Текст книги "Wounded Beast"

Автор книги: Georgia Le Carre

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SEVEN

I knock on Rob’s door.

‘Come in,’ he calls.

I enter. ‘You wanted to see me?’

He beckons me over to his desk with his finger. ‘Have you made another appointment with the wanker’s accountant?’

I know exactly to whom he’s referring, but I feign ignorance. ‘Which wanker?’

He looks at me with unconcealed irritation. ‘How many wankers are we dealing with? That Eden wanker, obviously.’

‘Er … not yet. I didn’t know when you would be coming back to work. How are you today?’

‘Fine,’ he dismisses curtly. ‘Check my diary and make another appointment as soon as possible.’

I shift my weight from one foot to the other with the realization that apparently Dominic Eden is personal for both Rob and me. Me because I crossed the line last night and probably will again tonight, and Rob because Dom snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand, so he’s decided to show him who the real ‘boss’ in this scenario is. Before yesterday he was just doing his job. Today he’s out for blood.

Unfortunately this puts an end to my plans to exit gracefully. A) In this frame of mind, Rob wouldn’t ‘get’ my reason. And B) I can’t walk away and allow Rob to misuse his power and destroy Dom. I’ve seen him in this mode before, when people rub him up the wrong way, and I know just how vindictive he can be. Once he gets like this, he always demands the maximum penalties. Prison, if possible.

I close the door and walk into his room. ‘Sir, do you ever wonder if what we’re doing is right?’

His eyes fly up to meet mine. ‘No.’ He pauses and leans back in his chair. ‘What’s up with you, Savage?’

My face flames. God! If he knew what I did yesterday.

‘Nothing,’ I reply, keeping my tone light and easy. ‘I was just wondering how it is that we always go after the middle and upper middle classes. We never seem to target the truly big corporations and the truly rich one percent who should be paying billions in taxes but don’t.’

He looks at me as if I’m stupid. ‘Because that’s not our job. Our mandate is to go after the middle and upper middle classes. Going after the big boys is somebody else’s job.’

‘Whose job is it?’

‘How would I know?’ he says with a shake of his head.

‘From what I can see, nobody’s going after them.’

‘Are you surprised?’

‘What do you mean?’

He sighs. ‘The best description of taxation I’ve ever heard was from one of our ex-Prime Ministers, Denis Healey. He, very sensibly, compared it to plucking a live goose: the aim is to extract the maximum number of feathers with the minimum amount of hissing. Plucking the corporations would create the kind of hissing we’re unprepared to handle. They have the best lawyers and the most talented accountants who’d run rings around us. We’re never going to get anything out of them. It would just be a pointless exercise.’

‘So we go after the small and medium-sized fish because we can’t catch the big white sharks and the killer whales?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘But that’s so wrong.’

‘No, it’s not. Every year we recover billions from these slimy bastards.’

‘And do what with that money?’

He looks at me with a sneer. ‘Our shakedown pays for schools, hospitals, roads, people to collect your rubbish, police, fire services. Need I go on?’

‘But it’s still unfair,’ I say softly.

He leans forward and steeples his fingers. ‘Life is unfair, Savage. Is it fair that one child is born the great-grandson of the Queen of England with a golden spoon in his mouth, and another child, through no fault of its own, is born to starve in Africa?’ He pauses to look at me with an expectant expression. When I say nothing, he adds, ‘Now, go make that appointment with the wanker’s accountant, will you? That’s one goose I want to see plucked and cooked until crisp.’

I bite my lip. ‘I don’t know about his account, Rob. The computer flagged the tax return because there was one incorrect figure, but you and I know it’s probably just a simple accounting error. If that one figure is adjusted as his accountant proposes there’s no reason at all to suspect there’s any tax fraud going on.’

His eyes narrow. A mean look comes into them. ‘What’s the matter with you today, Savage? Have you gone soft in the head?’

I take an involuntary step back. There’s something cruel about Rob. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of his fury.

He goes on coldly. ‘It’s as obvious as the nose on my face that this restaurant is not paying the correct amount of tax. They never are. Dig hard enough and there’s always something to be found. At the very least I expect to extract a massive penalty and interest for our time and effort.’

