Wounded Beast (Gypsy Heroes Book 2) (4 page)

I turn my attention to the menu. The combinations of ingredients are unusual and fascinating. I look up once and Dom is watching me. For a moment we stare at each other then I feel myself start to color and have to drop my eyes back to the menu. When Dom lays his menu down I do the same. Almost instantly the headwaiter is at my side. We place our orders and he diplomatically compliments us on our excellent choices.

A small plate of beautifully colorful miniature amuse-bouches is placed in the middle of the table. The waiter who brought it explains what the little titbits are, but his French accent is so thick I catch only the words ‘black radish’, ‘fromage frais’ and ‘steamed mussels with pickle and Guinness’. He disappears as silently as he had arrived.

I pick up one of the ceramic tasting spoons holding a little cube made from three brightly colored, unrecognizable ingredients, sitting in a pool of soy sauce, and slip it into my mouth. There’s a delicate burst from the green base of avocado, the rich meaty taste of tuna tartare and a complete texture and taste change with the rice crispies and deep fried shallots on the top.

‘Good?’ Dom asks.

‘Very,’ I reply sincerely.

He pops one of the smoked salmon shells between his lips and suddenly I find myself hungrily watching his incredibly sexy mouth. I drag my gaze away quickly and cast it around the opulent room.

If his intention is to dazzle me then yes, I’m dazzled—the suit, the car, the impossible to miss deference of the waiting staff toward him, the splendor of the restaurant, the five star excellence of the food—but it doesn’t mean a damn thing.

That strange look we shared in his empty restaurant is worth more to me than one thousand nights in the lap of unrivaled luxury. I know that moment is gone forever. The man in front of me is wearing a mask and he has no intention of ever letting me see underneath the mask again.

He is either with me now because he wants to take me to bed or he is trying to get some information out of me. Most likely a bit of both. I won’t give him any information, but I also know I can’t be the one to hurt him either. Not after what I saw this afternoon.

Tomorrow, I will tell Rob that I want to be taken off this case. He’ll ask why, and I’ll tell him that I don’t feel comfortable around Mr. Dominic Eden. That is tomorrow. Tonight belongs to me and the man in the mask.

I take a sip of the delicious champagne cocktail and meet his gaze. ‘I notice you don’t have a Facebook page?’

H
e stares at me. ‘Is that a crime?’

‘No,’ I concede. ‘But it is rather unusual.’

‘Why?’ he demands.

I shrug. ‘Everybody uses some form of social media. Twitter, FB, MySpace, Picasa, Tsu, Instagram, Plaxo, Xing, Ning … You can’t be found on any platform.’

He bares his teeth suddenly in a pirate grin. And ooh … devilishly attractive. My heart flutters a bit.

‘Can it be,’ he mocks softly, ‘that HMRC’s latest and most formidable weapon, the eighty million pound super-computer Connect, needs me to supply it with data so it can effectively spot signs of potential non-compliance from me?’

‘Hardly,’ I reply. ‘Connect holds over a billion pieces of data collected from hundreds of sources. As it happens, a lack of participation on social media is also “data”. It indicates a desire to conceal suspicious activity.’

He raises one straight, raven-black eyebrow. ‘Really?’

‘Yes,
really
,’ I say with emphasis.

At that precise moment, the sommelier appears with a bottle and tries to display the label to Dom, but Dom doesn’t take his eyes off me. Not willing to be outdone, I stare back. When the bottle is uncorked, he makes a slight motion with his hand to indicate that he wants to dispense with the business of tasting the wine. The sommelier comes around to my side and fills my glass. When he goes around to Dom’s glass, Dom gives a slight shake of his head. Quietly, the man slips the bottle back into the ice bucket and disappears.

I take a sip of wine. It is so smooth and ripe with different and distinct flavors that it makes every type of wine I have ever consumed seem like bootlegged versions of squashed grapes and vinegar.

‘Just out of interest,’ Dom says, ‘what information does Connect hold about me?’

‘And there I was thinking I was here to learn more about your business and not the other way around.’

‘Touché.’ He chuckles good-naturedly.

I smile faintly.

‘So, what would you like to know about me?’ he offers with a reckless smile.

