‘I’ve been in this game a very long time,’ he shouted over the insistent techno beat. ‘I was the one put Morrissey on the map, you know. And the Mondays. All the big boys, I’ve had them all through my hands. You’re talking to a very experienced operator here,’ he added, wetting his whistle with a swig of the large dark rum and Coke he’d asked for. Dan and Lice nodded sagely, backing up their man. Funny how quickly clients forget whose side you’re on.
I waited, sipping my extremely average vodka and bottled grapefruit juice. Costigan lit a Marlboro Light and let me share the plume of smoke from his nostrils. Sometimes I wonder if being a lawyer would really have been such a bad choice. ‘And I have not been trespassing,’ he said, stabbing my right shoulder with the fingers that held the cigarette. ‘I am the one trespassed against.’
‘You’re telling me that you haven’t been sticking up posters on someone else’s ground?’ I asked sceptically.
‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Like I said, we’re the victims here. It’s my ground that’s getting invaded. More times than I can count in the past few weeks, I’ve had my legitimate poster sites covered up by cowboys.’
‘So you’ve been taking revenge on the guilty men?’
‘I have not,’ he yelled indignantly. ‘I don’t even know who’s behind it. This city’s always been well regulated, you know what I mean? Everybody knows what’s what and nobody gets hurt if they stick to their own patch. I’ve been doing this too long to fuck with the opposition. So if you’re trying to lay the boys’ trouble at my door, you can forget it, OK?’
‘Is there any kind of pattern to the cowboy flyposting?’ I asked.
‘What do you mean, a pattern?’
‘Is it always the same sites where they’re taking liberties? Or is it random? Are you the only one who’s being hit, or is it a general thing?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s all over, as far as I can tell. It’s not the sort of thing you talk about, d’you understand? Nobody wants the opposition to think they’re weak, you know? But the word on the street is that I’m not the only one suffering.’
‘But none of the other bands are getting the kind of shit we’re getting,’ Dan interjected. God knows how he managed to follow the conversation. He must have trained as a lip-reader. ‘I’ve been asking around. Plenty other people have had some of their posters covered up, but nobody’s had the aggravation we’ve had.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s nothing to do with me, OK?’ Costigan retorted aggressively.
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. I told Dan and Lice I’d be in touch, drained my drink and walked home staring at every poster I passed, wondering what the hell was going on.
I dragged my feet up the stairs to the office just after quarter past nine the next morning. I felt like I was fourteen again, Monday morning before double Latin. I’d lain staring at the ceiling, trying to think of good excuses for not going in, but none of the ones that presented themselves convinced either me or Richard, which gave them no chance against Shelley or Bill.
I needn’t have worried. There was news waiting that took Bill off the front page for a while. I walked in to find Josh Gilbert perched on the edge of Shelley’s desk, one elegantly trousered leg crossed casually over the other. I could have paid my mortgage for a couple of months easily with what the suit had cost. Throw in the shirt, tie and shoes and we’d be looking at the utility bills too. Josh is a financial consultant who has managed to surf every wave and trough of the volatile economy and somehow come out so far ahead of the field that I keep expecting the Serious Fraud Office to feel his collar. Josh and I have a deal: he gives me information, I buy him expensive dinners. In these days of computerization, it would be cheaper to pay Gizmo for the same stuff, but a lot less entertaining. Computers don’t gossip. Yet.
Shelley was looking up at Josh with that mixture of wariness and amusement she reserves for born womanizers. When he saw me, he broke off the tale he was in the middle of and jumped to his feet. ‘Kate!’ he exclaimed, stepping forward and sweeping me into a chaste embrace.
I air-kissed each cheek and stepped clear. The older he got, the more his resemblance to Robert Redford seemed to grow. It was disconcerting, as if Hollywood had invaded reality. Even his eyes seemed bluer. You didn’t have to be a private eye to suspect tinted contacts. ‘I don’t mean to sound rude,’ I said, ‘but what are you doing here at this time of the morning? Shouldn’t you be blinding some poor innocent with science about the latest fluctuations of the Nikkei? Or persuading some lucky Lottery winner that their money is safe in your hands?’
‘Those days are behind me,’ he said.
‘Meaning?’
‘I am thirty-nine years and fifty weeks old today.’
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Ever since I’ve known him Josh has boasted of his intention to retire to some tax haven when he was forty. Part of me had always taken this with a pinch of salt. I don’t move in the sort of circles where people amass the kind of readies to make that a realistic possibility. I should have realized he meant it; Josh will bullshit till the end of time about women, but he’s never less than one hundred per cent serious about money. ‘Ah,’ I said.
‘Josh has come to invite us to his fortieth birthday and retirement party.’ Shelley confirmed my bleak fear with a sympathetic look.
‘Selling up and selling out, eh?’ I said.
‘Not as such,’ Josh said languidly, returning to his perch on Shelley’s desk. ‘I’m not actually selling the consultancy. Julia’s learned enough from me to run the business, and I’m not abandoning her entirely. I might be going to live on Grand Cayman, but with fax machines and e-mail, she’ll feel as though I’ve only moved a few miles away.’
‘Only if you don’t have conversations about the weather,’ I said. ‘You’ll get bored, Josh. Nothing to do all day but play.’
The smile crinkled the skin round his eyes, and he gave me the look Redford reserves for Debra Winger in
I heard the door open behind me and Bill’s voice said, ‘Are we using “met” in the biblical sense here?’
Bill and Josh gave each other the usual onceover, a bit like dogs who have to sniff each other’s bollocks before they decide a fight isn’t worth the bother. They’d never been friends, probably because they’d thought they were competitors for women. Neither had ever realized how wrong they were; Bill could never have bedded a woman without brains, and Josh never bedded one with an IQ greater than her age except by accident. Shelley had her pet theories on their respective motivations, but life’s too short to rerun that seminar.
‘So it’s all change then,’ Bill said once Josh had brought him up to speed on his reasons for visiting. ‘You off to Grand Cayman, me off to Australia.’
‘I thought you’d only just come back,’ Josh said.
‘I’m planning to move out there permanently. I’m marrying an Australian businesswoman.’
‘Is she pregnant?’ Josh blurted out without thinking. Seeing my face, he gave an apologetic smile and shrug.
‘No. And she’s not a rich widow either,’ Bill replied, not in the least put out. ‘I’m exercising free will here, Josh.’
I swear Josh actually changed colour. The thought of a man as dedicated as he was to a turbo-charged love life finally settling down, and from choice, was like suddenly discovering his body was harbouring a secret cancer. ‘So because of this woman, you’re going to get married and live in
‘The game plan is that I’ll sell my share of the agency here and start up again in Australia.’
Josh’s eyebrows rose. ‘At your age? Bill, you’re only a couple of years younger than me. You’re really planning to start from ground zero in a foreign country where you don’t even speak the language? God, that sounds too much like hard work to me. And what about Kate?’
I’d had enough. ‘Kate’s gotta go,’ I said brusquely. ‘People to be, places to see. Thanks for the invite, Josh. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ I wheeled round and headed back out of the door. I wasn’t sure where I was going,