‘Right. I’ll go and make that appointment now,’ I say, and quickly exit his office before he deduces more than he already has about my stance on the matter.

I go back to my desk and lean my forehead against my palm. What a bloody mess. Nigel Broadstreet has already called twice to speak to me and left his mobile number. I dial it and he answers the call.

‘Mr. Broadstreet? Ella Savage, HMRC, here.’

‘Good morning, Miss Savage.’

‘Yes, I’m calling to reschedule our appointment.’

‘Yes, of course. When would be convenient for you?’

I look at the computer screen showing both Rob’s diary and mine. ‘How about Monday, ten a.m.?’

‘Excellent. Same place?’

‘That will be fine.’

‘I’ll see you there, then.’

‘Um … Will Mr. Eden be attending, too?’

He pauses as if surprised. ‘No,’ he says very firmly. ‘Mr. Eden is an employee who has very little information about the accounting side of things. As I explained before, and will prove during our appointment, this whole situation is an error made by a trainee, which can be rectified quite easily.’

‘Fine. I’ll see you Monday. Please don’t be late.’

He coughs uncomfortably. ‘Of course.’

‘Goodbye, Mr. Broadstreet.’

‘Goodbye, Miss Savage.’

I end the call and schedule the appointment into our diaries. Afterwards, I call my mother and confirm that I’ll be picking her and my father up at twelve. Then I call down to John to remind him that I’ll need to borrow the ‘official business’ car at eleven thirty. I lean back in my chair. Dom will not be at the meeting. Thank God. I honestly don’t think I could act normal if he was there watching me with those eyes, knowing he’s been inside me.

As planned, I pick my parents up at twelve and we have lunch at a local pub. The food tastes like what it costs—£5.99 for two courses and £9.99 for three—but my father seems to be glad of the change of scenery, and my mother’s in a good mood. So, it’s a nice, easy lunch.

After that, we all troop back into the car and I drive to Tesco to do the weekly big shop for my parents. Because I felt bad yesterday that I could never take them to a place like the Rubik’s Cube, I start picking up stuff that’s more expensive than I’d normally choose and place it in the trolley.

My mother touches my arm. She looks worried. ‘That’s too expensive for us, darling. Just the economy version will do,’ she says.

‘No,’ I say with sadness in my heart. ‘I want to treat you and Dad to something better than economy this week.’

‘But, darling,’ my mother whispers, ‘you’ll leave yourself short.’

I smile at her. ‘It’s only this one week, Mum. Next week we’ll go back to the economy stuff, OK?’

I fill the trolley with fine ham, expensive cheeses, two good cuts of sirloin, some of Tesco’s finest desserts, a lovely boxed Tesco’s Finest carrot cake, all butter croissants, branded ice cream, two duck breasts and organic walnut bread. The bill, when it’s rung up, is shocking. It’s almost double what I usually spend shopping for economy stuff. My mother gives me a ‘let’s put it all back’ look, but, ignoring her, I slide my credit card into the reader and key in my PIN.

I return to work at two p.m. to find a large brown box inside an Argos plastic bag. For one second I think my mother has sent me a gift. She does buy stuff from there, but then why would it arrive on my desk when I’ve just returned from spending time with her?

I walk toward the bag with a frown on my face. I take the brown box out of the bag and open it. Inside, there’s another box, only this box is from an expensive boutique. I quickly drop it back into the brown box and put everything back into the Argos bag. My face feels hot and my heart is beating fast in my chest.

Now I know exactly who the package is from. I stuff the bag under my table, switch on my computer, and stare blankly at the screen. It occurs to me that whoever he got to send the box to me went to a lot of trouble to make it seem as if I was just receiving some cheap thing from Argos. For that I’m grateful. The last thing I need is my work colleagues thinking I’m being bribed by tax evaders.

Lena, from down the hall, puts her head around my door. ‘You got your package then?’

‘Um … yeah.’

She comes in. ‘So what’s in it?’ she asks nosily.

‘Oh, just my mother sending me something for the flat. Probably crockery.’

‘Oh.’ She scrunches up her face as if to say, ‘Nothing interesting, then.’

I shrug as if replying, ‘That’s life, what can you do?’

She brightens. ‘Do you want to come with us for a drink tonight?’

‘Uh … No. Not tonight. I’m a bit tired.’