I slip a steamed mussel into my mouth. It is so tender it melts on my tongue. I let it slide down my throat and wipe my lips on the napkin before I answer. ‘I’d like to know why you aren’t on social media.’

The broad shoulders lift, an almost Italian gesture. ‘We’re gypsies,’ he says, as if that answers everything.

‘And?’ I prompt.

‘By nature we distrust any form of surveillance, and as you’ve just confirmed, all forms of social media are Greeks bearing gifts.’ A teasing quality slips into his voice. ‘See, gypsies wouldn’t have towed the Trojan horse into their city.’

‘I don’t want to be stereotypical or anything, but I honestly thought gypsies have always been rather brilliant horse thieves.’

His crystalline blue eyes twinkle with mischief. ‘Ah yes. Perhaps it would have been a different matter if the horse had been real, or made of scrap metal. But being wooden …’

I really want to laugh with him, but I suppress the urge. I’m
not
on a date. I cannot allow myself to like him. I’ll just end up getting hurt.

We’re interrupted by the arrival of our starters. My order of goat’s cheese with roasted beet looks like a white and magenta millefeuille. I gaze at it with awe. Just as the amuse-bouches before, it is a precisely arranged work of art. Almost too beautiful to eat. Dom has seared scallops and walnuts served with a dinky pot of Parmesan brûlée

I cut into my millefeuille and fork a small piece into my mouth. It is so delicious I’m immediately struck by how much I’d love to be able to afford to bring my parents here, instead of all the cheap restaurants my tight budget forces me to take them to. I
know
they would never have tasted anything so refined and luscious, and it suddenly and painfully hits home that they probably never will. And just like that I no longer need to stop myself from liking him. That resentment for ‘people like him’ comes back into my gut. I welcome it like an old friend. It’s better this way. I am too affected by him already.

‘Why are you so afraid of surveillance if you’re doing nothing wrong?’ I ask.

‘Why do you have curtains in your bedroom windows? Are you doing something wrong?’ he shoots back.

‘It’s not the same thing,’ I argue.

‘Why isn’t it? I don’t want the government, its agents and a whole slew of marketers to have access to my private data. That’s my business alone, and I take steps to keep it so. Why is that concept so foreign to you?’

‘You’ll be pleased to know that Connect holds very little information on you, or,’ I continue, ‘your brothers.’

He smiles a slow, satisfied smile.

Smile he should. Guarding his privacy has worked. He is a closed door to Connect’s tentacles. All it managed to dig up was that at twenty-eight years old he has never made a benefit claim. He doesn’t own or co-own any property or business. Needless to say, I don’t believe that for a second. Him not financially tied with anyone? As if! He has two bank accounts that show a pathetic amount of activity, mostly direct debits for utility bills. No overdraft. He has a credit card, but he won’t even use it to pay for petrol. He hasn’t flown with a commercial airline for as long as Connect has been running. One look at that tan tells me he didn’t acquire it in London. Which only signifies he’s leaving the country using other, private means.

I flash him a fake smile. ‘It would appear that you’ve fooled the super-computer into believing that you’re a rather uninteresting employee.’

He lifts his glass of whiskey. ‘I don’t know how you meant that to come out, but I have to say it kinda looks bad when you give the impression that you believe you’re better than a super-computer.’

I smile through my irritation. ‘Connect is an amazing invention. At the touch of a button it can show an incredibly detailed picture about a person that would have taken months of research before, but it has no intuitive powers. The department relies on investigators and analysts like me to validate the data and pick up unnatural patterns.’

‘Unnatural patterns? Like what?’ he asks, fishing for information.

Well, he’s not getting anything but the obvious from me. ‘Like
everything
I’ve seen tonight. Like the clothes, the car, this restaurant.’

‘So, you noticed my clothes,’ he notes cheekily. It’s hard to imagine that this is the same tormented man from this afternoon.

‘One can hardly fail to notice that they’re not off a department store’s rack.’ My voice is mild.

He widens his eyes innocently. ‘I saved up for years to buy these clothes. The car belongs to the company, and I only come to this restaurant when I’m feeling particularly flush or on a really big date.’

‘It’s all a big joke to you, isn’t it?’ I accuse. I can feel myself losing my cool.

‘It’s not just a job for you, is it?’ he asks curiously.

