Secret Skin (27 page)

We laughed companionably at his dilemma. I searched his face for signs that he might have recognized me. I squinted at him for a moment blocking out the rest of his face, just leaving his eyes.

I remembered the young girl shaking as she walked from the stage. The memory made me want to hurt him again.

He stopped laughing and stared back at me. ‘Mr. Matthews,’ he said slowly, ‘have we met before?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

He hesitated a moment and then turned back to Hamza. If he recognized me he was hiding it and I had no escape route if he did. I felt my stomach tighten and hoped the big Russian wasn’t lurking nearby.

‘So Sheikh Hamza, what wonderful things have you been telling our new partner about our project?’ Lawrence said.

Hamza swallowed, ‘Well,’ he began, ‘We were discussing expected yields for the first five years….’

‘Bryson!’ yelled an unmistakable voice, ‘Bryson you old coot, what the hell are you doing here? I thought your whip was still lashed.’

Before I could deny anything Martin was standing beside me and grinning wildly, ‘Didn’t you hear me Bryson? What’s wrong with you? Still drugged up after our little accident are you?’ As usual his booming unsubtle voice was already forcing people nearby to stop their own conversations and stare. ‘Well bugger all that, guess who I’ve just had a meeting with?’

Hamza and Lawrence were both listening to him with bemused fascination.

‘Martin….’

‘Just guess.’

‘Martin….’ I began again and gave up. ‘I’ve no idea Martin, who?’

‘Orsa.’

Oh god, he’s here.

‘Vladimir bloody Orsa son, how cool is that?’

‘He hates journalists apparently.’

‘Yeah doesn’t everyone, but listen,’ he tried to whisper and failed miserably. His whispers were a conversation for anyone else, ‘I’m also a businessman with connections in Sudan, know what I mean?’ he said tapping the side of his nose.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Neither could the two men beside me.

‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you all looking at me like that?’

‘Because we’re all speechless,’ said Lawrence, ‘it would appear Mr. Bryson has some explaining to do.’

Martin looked confused for a moment and then ignored Lawrence because he was saying things he thought were unimportant.

‘Whatever,’ he said, ‘look there’s Orsa. Hey Vlad!’ he yelled.

Lawrence was beaming, Hamza looked terrified. Orsa strode across the room standing head and shoulders above the investors.

‘Vlad, let me introduce you to a friend.’

‘Oh hell.’ I said under my breath.

I felt Orsa’s baritone before I heard it. ‘The fucking journalist,’ he said with cheerful malevolence, his granite eyes boring into me.

‘Hey!’ Martin laughed, ‘you’d better not be referring to me.’

‘He’s referring to me,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘He hates journalists, remember?’ I said pointing at Orsa, ‘But the weaselly looking fella with the broken nose just loves to fuck little girls.’

‘Oh he’s that prick.’

‘Yeah he’s that prick.’

Lawrence blushed through his tan as one or two heads turned to see who I was referring to. Their interest grew when they realized it was their platinum host.

‘Mr. James Lawrence, fraudster and pedophile,’ I said loudly.

‘I am no such thing. That is quite simply slander. Mr. Bryson, you’re just a trashy journalist looking for a cheap headline. You’re simply jealous that other honest people are making money while you scratch a living making up nasty little stories.’

Orsa looked like he wanted to damage every single one of us. With an audience of investors he resisted the temptation and waved for security to intervene. Two impressively muscular men joined our little soiree and waited for Orsa’s command.

Martin was scared, sweating, his face dappled with red blotches.

‘Bollocks to this,’ he muttered and then bellowed, ‘that man Lawrence is a child rapist you say?’ At least half the heads in the room turned to face us. Jesus what was he doing? Orsa and Lawrence’s faces told me we would be scratching the inside of coffin lids before the day was out.

‘Tell me again, how do you know he likes to fuck children?’ Martin looked at me with pleading eyes. The whole room was quiet and focused on us. One salesman remained undeterred still in mid-flow with a couple who were more interested in the impromptu entertainment.

We both unconsciously edged away from the security staff. ‘Well,’ I shouted back trying to match Martin’s volume, ‘I was working on a story about prostitution, when I came across that man,’ I said pointing, ‘James Lawrence, leading a young girl up to a hotel room.’

‘How young was she?’

