The Elephant Tree (15 page)

Scott walked back across the club towards the exit. He glanced over in the direction the earring doorman had been standing at but he was already gone.

An attractive girl with long white-blonde hair, a low-cut black top and tight white shorts seemed to be fending off the advances of a young Asian man in a clean-cut suit and expensive looking jewellery. She pushed him gently out of her personal space and immediately he stepped in towards her, slid an arm around her back and leaned in for a kiss. This time she’d had enough, grabbed his arm from behind her and flung it off, put both hands against his chest and shoved as hard as she could. The man looked to have had a few drinks, which maybe impaired his balance, he stumbled back trying to stay upright and slammed hard into Scott just as he was trying to pass behind them; the man dropped his glass which shattered on the floor.

‘What the fuck you doing, man?’ he snarled at Scott, turning around to see what he’d collided against.

‘Take it easy, you backed into me.’

‘Bullshit, yeah? I was conversing with this lady here and you smashed right into me. Get me another fucking drink,’ he said, pointing towards the shattered pieces of glass on the carpet.

‘The bar’s over there,’ Scott said, pointing with his middle finger before pulling it up into a fuck you gesture.

The Asian grabbed two handfuls of Scott’s jacket and tilted back his neck as if about to launch a head-butt at Scott. Before this could happen, the earring doorman grabbed him by the hair and threw a single short punch directly into the man’s kidneys. The Asian gave a mangled cry and fell to his knees, the doorman preventing his fall any further by maintaining his grip on the man’s hair. Another member of security came towards them and hauled off the Asian towards the exit by his collar.

‘Sorry about that Miss,’ said Earring to the blonde girl, whose startled look resembled a sex doll with her mouth shaped in a perfect O. ‘Complimentary cocktail, just you head over there and see that barman,’ he said, and pointed at the man who had served Scott earlier, who was looking over.

‘I bet you’re glad I was still close by,’ He said, once the girl was out of earshot, looking decidedly pleased with himself as he smoothed imagined creases from his jacket.

‘Nice place you have here,’ Scott said, avoiding the question. ‘I thought I was supposed to be the one who hung out in dives.’

‘Sadiq there was a VIP, a rising star in the Garden Heights business community, a multi-millionaire already. If his altercation had been with pretty much anyone else in here you can be sure it would be them on the pavement now and not him. You’re just lucky we have a special relationship.’

The tempo of the music increased and scarlet spotlights began to dance around the room. The doorman’s skin and eyes shone with a malevolent red, earring sparkling furiously.

‘Will you be there at the meeting?’ Scott asked.

‘We’ll see.’

‘Do you know when?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

Obviously Scott wasn’t going to get any information so he made to walk past the doorman towards the exit. The man reached out and held him lightly by the forearm.

‘Are your habits going to be an issue like Twinkle or do you have things under control?’

Scott didn’t know what he was talking about so just stood and looked at him, waiting for the question to be given further clarity.

He released Scott’s arm, held his own forearm out and tapped three times in the crook of his elbow with two large forefingers. ‘Your habit,’ he said. ‘Twinkle can be a bit excessive at times.’

‘I don’t have a habit,’ Scott said. ‘As far as I know neither does Twinkle.’

The man laughed and shook his head. ‘Alright Scott,’ he said, and held out a hand indicating that the conversation was over and Scott was free to leave.

Twinkle could be many things but Scott had no reason to suspect him of having a heroin addiction.

Before venturing back onto the street Scott quickly glanced around to make sure the lunatic from the club wasn’t skulking in the shadows looking to avenge his bruised ego and kidneys. Reasonably satisfied that he could avoid being thrust into the public eye for a pointless fight with the Z list celebrity, he pulled out his phone to call Angela. She was pretty much the only thing that could persuade him not to just head home. After five rings it redirected to answer phone. Fuck it, Scott thought and called for a cab.

S
cott found the Christmas holidays a fairly depressing time and given the opportunity he tended to stay longer in bed. The whole season was geared up towards families which in his case just made him think of death. By the time he did surface and have a shower it was already past one in the afternoon. Scott turned on his mobile phone intending to try Angela again; it had been a few days without any contact at all, and considering how close they had recently become it didn’t feel right.

