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NATHANIEL ON THE GAME

  Sometimes I find it very hard to understand women. Very often they will find themselves a man, who treats them well and provides a good life, only to cheat on him. Some will even try to delve deep into his pockets, and expect to get away with it. Some may succeed. Some may not.

   A man called Charlie Papas called me the other day. Charlie is a Cypriot, and a bit of a villain, but he has a heart of gold. Well, so all his friends tell me. He makes his money from a string of up-market massage parlours in some of the glossier London suburbs. Big solid Victorian houses, with lots of bedrooms. Charlie likes to call them hotels, but the bars always seem filled with rather full-blown waitresses hanging around in tight peasant blouses and skimpy little skirts, and not many of his guests stay overnight. Some of the hotels also specialise in extremely strange diversions. Charlie also runs a little hash and horse, cannabis and heroin to the unworldly. He has good contacts in the Middle East and South America, and he travels a good deal.

   Charlie’s business interests have made him a rich man. He lives in a big Victorian vicarage somewhere close to Luton, very handy for the airport, has a beautiful villa overlooking Larnaca, and a nice little island with an airstrip in the Bahamas. He always flies first-class, and frequently hires private jets and choppers. He shares his life with a nice woman called Mandy. Mandy is blonde, and very shapely, and almost young enough to be Charlie’s daughter. She worked once as a stripper in a club, but likes to tell people that she met him whilst modelling at a fashion show. Charlie smiles indulgently.

   Mandy has a good head for figures, and Charlie lets her manage all his waitresses. He feels that women understand women, and Mandy is not a girl to take backchat. Girls who cross her sometimes end up very bruised. But Charlie has recently grown a little doubtful about her, not to say suspicious.

   ‘Business is not booming, Nathaniel. Not booming the way it should.’ We were sharing a drink in the private bar at his smartest hotel, a big house in Putney. Charlie uses it as his London base, and Mandy staffs it with her best-looking girls. I enjoy free massages from time to time: both Mandy and Charlie know that I am a malefactor, and the girls are sworn to secrecy. I have the very best treatment: girls never like to be bruised.

   ‘Money seems to be slow.’ He sipped thoughtfully at his champagne cocktail, whilst I eyed the waitress behind the bar with interest. A nice plump girl with raven hair – I had never seen her before. She seemed to find me interesting as well, and I scented a promising relationship in the offing.

   Charlie eyed her as well, and told her to leave us. I was a little disappointed, but he shook his head. ‘I’m worried about Mandy, and I don’t want any sharp little shellpinks listening in,’ he explained. ‘I think she’s skimming the takings.’

   I was surprised. Charlie has never been mean with his women, because he likes them to shine for him. Mandy could choose between her smart little Merc convertible, her BMW with darkened windows, and a big four-wheel drive when she chose to go shopping, and she carried a string of charge cards as long as my arm.

   ‘I think she’s restless.’

 

 

 

   I glanced at him quickly. London may be a big city on the map, but it is really just a village at heart, or a series of villages, and villages gossip. I had heard a whisper or two, tales of Mandy making sheepseyes at a handsome young Indian with a growing stake in the dance world. But I had paid no attention. Young Kazoor had girls and enough of his own.

   ‘I think she’s been cutting him in.’

   I took a deep breath. ‘You mean cutting you out?’

   Charlie nodded  lugubriously. ‘I fear it, Nathaniel, I fear it.’

   I was silent. I had been cultivating Kazoor, in a desultory sort of way – he was a useful man to know. I was reluctant to act against him.

   ‘She’s chancing her arm, flexing her muscles a bit.’ Charlie drained his glass. ‘Trouble is, she’s an ambitious girl. I’m afraid Kazoor will promise her the earth, and sweet talk her into sticking a knife in my back.’

   Some of the gossip had whispered just the same thing.

   ‘I’d like you to have a word with her.’

   I looked at Charlie in surprise. He has a number of men who will do just what he wants.

   ‘No, Nathaniel, nothing like that.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m attached to the girl. She knows what I like.’ He leered at me. I was surprised, because all the girls in Charlie’s world know what men like, and will deliver in style, if the rewards are sufficient. But then I am only a malefactor, and I have never been able to fathom human emotions.

   ‘Make her talk to you, get the truth out of her.’ He leered again. ‘I don’t mind sharing, just once.’

   So I went off looking for Mandy. I found her at another hotel, interviewing new waitresses. She made them strip off, and perform on an elderly man she kept for the purpose. He typified Charlie’s clientele, so the girls got a green light if he liked the way they massaged him. Mandy was watching with a strange look in her eyes, a set kind of expression. I wondered if she fancied the girls as well.

   I gave her one of my sweet looks, nothing too strong. I wanted information, rather than action. She took me into her office, and I looked at her again. Charlie may not know it, but I ran Mandy quite close for a while about a year ago. She looked after both my ends well. But I have no ambition to run a string of massage parlours, and Mandy is a fickle kind of girl.

   ‘He’s getting to be a pain, Nathaniel.’ She came over to stand close to me, and I could feel my ends flicker. But the past is the past, and I counted on Charlie being generous. Nor had I any ambition to compete with Kazoor.

   ‘He’s not what he used to be.’

   I looked sympathetic. Mandy often moans about men, generally when she grows restless. Maybe it has something to do with the phases of the moon.

   ‘People think he’s getting past it.’

   ‘Coming up to retirement age?’

