Читать книгу Switch - Charlie Brooks - Страница 7

Monaco

Max Ward had to get out of bed when room service arrived with their breakfast. Gemma was pretending to be asleep. He slipped a ten-euro note into the waiter’s hand and asked him to park the trolley by the window.

Max wanted to have breakfast with Gemma, so he poured her some coffee, added the exact amount of hot milk that she expected and took it through to the bedroom.

She was lying with her back to him, welded to the sheets in semi-slumber.

‘Coffee?’ he asked, sitting on the bed. She made an appreciative noise and rolled on to her back, keeping her eyes shut. Max slid his clenched hand under the sheet and found her knee. Then he started to stroke the inside of her thigh with the back of his fingers. She pulled the pillow over her face. Max opened his hand and rubbed an ice cube up her thigh.

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said as her head jolted up from under the pillow.

‘Breakfast then?’

While Gemma headed for the bathroom, Max sat down at the small table and gazed across the harbour. A wooden water taxi struggled from one side to the other, dwarfed by the super yachts.

Gemma barely bothered to do up her dressing gown as she ambled towards him. Max thought about grabbing her and taking her back to bed, but his boiled eggs were getting cold. And they’d cut his toast soldiers half an inch wide, exactly as he liked them.

As she sat down, Gemma looked out of the window. Two women were power-walking down the Parcours Princesse Grace – followed discreetly by a bored minder. She wondered when they’d last had sex with their husbands.

Max leant over and kissed her. Then he set about his eggs.

‘Why did they do that?’ Max wondered aloud as he returned his attention to the window. ‘Why did they cover this place in higher and higher concrete boxes? Jesus, you’d be pissed off if they’d trashed your view with that monstrosity, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, pointing at a recent erection that had blocked the sea view – any view, in fact – from the equally offensive apartment blocks behind it.

‘Greed,’ suggested Gemma.

‘No one lives in them anyway,’ Max said as he decapitated one of his eggs. ‘They’re tax bolt-holes. As long as you get your cleaner to run the taps every day and turn on the lights, they can’t prove you’re not living here.’

‘Fine, I suppose, as long as you don’t have to live in this ghastly place.’

‘It’s not that bad. And of course you have to pay someone to drive your car around too. But it’s cheap living here, compared to paying tax anywhere else.’

‘Could you live here?’

‘Well, if you came to visit me every weekend, I might think about it.’

‘Really? Where would you put your other girlfriends at the weekend then?’

‘I’d send them back to Saint-Tropez, of course,’ Max replied without missing a beat.

He looked around the room. Everything was so perfect. The orchids proudly erect in their pot, the imposing gilded mirror frame that perfectly matched the candle holders and standard lamps. Even the rails holding the thick, white curtains were coordinated. And yet everything wasn’t perfect. It never was in Gemma’s life.

‘I get frightened sometimes, staying in places like this,’ she said pensively. ‘It reminds me, in a weird way, of what it’s like to have nothing. Look at those little pots of jam. We’re just going to send them back, even though we’ve paid for them. I didn’t have any fucking jam when I was a kid.’

Max stood up, put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She was haunted. He wished he could do something about that. But she’d chosen someone else.

As they stepped into the lift, Max pressed the first-floor button for the spa and the ground floor for himself. He held the leather document holder loosely in one hand, deliberately keeping his eyes off it.

‘Aren’t you a bit overdressed for a massage?’ he asked flippantly.

‘Very funny. Actually, I’ve ordered a male masseuse who’s going to strip me naked, cover me in chocolate and lick it off. It’s a hotel speciality. Then I’m going shopping. What time will you be back?’

‘Oh, I’d say about three o’clock. Then we can explore together.’

As the lift ground to a halt, Max kissed Gemma’s neck under her long auburn hair.

‘Stop it,’ she said, taking a step away, but giving in to a wide smile. ‘Or I’ll drag you back upstairs. And then you’ll be late for your mysterious meeting. Go on, tell me. What’s in your holder?’

‘You know I can’t. Or I’d have to kill you with my bare hands.’ With that he gave her neck a small bite.

