NATHANIEL AND THE POP STAR
Love and hate are strange, and often strained, passions from a malefactor’s point of view. I have just completed an interesting commission: I was asked to break a showbiz career. A man’s voice called me a couple of days ago, asking me to visit him in Wardour Street. He said he had my name and number from a mutual friend. I never ask, because I don’t have friends. But many people find me useful, and whisper about me. I wore my best suit when I went to see him: a nice shade of charcoal, to match my eyes, crisp white shirt and black silk tie, black silk socks and well polished lace-ups from Lobbs of St. James – I do like my feet to look smart. People sometimes tell me I dress like an undertaker, and I smile, because sometimes an undertaker is next down the line from me.
The Wardour Street office was large, and expensively furnished, for the man was a showbiz agent, managing pop stars. He was a shark, with a tight shark smile, and oil paintings of racehorses in heavy gilt frames on his office walls – sharks always like racehorses: maybe they think horsemeat. His secretary was very dishy indeed, but I exercised restraint – one should never mix business with pleasure. The story was simple.
‘There’s this girl, she’s doing a concert tomorrow night.’ The showbiz agent wreathed himself in clouds of expensive cigar smoke. ‘She’s got too big for her boots, she needs taking down a peg or two.’
I noticed that a door into an adjoining room was a little ajar, and I detected the presence of a woman. She was wearing Chanel No. 5: I could tell that at a distance, because I have an acutely developed olfactory sense – I can smell things that pass ordinary humans by. I’m like a polar bear – polar bears can scent their own kind from more than 20 miles.
I listened politely. ‘What do you want me to do?’
The shark smiled. ‘We want her out of the running.’
I nodded professionally. ‘Terminally?’ This sounded to be good news. A termination on a pop star with a hit in the Top 20 had to be worth at least £20,000, maybe a touch more.
He looked a little shocked. ‘No, not that. We don’t want to risk any bad publicity. Just make her lose her singing voice for a year or two. Can you do that?’
I frowned, to show my disappointment. ‘It’ll cost you five big ones. Half now, half the day after.’
The man was already reaching to a drawer in his desk. But now the door to the adjoining office opened, and a woman came in. She was wearing dark glasses, and a silk scarf pulled close around her hair. But I knew her immediately. She was a girl from a big name all-girl group back four or five years ago. The girls had squabbled and split up in a welter of recrimination and rivalries, and several had gone on to marry millionaires. One had tried having her cake and eating it, marrying a millionaire and then bidding to relaunch a solo career.
‘I want her wasted.’ The woman’s voice was a sibilant hiss, a voice of hatred. I perked up immediately. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Perhaps we were back into terminal mode.
‘I don’t want her ever singing, pretending to sing, again.’
My ardour failed. ‘That’s more than a year or two.’
The agent reached into his drawer for another bundle of banknotes, and pushed them towards me. ‘She wants the girl out of the running.’
So we settled. I tried making eyes at the woman in the dark glasses, because I had seen her a couple of times on television, and quite fancied her: I also like to keep abreast of the trends. But you know how it is with killing looks – they never penetrate dark glasses. It’s a power I lack, in the same way that witches can never see their reflections.
The thought kept me in my seat, and the agent look at me curiously. Maybe he thought I would ask for out-of-pocket expenses.
‘I’ll have to get close to her.’ I was not going to tell them about dark glasses. I thought maybe, were I to bide my time, I might collect a pop star.
‘Close to her?’
‘It works better when I’m close.’
‘How close?’
Now we were fencing, and I began to grow bored. The agent was not wearing glasses, so I shot him a look. Nothing very fierce, but a warning. I could see him wince, and I smiled.
‘Did you feel that?’
He took care to avoid my eyes. ‘We’ll get you a back stage pass. You’ll see her when she comes out of her dressingroom.’
I prepared well for the concert. My powers have a kind of electric force to them, and work best when my batteries are fully charged. So I spent the afternoon of concert day doing a little gardening: nothing to make me excited, and I allowed plenty of time for my trip to the concert arena. I am not prone to road rage, nor exhibitions of driving temper. But I can take umbrage quite easily at being cut up, so I drove sedately. I had a job to do, and I always try to do my jobs well.
I reached the venue in plenty of time, and I even found a space for parking. (These things are important, when towing away to a car pound can cost a hundred and sixty smackers, and engender some very bad feelings. I have wiped three tow crews and half a dozen men in blue in the past year, and I fear they may all soon wear crash helmets with plastic visors. Visors provide the same protection as dark glasses).
The arena was already buzzing. People were rushing around in great excitement, and a crowd of fans clogged the star’s entrance. I thought of a little power staring, but used my shoulder instead. I am quite a wiry malefactor, all things considered.
The man guarding the entrance eyed me a little doubtfully - it was plain that he did not recognise me, and the pass might have been a forgery, for all he knew. So I shot him a minor love look. Nothing to tap into my powers, more of a kind of chummy smile, if you like. But he smiled back immediately, and I knew I had made a conquest. It is always nice to be liked.
I was well ahead of the pop star’s opening call, so I set off to explore a little. I found myself in a world of lithe young men and pretty girls, and I felt myself sorely tempted: I could have mastered a dozen girls in as many minutes. But I kept myself under control, for I was on duty.
Then things began to happen. The pop star arrived, hemmed in by a posse of henchmen, all in dark suits and dark glasses, and music began to thunder. Spotlights flashed, and searchlights swept the sky. I could hear a great deal of screaming. I readied myself, close to the door into the pop star’s suite. It was guarded by a burly man in a dark suit and dark glasses, but I was not fussed, for I had a plan.