’12 years old, I was told.’

There was a shout of disgust from a woman in the crowd. One of the beefy security guards put a hand on my shoulder.

‘I followed him to the room and knocked on the door,’ I said quickly, ‘I could see the girl on the bed, that’s when I pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and broke his nose with it.’

There were several people shouting now. ‘Is that true?’ one of them hollered. ‘I’m not investing my money with a bunch of kiddie fiddlers.’

‘What?’ Lawrence spat and pulled on the wireless headset he’d worn on stage. He flipped a switch on its side and a screech of feedback ran through the room to a collective ‘Oooh!’ from the crowd.

I shook off the guard’s hand as soon as Lawrence began to speak and slipped into the mass of investors.

‘I’m afraid you’re all the victims of a terrible hoax, I’ve just found this journalist, a Mr. Bryson, pretending to be an investor called, of all things, Stanley Matthews,’ he raised his eyebrows and got a titter from a few of the older members of the captive audience. ‘We often get these types of people at our exclusive events which is why we try to keep them out. You don’t have to worry about your investments; I’m a family man myself, so….’

All eyes were on Lawrence as I walked up behind him and pulled the headset away from him. Then all eyes were on me.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Orsa said to the guards. ‘Get him.’

I held the headset’s small microphone to my mouth. ‘So, as Lawrence says he is a family man…a family man who likes to have sex with children, is that the kind of company you want to invest in?’ I asked the audience.

‘Sure, if the figures add up,’ one man said, only to be shushed by those around him.

The investors blocked the guards’ path and refused to move. They wanted to hear more.

‘Somebody grab him,’ Lawrence shouted. The man who would have invested with pedophiles lurched as if to take hold of me. I squared up and then thought better of it. I jumped up onto a table covered with glasses full of complimentary wine and skirted around them trying not to topple the linen covered trestle.

The guards had pushed their way forward and were slowly getting closer. ‘That’s not all I’ve found out about Mr. Lawrence and his friends,’ I said. ‘The man with the white hair you see trying to intimidate my editor there is in fact Vladimir Orsa the notorious arms trader, people trafficker and all round not-so-nice guy.’ Lawrence was making the slit-throat signal to the sound desk. I spoke quickly. ‘He and a man called Mohammed Akbar are the key investors in this project.’

One of the guards made a swipe for my legs but missed, I ran off the end of the table, turned quickly and flipped the table with its pyramid of full wine glasses back onto the guards.

The loud crash made sure everybody was paying attention.

‘Mr. Akbar is a notorious trainer of terrorists and drug smuggler who is in all probability dead – killed by his partner,’ I pointed at Orsa. He roared with anger, scaring the investors as much as me. He forgot about the editor and ploughed through the crowd. They tried to stand in his way. Orsa pushed them roughly aside.

‘These men need schemes to launder their money. Sunset Heights is just one of them,’ I said. I looked for a way to delay the Russian psychopath heading towards me.

‘Mr. Lawrence has set this project up so that in the next few months the platinum investor’s money will be passed off as their own. Eventually when nothing is built on the land it will revert to the government and you will lose everything you have invested.’

I leapt onto a narrow table that held the canapés and frilly food. It nearly flipped up and I had to slam my weight down on the other end to stop it from throwing me off.

Orsa made his way to the front while the guards pulled themselves out from under the other table. The investors were becoming hostile and the sales staff couldn’t calm them down.

The sound desk happily ignored Lawrence’s commands to cut me off and the crowd blocked his path demanding to know if my accusations were true.

‘Of course not,’ he shouted at one man and pushed him out of the way. He didn’t see the woman behind him and knocked her off her feet. She screamed.

The man with the glasses who had given me the thumbs up shouted at Lawrence. ‘Look what you did to my wife!’ he said. Lawrence didn’t know how to respond. ‘You apologize right now or else!’ the man continued.

‘Or else what?’ Lawrence said irritably.

The man in the glasses huffed and puffed, trying to figure out what to do next. Lawrence grinned. The little man punched him and re-broke his nose, Lawrence howled with pain.

‘Don’t forget,’ I shouted into the microphone, ‘that man is a child molester.’ Lawrence straightened up and through the pain punched the little man, who fell to the floor. Hands grabbed Lawrence from all sides, urging him to stop, calling him vicious names and demanding to know how much money he was making out of the deal.

