed to make Tori’s apartment secure. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

He turned back to his work and I left to make Tori’s flat safe.

Before you start thinking ‘cowboy,’ let me tell you I know what I’m doing when it comes to installing alarms. After Dean took me on as a partner, it quickly
became obvious the business wasn’t going to support us both all the time. In one of my rare flashes of brilliance, I’d suggested, since I already dealt in Personal Protection – we
could stretch a point and expand to protecting homes and offices – with dogs, security guards and bouncers or by electronic means.

In our spare time, we take courses, visit suppliers and manufacturers and encourage them to visit us with samples, and after a City And Guilds in electrical engineering, yours truly can now fit
and advise on home protection for our clients. It’s proved a lucrative sideline. We’ve also built up contacts like White Knights, who help us out for knock-down prices as thanks for our
referrals.

The rest of day flew by. I hadn’t risen until eleven, due to the late night. Being the unofficial taxi for Tori’s girlfriends, visiting Dean, changing the locks on the doors and
windows in Tori’s flat, fitting motion sensors, then the client interview, took me till nearly eight. I just had time for a bite to eat and another shower before it was back to the
Paradise.

“Promise me you’ll take it easy tomorrow,” Tori scolded, flicking imaginary lint from the shoulder of my suit when we reached the top of the stairs.

“As far as I can with two jobs to do, I will. The politico needs me for four hours in the afternoon. I couldn’t turn it down. The business needs the money.”

She winced. “I’ll see if I can persuade the girls to take you on.”

“Thanks. I take it you had no luck this afternoon?”

“I wish!” She wrinkled her perfect brow in frustration. “They want to do something but they don’t know what to do for the best. They’re afraid something terrible is
going to happen to them in one breath, then in the next they’re sure it has nothing to do with them and they’re safe! I’m beginning to see what they mean about democracies. At
least in a dictatorship a decision gets made and things get done. How on earth does anything happen in a society where they make decisions by committee?”

I grinned. I’m sure my new client would have a few things to say about that opinion.

I drove us to work, saw her to the dressing room and managed to avoid any perilous entanglements with the girls on the way back.

Walking the mezzanine, I headed for the balcony. I hadn’t been up there long when Brian Junior caught up with me.

“Thank you for giving me that address.”

“My pleasure.”

“I really think it will help. They’ve enrolled me in a class on self-defence. They think it will ‘suit the requirements of my position best.’”

“It’s certainly what I’d have suggested, given that you want to go up against fools with weapons barehanded.”

He smiled nervously. “I’m sure my dad will feel better about me doing this job if he thinks that I really know what I’m doing.”

“I doubt that. Most parents worry about protecting their kids all their lives, no matter how old you get. But you might be right. It’s good that you both still care what happens to
one another.”

He may not have heard the note of bitterness in my voice, because he took my words at face value. Either that or he chose not to pry.

He was making a polite withdrawal, when a nearby cry of ‘Help here’ was choked off. The pair of us moved on the disturbance. A mean drunk had his hands around the throat of one of
the girls, across a table. I motioned Brian to get into his field of vision and keep him talking. I circled around behind him.

“You don’t want to do that,” young Brian said soothingly.

“Fuck off! You don’t know shit!”

The drunk tightened his grip and the girl moaned in pain.

“Come on, mate, you hardly know the lass! I’m sure she’s sorry for whatever she’s said to upset you. Isn’t that right?” He turned his attention to the girl.
She tried to nod but could hardly move her head.

“Doesn’t matter if she is!” the drunk slurred.

“Why don’t you let the girl go and tell me what the problem is? I’ll do my best to try and sort it out. I’m sure there is no need for this unpleasantness.”

The drunk snarled, his attention all for Brian.

I moved in and hit him at the base of his skull. A combination of the drink and my blow put him out for the count. His hands spasmed and he released the hysterical girl before he slumped across
the table.

I checked the girl’s throat. She was OK, but she’d have a necklace of bruises for at least a week. I had Brian take her to the Ladies to cry and clean herself up.

When they were gone, I checked Sleeping Beauty. He’d have a headache but he’d live. I hoisted him over a shoulder and carried him outside. The doorman called him a cab, and he came
round just before it arrived. I gave him a stiff lecture before sending him home. By the time I returned to the club, the girl had a feather boa around her neck and was sitting on a more
considerate fellow’s knee. Brian was keeping a close eye on the proceedings.

“Dad can be a bit bolshie if the girls don’t seem to be pulling their weight,” he said, explaining the speed of her recovery. “I’ll watch over her for the rest of
the night.”

“Nobody will demand your presence elsewhere?”

“No. That’s one of the few perks of being the boss’s son,” he admitted.

“You did a good job out there.”

He beamed. “Thanks!”

“I haven’t seen your dad around. He still helping the police with their enquiries?”

Brian winced. “Yes. If you see him, I wouldn’t mention it to him. It’s a sore point. When he heard what had happened he went off his head! You’d have thought the girl had
died just to spite him! ‘The last thing we need with everything else going on!’” He shook his head. “That was about the only repeatable thing he said. I suggested he should
watch where he aired that opinion, else the boys in blue would be asking him where he was on the night she was killed. He always tries to be seen as a respectable businessman. Now he’s got
the papers, the police and his bank managers all looking at him as if he was a glorified pimp.”