‘Oh, come on. It’s Friday.’

‘I know, but I’m too tired.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah. You have fun, though.’

The first thing I do when I get home is open the brown box and take out the expensive box. There’s an envelope attached to it. I pull it off and extract the card.

To replace the one I ruined.

                           Dom

His handwriting is bold and not the prettiest, but like him it oozes power and confidence. I open the box. Tucked amid white tissue paper is something red. I take it out and gasp. Wow!

It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen. It has a slit at the back and even looks like it’s my size. In a daze I run my fingers over the soft material. I’ve never owned anything so fine in my life.

Carefully, I hang the dress on a hanger and hook it on the door handle of my closet. Then, lying on the bed, I open the box of handmade chocolates, and, while eating them, admire the dress. The chocolates are delicious. The dress is fabulous. But I don’t like how confused I am about things I used to be so sure of.

In one hour Dom will be here.

EIGHT

I step up to the shower, turn it on, and the jet of hot water cascades down my body, relaxing my tightly wound muscles. I close my eyes and she fills my thoughts like an exotic perfume. Her eyes, blue and Bratz-doll enormous, flash into my mind. All day I’ve been haunted by their damn beauty. I know I’m being reckless, but I don’t care.

I’m gonna have her and fuck the consequences.

So many women have lain in my bed. They come, they go. They taste like fucking dry bread and tap water. A man needs to eat, so I filled my belly, but all the time I wanted honey and sweet flesh. A body that begs me to take it even when its owner doesn’t want me to.

Ella.

Ella of the zebra shoes, sexy calves and the perfect ass. Oh, that ass! What I could do with such an ass. So, yeah, I’m gonna fucking risk it again today, just for that adrenalin rush of opening her thighs and ramming my dick straight into her wet, tight pussy while she sucks my tongue.

My mind replays the moment I threw her against the wall and fucked her as her mouth hung slack and a rush that I’d forgotten I could feel pulsed into my cock, engorging it, making it ache. I clutch it in my hand and it hums … for her creamy body.

Soon, my friend. Soon.

I close my eyes and clear my head. Sometimes it feels as if I’m plunging off a cliff into the deep blue ocean. Maybe there are rocks under the surface. Maybe I won’t survive. Maybe she won’t take away the pain. Maybe she’ll stand on the cliff edge and watch me bleed to death instead, but so be it. I can’t stay away from her, even if it means my own destruction. I must see her soft hands lift her dress up and willingly offer me everything.

I must taste her honey again.

I keep my bedroom windows open, and when I hear the distinctive growl of the Maserati’s V8 engine I lean out of the window and call down to him as soon as he cuts the noise. He looks up, surprised, and as darkly beautiful as an avenging angel.

‘Don’t come up, there’s a parking attendant up the road. I’ll come down,’ I holler down to him.

‘Well, hurry up then,’ he shouts up.

I take one last look at myself in my pretty yellow sundress before running out of my flat and skipping down the three flights of stairs. As I step out into the street I see that Dom has come out of his car and is leaning his butt against it. My heart does a little dance. He looks super-edible in a black T-shirt, blue jeans and pristine Timberland boots. His arms are crossed, and my eyes greedily rove over the thick muscle cords. His eyes are as bright as gems and are focused on me. Hit by an unnatural attack of shyness (What? Me, shy?) I pause uncertainly by the entrance door.

‘Hey, sexy,’ he drawls.

‘There’s a parking attendant walking toward us with a very determined expression on his face,’ I say as nonchalantly as I can.

He replies by opening the passenger door with a flourish. I walk toward him with a smile.

He grabs my arm. ‘You’re one incredibly beautiful woman, you know,’ he says.

The compliment goes straight to my head and makes my skin burn. I have to pretend to look down at my shoes to hide my flustered face. He lets go of my arm and I slip into the seat. I turn my head to watch his fine ass go around the back of the car. He gets into the driver’s seat and closes the door.

‘Thanks for the dress. It’s beautiful,’ I say quickly, ‘but I can’t accept it. It’s too expensive.’

He frowns down at me. ‘It’s just a replacement. I ripped your skirt yesterday.’

‘Well, it’s too expensive.’

‘Well, I was very sorry,’ he says with a glint in his eyes.