‘No, it’s not. It’s a personal crusade.’ I lean back as the waiting staff move in to efficiently and quickly clear away our plates. My wine is replenished and a fresh glass of whiskey is placed before Dom. I notice that he’s not drinking any wine at all, which means that he ordered the bottle solely for me.

‘So, you must hate people like me.’

‘Hate might be too strong a word. Detest might be a bit closer.’

He looks at me with a perplexed expression as if he’s trying to figure out a three-headed, ten-limbed, purple-striped creature. ‘Why do you care so much what tax I pay? I couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether you pay yours or not.’

‘Because people like you play the legal game and screw the country,’ I accuse hotly.

‘Trying to avoid paying more tax than you have to is not
screwing the country
. On the contrary, it’s doing one’s best to avoid being screwed by people like
you
. I’m paying the right amount of tax within the rules. Only a sanctimonious, pompous zealot would criticize someone for seeking every
legal
means possible to reduce their tax bill. Tax avoidance isn’t wrong. It’s perfectly sensible behavior.’

‘Wow,’ I gasp. ‘This is a turn-up for the books. The tax dodger decides to take the moral high ground!’

He shrugs nonchalantly. ‘Let not he who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built—Abraham Lincoln.’ He leans back, a smug smile on his face.

My main course—Dorset crab and black quinoa with tomato and Meyer lemon sauce—is put before me. It’s a world-class visual treat, but I find I’ve completely lost my appetite.

‘Bon appétit,’ Dom says when we’re alone again, and digs with relish into his Ahi tuna topped with caviar. It is lined with slices of zucchini that are so thinly sliced they’re almost transparent.

I fold my arms over my chest. ‘So, you think that you have a perfect right to pay little or even no tax if possible, because you’re wealthy enough to have access to devious accountants, slick lawyers, corrupt bankers and tax havens while the rest of us subsidize your operations by paying for the education and health care of your workforce, the roads you and your companies use, and the police deployed to guard your restaurants and nightclubs from trouble.’

He leans forward, his eyes glittering dangerously. ‘If you truly feel that way then why don’t you do something about the really big tax avoiders like Google, Starbucks, Microsoft and Apple?’

I sit up straighter in my chair. ‘My mandate does not cover multinational companies.’

He raises one mocking eyebrow. ‘Your mandate doesn’t cover multinationals? How fucking convenient.’

‘Another department deals with them,’ I defend tensely.

He bursts into a sarcastic, cynical laugh.

I stare at him furiously. How dare he make out that I’m in some insidious way complicit in the wrongdoings of the multinational companies?

‘Since you seem completely clueless, let me tell you how your department for policing the multinationals dealt with the big boys last year. Starbucks had sales of four hundred million pounds in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax at all. It transferred some money to a Dutch sister company in a royalty payment, bought coffee beans from Switzerland (hey! who knew Switzerland produces coffee beans, but there you go), and paid high interest rates to borrow from other parts of the business.’ He pauses. ‘Want to hear how they dealt with Amazon?’

I say nothing.

‘I thought not. But here’s the deal anyway. With sales in the UK of four-point-three billion last year, it reported a tax expense of just four-point-two million pounds. What percentage is that, Ella? Could that possibly be just nought-point-one percent?’

I know everything he
’
s said is true, but I
’
ve always told myself that it
’
s not my remit. If I do my job well then I
’
ve done my bit to make my country a better place. His arguments do not shake my foundations at all.
I clamp my mouth shut and refuse to be drawn into an issue that has nothing to do with his tax situation—or me.

‘Why so quiet, hmm? Is it because you already know that the same story is repeated with Google and Apple and every massive multinational? The obvious question that arises in any rational person’s mind would be
why should I not make my tax disappear too?’

I jut my jaw out aggressively. ‘How about because it
’
s morally wrong? Or because you care for the people of this country? Because your taxes will keep schools and hospitals from closing their doors? Because you don’t have to do something wrong just because others are doing it?’

He shakes his head. ‘You know what you are, Ella?’

‘You’re obviously dying to tell me,’ I say dryly.

‘You
’
re someone’s attack dog. The question is whose? You
’ve
obviously been fooled into thinking you
’
re the attack dog for the poor and oppressed, but answer this: Every year you collect more and more taxes, so, how is it then that every year there
’
s less and less for public services?’