Lawrence panicked, turned and hit the man nearest to him, then did a one-eighty and struck another man behind him.

The investors retaliated and punches flew back in the other direction. Lawrence didn’t back down. Despite their best intentions the unwilling sales staff and guards were dragged in to the escalating violence.

A room full of portly middle aged investors turned into a wall of fists as respectable demeanors dropped and the skills from terrace fights, boarding school bullying and urban domestics were unleashed upon anyone within reach.

From the centre of the mayhem a chair was launched at one of the big plate glass windows that ran end to end along the wide top deck of the boat. I saw Martin laughing at the back. Job satisfaction at last.

‘Lawrence also hates his wife,’ I continued, ‘married her for her money and influence....’

I had foolishly forgotten about Orsa. He wrapped an enormous hand around my ankle and pulled. I crashed into a hot meaty spread of Arabian pastries and sauces. The trestle gave way at one end and I slid down to meet Orsa at the bottom.

I grabbed an arrangement of fruit and flowers that fell with me and launched a corner of its heavy wooden base at his forehead. It struck with a disgusting crunch. But he didn’t make a sound. Instead he turned quickly and hit me harder than I had ever been hit before. My nose exploded and I tasted blood.

***

I smelt the liquid before I felt it. Gravity pulled it over my face and down my neck. Sticky bubbles. I heard the noise of a party, then a voice shouting in my ear which grew louder, painfully loud, destroying the perfect peace of unconsciousness. I growled at the voice.

‘Wake up!’ it said.

I blinked my eyes and light flooded in. Someone pulled me to my feet and tried to move me forward. My legs felt like molasses.

‘Come on Bryson,’ the voice implored. I opened my eyes wider and focused.

‘Martin?’ I said.

‘Yes, you need to wake up. We have to get out of here.’

‘Out?’ I repeated groggily.

‘Yeah, I can’t be here when he wakes up’

I looked down at the floor; my feet were under Orsa’s chin. His lips were open, unconsciously kissing my shoes. I hoped they were dirty. My eyes went to the champagne magnum lying next to his head.

‘It took three blows,’ he said panting. ‘Hard bastard.’

‘Well done,’ I said and tried to clear my mind. My spine and neck were in agony. ‘I don’t want to be here when he wakes up either, how do we get off?’

‘Can you swim?’ he said.

***

We stood on a thin ledge that ran the length of the boat outside the tall glass windows and swayed with the movement of the boat. My nose and lips began to swell. Orsa’s fist had done more damage to my face than the extinguisher had to Lawrence’s.

‘I don’t think I can,’ I said.

‘Come on you silly sod, they’ll bloody kill us when they find us, we’ve just lost them so much money.’

‘I’m too woozy Martin. I’ll drown if I try and swim anywhere in this heat, I know it.’

We stared at the grey expanse. The nearest land was about two nautical miles away. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, I’d chance it, but my legs kept threatening to give way.

‘You go, I’ll be fine,’ I said.

‘Don’t be stupid Bryson. I didn’t beat Vladimir Orsa around the head for the fucking thrill of it; I was trying to save your arse.’

‘Thank you Martin,’ I said. ‘You put yourself in harm’s way for me. Thank you,’ I said and put a grateful hand on his shoulder. He shook it away.

‘Don’t get soppy on me Bryson. I’m going to give you a good kicking myself when we get out of here. We’ll both have to leave the country after this.’ He gritted his teeth and tried not to fall off. ‘It’s only fucking journalism,’ he went on, ‘I don’t want to die for an article, writing is supposed to be indoor work with no heavy lifting for god’s sake.’

‘Yeah right,’ I said grinning, ‘tell that to Orsa.’ We chuckled, releasing the fear and tension for a moment. The shouting from inside reminded us where we were.

A trio of jet-skis sped past, cutting each other up and jumping across each other’s wake.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he said.

‘I have no idea, what are you thinking?’

‘Hey!’ Martin yelled at the jet-skis ‘Wooooooh!’ When one of them turned he shouted, ‘Hey, over here, help us,’ and waved his hands over his head. ‘Help!’

Two of the three jet-skis had spotted us and they turned to see what the fuss was about, ‘Help!’ he yelled.