Bang went my chances of getting him to throw his weight behind the suggestion that the girls employ us to look into the incidents.

Another bouncer beckoned further along the balcony.

“Sorry, gotta go.”

“Of course. Have a better one.”

“God, I hope so!”

The night was troublesome. It seemed that without the influence of a high-ranking police official among them, everybody was taken with the desire to misbehave. I spent more time breaking up
fights than patrolling. I actually relished the few occasions I was asked to sit in the Star rooms for the breather it afforded.

By the two a m closing I still hadn’t been called into the office for anything more significant than my pay. By then I was too tired and dispirited to pursue the issue of a contract.

Tori, too, was despondent. Either the general mood had rubbed off, or her own situation and Lisa Moran’s death was weighing heavily on her mind. I didn’t press her for reasons.

All the girls with no one to pick them up called for White Knights to take them home. I was just happy to drive Tori back to my place, shower and fall into bed beside her. Not even the promise
of tuxedo sex could keep my eyes open a minute longer.

I scrambled on to the low wall surrounding the penultimate level of Blackpool Tower, clipping the rappelling line coiled around my waist to a piece of chicken wire, while he
checked the position of his men and made sure there were no witnesses. I hid the line before he looked back.

“You’re going to have to do this. I’m not going to make it easy for you. I’ve got more pride. And I don’t think you can’t afford the noise of shooting me
without a silencer.”

I thought for a minute I’d pushed him too far. That he’d call one of his thugs to do the job. But I’d read him right. He wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.

Snarling, he ran at me full tilt, palms out to push me off. I grabbed him as he barrelled into me. His momentum carried us both over the edge.

He screamed as he plummeted toward the roof.

Line played out. I spun end over end. Chicken wire stretching in slow motion as I fell…

I woke drenched in sweat, smothering a scream.

Tori slept peacefully on. For a moment I wanted to wake her up, needed someone to hold me after reliving my plunge from the Tower. Then I pulled myself together. Right now she needed me to be
strong. And I needed to put that mess behind me.

I climbed carefully out of bed so that I didn’t rouse her. It was still early but I was wide awake. Normally I sleep like the dead, don’t dream anything that I can remember. When my
body-clock has been disturbed, as it had by the hours this job demanded, I have nightmares, and relive some significant moment in my life – like that one – where I’ve found myself
facing certain death. In my line of work, that happens more than I’d like. As you can imagine, my dreams are fairly colourful.

I stripped out of my T-shirt and Calvins and stepped under a shower as hot as I could stand. Stinging needles of water eased away the last vestiges of the dream. By the time I emerged ten
minutes later, I was almost fit company.

I’m not a morning person.

As Tori was still sleeping, I dressed in sweat-pants and a fresh T-shirt and took myself into the lounge/kitchen and swallowed down a multivitamin with orange juice.

I’m not a breakfast person either.

I fished my Walkman and a Bon Jovi tape from a drawer, then slid the exercise bench and bars out from their place beneath the sofa and the weights from the bottom cupboards of the kitchen
cabinets. After a few warm-up stretches to
You Give Love A Bad Name,
I settled down to the steady mindlessness of lifting weights.

I was on side two of the tape, lying on my back, on the God-knows-how-many’th repetition, eyes closed, humming tunelessly along with
Living On A Prayer,
concentrating on my
breathing, when I felt the air move. I opened my eyes in time to see Tori sweep past in a swirl of silk dressing gown to open the apartment door.

Sammi, Joy, Liu and two others girls whose names I didn’t know tumbled inside. After their initial greetings for Tori, their eyes were all for me. They scurried over, cooing about my
muscles and the healthy glow of my exertions, running their fingers over my slicked arms as if I was a prize heifer. I dropped the weights quickly enough to dent my cork floor and elicit the usual
pounding on the ceiling from my landlord. I fled to the sounds of their laughter.

When I returned in my usual uniform of suit pants and silk shirt, Tori had collapsed the exercise bench, slipped it back under the sofa and rolled the weights across the floor to the cupboards.
Putting them away gave me a few moments to force the blush from my skin before I had to face them again.

They were sitting quite primly, as if nothing had happened (maybe Tori had given them grief about it?) along my sofa and every available seat when I returned. I would have sat on the floor, but
this felt like an official visit. I stood in a kind of parade rest, a stance you learn to adopt when you’re spending any length of time on your feet, and tried to look capable.

“We’re sorry to turn up unannounced,” Joy began.

“And so early,” Liu added.

“But we’ve made some decisions,” from Sammi.

Then they allowed Tori to do the talking.

“Yesterday morning we got in touch with Lisa Moran’s parents. We gave them our condolences and asked what was happening to Lisa’s body when the authorities released
it.”

Of course, since it was a suspicious death, there would be an autopsy.

“You can sit by me,” Sammi interrupted, revealing a miniscule space on the sofa.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I assured her, determined not to get distracted.

“They’re taking her home to Cambridge,” Tori continued. “She’ll be buried or cremated there. We didn’t get into details. We’re arranging a memorial
service for her. It was our thought that you and Dean might want to come; you could sit with the bouncers, take a look at the guests who turn up. By now you know most of the cast in our lives. If
someone is out of place or looks as if they’re gloating instead of grieving, that might be a good place to start looking, don’t you think?”