As he scrolled down through his contact list for her number the phone began to ring, Neil flashed on the caller ID screen.

‘How did the night go?’ he asked, as he connected the call.

‘Fucking terrible man, I need to see you today,’ Neil said, his voice sounding scratchy.

‘Alright, calm down. What happened?’

‘No, not on the phone.’

‘OK then I’ll wait in, just come over when you can.’

‘Someplace else. The Starbucks down beside the plaza, can you be there at two-thirty?’

‘Yeah,’ Scott said uneasily. Neil got spooked by things from time to time, but Scott had never heard him as nervous as this. ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said, and hung up.

Scott arrived at Starbucks fifteen minutes early. He’d called Iris and ordered a cab for twenty minutes’ time but it had turned up right away.

Stan was the driver and explained they hadn’t had many calls so asked if Scott wanted him to wait. Scott said he didn’t know how long this would take, but Stan told him he’d be in the car park at the corner unless another call came through.

At the counter Scott ordered a large Mocha from a cheerful woman with unusually wide gaps between her teeth and a body that was shaped like a potato.

Taking his cup he moved away from the front of the shop. He usually avoided any food or drink establishments that had the floor to ceiling glass fronts. All the people walking by made him feel like a goldfish in a bowl or an animal at the zoo.

He settled into a booth, put his feet up on the seat opposite and tried again to call Angela as he waited for Neil to arrive. There was still no answer. Scott tapped his phone against the formica table-top thoughtfully. If there had been complications with Steph it was possible that Angela had been in the hospital the whole time with her phone turned off. He phoned directory enquiries and had them connect him through to Steph’s ward at the hospital.

‘Hi, can I speak to Stephanie Hutton, or someone connected with her? I’m a close friend of the family,’ he said when the call was connected.

‘One moment please,’ the voice that answered the phone said. ‘No I’m sorry, Miss Hutton was discharged on Friday.’

‘That can’t be right, I visited on Friday and the doctors told her she would be discharged on Monday.’

‘I’m sure you’re right but patients often get homesick and discharge themselves early, especially at this time of the year.’

‘OK, thank you.’ Scott mumbled, and disconnected the call.

He took a sip from the Mocha, and decided if Stan was still there after he met with Neil he’d stop by Angela’s place on the way back home.

The glass door into the coffee shop opened and Elizabeth Flight walked in with someone wearing a grey sweatshirt with the hood up and combat pants, that may or may not have been Neil.

She walked up to the counter as her companion glanced around the room and Scott recognised by the long length of dirty blonde hair that hung down from the hood that it was Neil. Scott waved him over and, as Neil walked up to the booth, Scott noticed he seemed to be favouring his right leg over the left, and when he put down the hood saw a black and purple bruise that stretched from as low down as Neil’s jaw bone, covered his right eye and across the bridge of his nose.

‘Jesus, what the fuck happened?’

‘Apparently there’s competition.’

‘Competition from who? Those twins with the long hair that used to deal around our route?’

‘No this is much bigger. Not competition as much as these guys have taken over.’

‘Taken over in Blitz?’

‘No, everywhere. The whole city,’ Neil said, glancing nervously around as if his attacker may have been lurking in one of the booths, ready to strike again.

‘Start from the beginning, what happened?’

‘Just the same as any other night, I went round the bars, Elizabeth was with me,’ he said, looking at her as she put two cups down on the table and sat on the seat beside Neil. ‘I moved some stuff to the usual crowd, no strangers. We saw these two guys in a couple of places over the night. Probably wouldn’t have noticed them but they weren’t really dressed right for those type of bars. They looked sort of as if they’d dressed down to blend in but hadn’t quite got it right.’

‘I think I’ve seen one of them before,’ Elizabeth said, in what Scott found to be an amused tone of voice, as if this was just some new game she was playing.

‘Seen one where, out drinking in the bars?’ Scott asked, trying to repress any ill feeling he had towards her.