‘It could be deemed a bribe.’

‘Let me tell you how tonight and every night that we spend together is going to go down. We are never discussing my tax situation, or my finances, or any of that shit we talked about last night. You want that kind of information, you’ll have to talk to Nigel. We are just going to eat, talk, fuck and have fun.’

‘Rob and I have an appointment to see your accountant next week,’ I inform him quickly. ‘I’m saying this up front so there’s no misunderstanding about the investigation. We are going ahead with it.’

‘Good,’ he says casually.

‘You don’t sound worried.’

‘That’s probably because I’m not.’

I look at him curiously. ‘Why not? Most people in your shoes would be.’

‘Why should I be? I haven’t done anything wrong, and Nigel will finally get to do what he’s paid a shitload to do.’

‘Look, we won’t ever talk about your tax situation again, but I have to warn you that you really pissed Rob off the other day when you refused to shake his hand. He took it as a personal insult, and I think he’s going for maximum damage.’

A soft look comes into his eyes. ‘Thank you for the warning. It means something to me.’ Then he grins. ‘But it’s totally unnecessary. I meant to piss that asshole off. He’s like a little bully on a power trip. In school he would have been one of those boys who joined a gang to terrorize all those smaller and weaker than them.’

It’s startling how you can spend weeks and months with someone and be totally blind to their true personality. In one sentence Dom has described Rob’s entire MO. Something I’d shut my mind to because I truly believed we were doing it for the greater good. But now I’m not so sure anymore.

Are Rob and I bullies? We threaten ordinary, hardworking people who’ve salted away something for their old age, so they don’t have to depend on their children to buy them the necessaries the way my poor parents do, with prison sentences and force them to pay up. When possible, we even go into their bank accounts and help ourselves to their hard-earned money. We do it all because we can. And yet the multinationals, the super rich, the old money families who already have everything tied up in untouchable trust funds, we allow to get away with paying laughable amounts of tax or no tax at all.

Yeah. I guess the hard truth is, we are shameless bullies.

The idea disturbs me greatly, but I don’t share my thoughts with Dom. Instead, I shrug slightly and say, ‘Just ask Nigel to be careful. Rob can be really vindictive.’

‘You know those hotshot accountants the multinationals use?’

My ears prick up. ‘Yeah …’

‘We stole Nigel from them. Let Rob pit himself against Nigel. It’ll be interesting to see if my accountant is actually worth his huge salary.’

I don’t get to answer him because the parking attendant is standing outside the car next to me. To my surprise, he doesn’t berate Dom the way he does other drivers with lesser cars. Instead, he asks in a totally awed voice, ‘How fast can this beauty go?’

‘I never took her over a hundred and fifty mph,’ Dom says.

The man shakes his head admiringly and lets his eyes caress the smooth lines of the car. ‘She’s a beauty, man. I’d exchange my wife for a car like this.’

Dom laughs, kisses the pad of his thumb, and guns the car. The attendant watches us take off with a wistful expression.

‘Where are we going?’ I scream over the noise.

‘My place,’ he says.

We park in an underground car park beneath a posh building in Chelsea and get into a lift smelling of disinfectant. Both of us face the gleaming doors as we’re silently and quickly whisked up to the top floor. His apartment is one of two on the top floor. As soon as he opens the front door, I say, ‘Wow!’ Most of the walls are made of glass and the view is breathtaking.

‘Oh my God! You can see across the river for miles out.’

He chucks his keys onto a metal container shaped like a leaf on the sideboard while I look around in amazement. The way homes in designer magazines look. Spotless, not a scratch or mark anywhere, fabulous furniture, everything color-coordinated with one or two bold splashes here and there, the floors shining with polish, and a bowl of fruit on a statement coffee table.

‘Does anyone actually live here?’

He looks at me strangely. ‘I live here.’

‘Wow, then you must have a shit-hot cleaner.’

‘I’ll tell Maria you said that,’ he says with a grin.

I grin back foolishly.

‘Come on. I’ll show you the balcony,’ he says and we cross the vast open-plan space. Our footsteps echo in the ultra-modern emptiness of the place. He opens the tall glass doors and I step outside.

‘This is amazing,’ I exclaim looking at the city bathed in the glow of the evening sun.

‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it? When you live somewhere for some time you start forgetting how beautiful you once thought it was.’

‘You’re very lucky,’ I say sincerely.

His face closes over. ‘It’s still too early to say,’ he says cryptically.

‘No, you’re already luckier than all the children who live in rubbish dumps in the Philippines and all the slave workers in China and India and all the homeless people in London.’

He looks down at me, and for a long time he doesn’t say anything. Then he raises his finger and pushes away a skein of hair that the wind has undone from my face. His fingers feel hard and warm against my skin. I have to resist the impulse to rub my face against his hand like some needy puppy. Thank God, he takes his hand away before I do something I’ll forever regret.

‘Sometimes you can be happier on a rubbish dump than in a palace,’ he says.

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘I don’t believe it, I know it. Growing up my family was dirt poor and yet we were happy. Fiercely happy.’

I stare up at him. In the sunlight his eyes are like blue crystals with silver flares, the pupils seeming too large for a man.

‘People don’t understand what wealth does. Wealth makes you more dissatisfied. You buy a house, you fill it with the best, then you buy another, you fill that with the best; you buy a yacht, then a plane; you buy a vineyard and then you buy a bigger yacht, and a bigger plane. Then you start a luxury car collection. And you never ever come to a place where you think, “That’s enough now. Why earn any more? I couldn’t spend it all in my lifetime even if I tried. I’ll just stop working and relax, enjoy all I have.” No, you just keep on pushing yourself, constantly expanding the business. It’s why billionaires in their eighties put in eighteen hour days.’

I think of my parents. They’re poor, yes, but they’re happy in their small world outside the rat race. And except for my resentment of the people who don’t pay their taxes, I love my little matchbox flat and my little life.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asks suddenly, jerking me away from my thoughts.

‘Ravenous,’ I admit.

And he laughs. ‘Good. There’s plenty of food.’

I hear his laugh inside my chest. ‘What’re we having? A takeaway?’

‘Sort of.’

His idea of a sort of takeaway and mine are worlds apart. Mine is a small pepperoni pizza with garlic bread, or chicken biryani and poppadoms, or a quarter crispy duck and special fried noodles from one of the takeaway joints inside the five-mile free delivery radius. His is a three-course meal from one of his restaurants.

The food—well, the raw ingredients—is brought by a man in a chef’s uniform whom Dom introduces as Franco. Franco then proceeds to cook and serve us as we sit at the dining table. I take a careful sip from my glass of wine. I woke up with a massive hangover this morning and I don’t want to repeat the experience tomorrow.

‘So, you can’t cook,’ I say, cutting into my perfectly baked leg of milk-fed lamb.

‘Nope.’ Holding his food at the side of his mouth, he says, ‘My brother Shane can, though.’

‘He’s the youngest, isn’t he?’

‘No, my sister Layla is. He’s the second youngest.’

I pick up a dab of artichoke and pearl barley mash at the end of my knife. ‘Ah, yes. I forgot. He’s the youngest boy. Being a stay-at-home mother, your sister didn’t quite make it on to our radar. But she’s married to a rather … um … interesting character, isn’t she?’

He leans back and looks at me expressionlessly. ‘He may be a rather … um … interesting character, but outside of my brothers I’d rather have BJ guard my back than I would any other man on earth. He’s a totally straight and loyal guy. Maybe one day you’ll meet him.’ He smiles. ‘He might not like you too much, though. As you’ve probably figured out, us gypsies have no love for tax collectors.’

‘And yet here I am.’

He takes a sip of his whiskey and puts it down on the table, then remarks almost to himself, ‘Yes, yet here you are. Real enough to touch.’

Whatever the thought was that passed through his head, it made him suddenly pensive.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I blurt out.

He looks up at me, one sooty eyebrow raised. ‘Doing what?’

‘Fraternizing with the hated tax collector.’

He gives my question serious consideration and then says the most unexpected thing. ‘It is a lucky man who finds an enemy who is so intoxicating.’

I frown. Hearing him say that is surprisingly wounding. ‘We’re not enemies,’ I say softly.

His eyes narrow until they are dark slits. ‘Ah, but we are, sweet Ella. We just find each other physically irresistible. That is all. Never make the mistake of thinking otherwise.’