   She nodded. ‘That sort of thing.’

   I looked dubious. Charlie is not the retiring kind. ‘There’s not push enough to make a shove.’

   ‘People want to dust the business over.’

   I could see she had her mind on Kazoor, or possibly some other young rising star. But I needed to know the strength of the opposition. ‘Charlie could blow them away.’

   Mandy avoided my eyes. ‘The boys in blue want him.’

 

 

   I looked at her sharply, and now I began to cotton on. Mandy was plainly planning a bonanza double-cross, buying her way into Kazoor’s good books in one direction, and grassing Charlie up to rights as a bonus.

   She turned to pick up a pair of dark glasses from her desk. I could have easily sent them flying, because I am more than a match for any retired stripper, but I desisted. I think I admired her gall.

   ‘When’s the time?’

   She smiled, and glanced at her watch. ‘They planned to buy him lunch. He’s probably already inside.’

   Poor Charlie. I could see that Mandy had set a nice little trap, doubtless shopping him both for fortune and safety. The boys in blue love pouncing on brothels, they make nice easy targets. Kingpins collect extended holidays at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but grasses stay outside. Charlie could count on a nice comfy cell for five to ten years, leaving the vultures to pick up the hotels – or perhaps Charlie had already made them over to Mandy to shelter his tax status. She only had to call in a toyboy, and she could start all over again: a girl needs a man to handle the travel side of the business.

   But the best laid plans foul up frequently. I was just getting into my car, preparing to head for home, when my mobile rang. It was Charlie, and he was spitting hell and damnation.

   ‘Have you seen Mandy?’

   I grunted, after all it was Charlie who had sent me.

   ‘She’s tried to set me up.’

   ‘I know.’ I told him what Mandy had said.

   It did not improve his temper. ‘I want her dead. She set up a drop, a couple of kilos. She told me two faces from out of town would wait for us at the Heston motorway service area with a case full of cash. There was a crash on the motorway and we were late coming  in. A friend phoned to say to say the Old Bill were waiting, so we drove straight on down to the M25 and back along the M3’.

   I smiled to myself. Charlie is a wary old bird, and always sends biker scouts on ahead. They carry lists of registration numbers for unmarked police motors: Charlie pays a small fortune to keep it updated. I was surprised Mandy had forgotten. I wondered what he would offer.

   He was silent for a moment, and I could tell he was thinking vengeful thoughts. Then he spoke again, his voice edged with the sharpest cold steel. ‘I’ll give you a big one.’

   A hundred thousand is a nice price for a topping. But I had a plan of my own, just taking shape in my mind. I smiled, I could see my art collection growing. ‘You’re sure you don’t want her back?’

   Charlie was silent for a moment. But I know my Charlie, and I could tell he was tempted. ‘Bring her back, and I’ll go another score.’

   A hundred and twenty thousand pounds can buy some nice pictures. I drove around for a couple of minutes, until I found a small newsagent selling plastic bottles of fizz. I bought a dozen, drove round the corner, and emptied them down a drain, one after the other, then flattened them all neatly. Then I drove back to the hotel where Mandy was interviewing, parked just up the road, and popped into the carpark, taking my little collection of empty bottles. I carefully rammed one apiece into the exhausts of each of the cars parked in the staff section. I thought it might give me a chance to play noble Sir Galahad, and offer Mandy a lift.

 

 

 

   Then I went back to my car to wait. But somebody must have sent word of Charlie’s escape, or maybe somebody had seen me, because the next thing I saw was a big Merc with darkened windows come cruising past. I watched it drive into the hotel carpark, and a couple of men in dark glasses spilled out, to stand either side of  the motor looking fierce. I guessed they were armed.

   I wondered what to do next. A nice young woman came tripping along the pavement, and bent to unlock a nice little car parked just in front of me, and I had my answer. I apologised briefly as I gave her a look that knocked her quite senseless, and leaped into her motor. I must say that little Nissan Micras get off to a good start. I rammed the Merc amidships, the dent was quite nasty. The men in dark glasses seemed bewildered, so I leaped at the nearest one, and dealt him a solid right hook. He went down as if poleaxed. I grabbed his gun, rested my arm briefly on the roof of the Merc to get a good sighting, and blew his companion away. He screamed something awful.

   Mandy was huddled in the car. I grabbed her by her hair and hauled her out. The driver of the Merc had a gun as well, but he lacked dark glasses, so I sent him to meet his Maker. Mandy was screaming blue murder.

   I gave her a look, just enough to make her shut up, and bundled her into my car. The whole snatch only took a couple of minutes, and I knew nobody from the hotel could give chase. Plastic bottles melt in hot exhaust pipes, and blow the systems away.

   Charlie seemed pleased to see Mandy. I am not sure the pleasure was mutual. He paid me in cash, and a couple of his men took her away. I am told he first had her off quite brutally, but she let him, because she thought doing penance might earn her forgiveness. But then he turned her over to some of the girls she had bruised, and they ripped her apart. Mandy was not really as bright as she reckoned, but then strippers never are. They say Charlie had the last word with a sharp knife. Cypriot Greeks know how to wreak vengeance.

   I bought myself  some nice little 18^th century watercolours of pastoral scenes. Very restful. I am hoping fate will bring me some more Mandys. I have this chateau in  France and I would like to furnish it exquisitely. Sometimes I find it very hard to understand women, but I always understand business, and women can be very good business indeed.