‘No, at least not around those bars. I don’t remember. Daddy has me attend so many functions I can’t possibly keep track of everyone I’ve seen.’

‘Right so they approached you in one of the bars?’ Scott asked, turning back to Neil.

‘No, I caught them looking over a few times but they never said anything. I thought it was cause Elizabeth looked really hot, they were just jealous or something.’

She seemed to wallow in that, as if this whole meeting was some kind of clandestine ploy Neil had thought up to compliment her.

‘So you went on to Blitz?’ Scott prompted.

‘Yeah, it was fine in there, we didn’t even see them. After we came out I still had some bags I was selling off to people, so by the time I’d finished we were just gonna head over to Elizabeth’s place. They stepped out from the alley behind the club, told me they wanted a word. I walked round thinking they were gonna try buy some shit, like maybe they were undercover feds or something. I was just gonna tell them to piss off when one of them grabbed me and threw me up against a wall. His mate said that if we, and he did say we, not me, so they know I don’t work alone Scott, if we want to keep on dealing then everything has to be bought through them at their prices, and we have to pay a premium on top to keep Blitz as ours.’

‘So what did you say?’

‘I told him to fuck off, like who the hell did they think they were and shit.’

‘So then they beat you up?’

‘Yeah, fuck man it was brutal. I’ve been in plenty bar fights over the years but this was different. There was like, an efficiency to it. Within just a few seconds I was face down in the snow wondering what the fuck had happened. They took the rest of the drugs I had too.’

Elizabeth nodded, confirming Neil’s statement.

‘And the cash, how much cash did they get?’ Scott asked.

‘Everything, it was just rolled in my pocket along with the remaining bags. It was after the club so I figured it was job done, nothing was hidden.’

‘So what happens then, do we just wait until we run into them again or what?’ Scott asked, struggling to make sense of Neil’s story.

‘No, they said someone will be in touch.’

Back in the cab on the way to Angela’s flat Scott was wondering what he could do to get out of the situation he was now in. He figured just leaving their drug business for Neil to do what he wanted with might be the best option, but that would all depend how things went with the meeting in which he and Twinkle were due to get paid.

Stan could tell something was up the way Scott got back in and slammed the door shut. Other than asking for their next destination he kept quiet, casting the odd furtive glance at Scott in the rear view mirror but otherwise kept his thoughts, and more importantly his questions to himself.

The afternoon was dark and stormy, a perfect backdrop to Scott’s mood. He chewed distractedly on a fingernail as Stan continued to navigate the cab along the quiet suburban streets in silence. They pulled up outside of Angela’s apartment block and Scott handed some money to Stan and told him not to wait. He was out of the cab and walking towards the entrance before the driver had time to tell him the fare.

Remembering the steaming cup of coffee waiting on the table last time he’d been there, Scott looked up and tried to locate which were the windows for Angela’s flat. Across the whole block they were all small, square and identical. How many had been in the living room, was it two or maybe three? He couldn’t remember. He stopped for a second and counted along her floor, a shape five windows in vanished just as he caught sight of it. Had it been someone watching him? Maybe, or perhaps a cat jumping from the window ledge in a neighbouring apartment.

The entranceway was unlocked again so he didn’t bother to buzz up. There’d been no-one outside on the street and the stairway in the building was equally deserted. Scott felt an increasing sensation of isolation, like he was the last man alive on the planet. He shivered and gave three raps of the knocker on Angela’s door. The hallway had been quiet beforehand and he strained to hear anything from behind the door. The silence seemed to get louder until it became almost unbearable. Scott cleared his throat just to hear a sound, and knocked again on the door, this time pressing his ear up against it. He couldn’t hear anything so he tried calling her name, assuring her that it was just him and that he was worried about her, but his words did nothing more than bounce back along the corridor behind him. Slowly he made his way back downstairs, turning for one last glance over his shoulder in case the door should open.

Scott decided against calling Stan’s cab back and opted to just walk for a while. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry to get anywhere now anyway.

* * *