The burly man tensed, for my pop star was now ready. A girl swept up, bearing an armful of flowers to shepherd my pop star on stage, and I shot her a love look, but now quite intense. It worked like a charm – the girl thrust the flowers into my waiting arms, and collapsed in a faint. The burly man leaped to the rescue, and I strode past him to make my presentation. Fortunately the pop star was not wearing dark glasses. It was the work of a matter of seconds, and I knew I was aiming true, because the pop star’s eyes suddenly glazed, and she looked totally stricken. She clutched at her throat, and I knew I had done something unpleasant to her vocal chords.
Then I was gone, as an anxious flurry of people clustered around her.
I was a little disappointed next day to see nothing of my foray in any of the morning papers, though I went out early to buy every single one. I learned why in a call that came just after breakfast. It was the showbiz agent, and he sounded most unhappy.
‘The girl fucking mousetrapped you. She mimed the whole thing.’
I held my telephone a little way from my ear. The man really seemed very upset, and I cannot transmit my powers electronically. ‘But she won’t be singing for a couple of years.’
‘She never could fucking sing.’ The agent’s voice rose angrily. ‘The whole thing was hyped up to the eyeballs, and she signed with a major cosmetic group when the show ended. Her voice was bad, but they put it down to strain. She collared the contract my client was after, and now she’s gone off to recover. The tabloids think she’s a brave, brave girl.’
‘You mean both girls were pitching for the same bundle?’
‘Exactly.’ He snapped the word off sharp with a real shark snap. ‘Now my girl’s freaking out, and telling me I’ve fucked her up.’
I scented trouble in the offing. ‘What do you want me to do?’ I had an unpleasant feeling that I might have trouble securing full payment.
‘Come and sort her out. Eleven sharp.’
The line went dead, and I scowled at my reflection in a highly polished stainless steel sheet that serves me in lieu of a glass. Fortunately I had plenty of clean shirts, not to mention highly polished lace-ups. But I was still in a bad mood, and I could feel it growing worse by the moment.
Rush-hour traffic into London did nothing to help. A white van driver with his nearside window wound down tried to cut me up coming off the elevated section of the M4 motorway. He grinned at me, just once, before veering sharply into the central barrier. I don’t think he died, but I don’t think he’ll ever try cutting up a Clio Williams again. Radio traffic reports said the tailback stretched fully twenty miles back past Slough, and the M25 ring route around London seemingly ground to a standstill. A big, big Mercedes tried chopping me up as well. Unfortunately the Mercedes had darkened windows, and there was not much I could do to damage the driver, a fat swarthy man from somewhere south-east of Dover. But I have yet to find a Merc that can match a Clio Williams, especially when Nathaniel is driving, and I left the fat swarthy man fuming.
I arrived at the showbiz agent’s just after eleven, after charming a nice blonde traffic warden into allowing me twenty minutes on a yellow line – I gazed deep into the traffic warden’s soul, and I thought twenty minutes would be enough to do the business.
I noticed that this time the showbiz agent had donned dark glasses. ‘My client’s very unhappy.’ He barked the words – it was plain he was in a very bad mood.
I shrugged. I was equally disgruntled, and I just wanted to close the account. I held out my hand. ‘I’ve come for my readies.’
‘She don’t want to pay you.’
‘I see.’ I could sense Chanel No. 5 not far distant, and I knew that I needed to bait a trap. ‘She’ll look good in the papers.’
The agent scowled. ‘You want to cut your own throat?’
‘I’ve got friends in the media.’ This was true, because whilst I don’t regard anyone as a friend, there are many who would like to count on my friendship. However it was plain that we had come to an impasse, because we were eyeballing each other, and my twenty minutes were ticking inexorably past. Traffic wardens, and passing policemen, and towaway crews, never bother me, because all can fall subject to migraines, and sudden heart attacks – unless of course they wear glasses. But I don’t like having to take a cab way down past Waterloo to pay out a small fortune to rescue my beloved Clio Williams, particularly as nasty things can happen to high performance cars in police pounds.
I sighed. ‘I’ll put the word about that she spiked the other girl’s lemonade not just because she was jealous, but also because she was dyke, and the other girl packed her in.’
My words worked a charm. A small tornado reeking of Chanel No. 5 came racing out of the adjoining office, spitting like a wild cat. It was hard to tell what she was screaming, because she was jumbling all her words together. But she did not sound very pleased. I backed up defensively, because she had her hands raised, and I feared for my safety, not to say for my eyes, my greatest asset.
Then I realised that she was not wearing dark glasses. I looked into her eyes, momentarily, because they were really quite pretty, and let fly with my most supercharged love look, the one I keep for girls I really fancy, when I am most in a hurry. The girl stopped dead in her tracks, and a strange expression of adoration crept over her face. I glanced at my watch quickly, realised that I still had four minutes of my twenty to run, and had her away on the showbiz agent’s carpet.
He was watching me with a strange expression as I stood up again, zipping up my pants, and he was holding out a sheaf of banknotes. The girl was lying limp on the floor. I don’t think she had ever been taken so fast or so comprehensively, and I do not think it is an experience she will ever forget.
‘You deserve your money,’ he said tersely, and I noticed that he was still wearing his dark glasses.
‘She asked for it’, I retorted as I tucked the money into my wallet. I did not bother to count it – people never cheat me when they know my powers. ‘I don’t suppose she’ll try playing the revenge card again.’
He nodded. ‘I don’t suppose she will.’
The girl on the carpet did not say a word, and the nice blonde traffic warden smiled at me as I drove off. Charm can prove a valuable asset.