‘Call me to say where you want to meet.’

She waved as she exited down the corridor.

Max watched Gemma walk away. He wondered whether she swung her arse in that rolling manner for him. She still took his breath away. Her long flowing hair falling down her back, her dress clinging to her body just enough to be tantalizingly sexy, and best of all those exquisite calf muscles.

She was such a confused soul. Spoilt and self-centred on the one hand, and yet generous and insecure on the other.

He wondered why she half turned and took her sunglasses off in that mock-coquettish manner. Maybe she wanted to be sure that he was still watching her.

Max marvelled at the main reception of the Hôtel de Paris as he walked across the multicoloured marble floor. It was twelve o’clock in London, according to one of the clocks above the concierge’s desk.

They built things beautifully in the eighteen hundreds. The high ceiling, the aged mirrors lining the walls and the glass atrium that flooded the whole area with natural light.

He looked at the old ladies sitting on the delicate Louis XV chairs and wondered what they did all day. They made him think about his mother. Was she sitting around in some hotel in Spain? Maybe she’d moved on? After all, she wouldn’t have bothered to let him know. As usual, he cast her from his thoughts as quickly as she’d invaded them.

Max stopped in front of the wooden revolving door to let a woman in an apron come past. She was carrying a huge bunch of red and yellow roses, all perfectly coming into flower. Some guy must have been caught swimming outside the ropes, he thought to himself.

As he waited, he admired the magnificent bronze of Louis XIV on horseback, waving his sword around with an air of imperious egotism. The French had probably been all right, Max mused, until they had a revolution and became ridiculous socialists. Since then, they’d been nothing but trouble.

Max nodded to the doorman, bid him ‘bonjour’ and stepped into the revolving door. It was a beautiful February day in the Casino Square, but the fresh, cold air made him reach for his coat buttons. He was a bit early and he knew he only had a couple of hundred metres to walk.

He had time to nip into the casino. Just to have a look around. No harm in that, although he knew he’d win if he had a crack. No one would know. It could pay for dinner. But a sign at the foot of the steps said: Ouvert tous les jours à partir de 14 h. Maybe that was a good thing.

Max’s mind flashed back to his last ‘gambling’ dressing-down on the Embankment in London from his then immediate superior Colin Corbett.

Max had been leaning on the black railings watching the seagulls, opposite Vauxhall Cross.

‘Do you have any idea why we’re having this conversation here, and not in that building?’ Corbett had asked, pointing across the river.

Max felt like saying, ‘The weather?’ but thought better of it.

‘Well, I’ll tell you why. We’re here because I have to decide whether we let you go, or stay with you. And I’ll be honest with you. Your file doesn’t make particularly good reading. So I didn’t want this conversation on the record. For your sake, Ward.’

Corbett was referring to the incident in Saudi Arabia that had led to Max being sent back to London in disgrace.

‘My file?’

‘Your file. History’s repeating itself, isn’t it?’

‘No. What are you talking about?’

A squat Filipino woman walking a Yorkshire terrier had shuffled slowly past them. Corbett had instinctively shut up until she was out of earshot.

‘Thrown out of Eton for gambling. Thrown out of Saudi for gambling. Any pattern revealing itself there?’

‘I was trying to make some contacts.’

‘We’re not idiots, Ward. Don’t think we don’t know what happened. You let some card game compromise your work. And we had to bail you out of there.’

‘I told you, I was trying to make a few contacts.’

‘No. You weren’t. You got sucked in like a mug. Because you have a weakness. Just like your father …’

‘That isn’t fair. He was a bookmaker.’

‘He shot himself, Ward. Because he lost all his money.’

‘That’s cheap. Very cheap,’ Max had said, watching the seagulls float on the air above the Thames. He hadn’t known whether to smack Corbett in the face or just walk away. A seagull had perched on the railings a couple of feet away from them.

‘They have a knowing look, don’t you think?’ Max had asked, buying time to compose himself.

‘Fuck the seagull. Do you actually want this job? According to Nash, not that much.’

Max had paused, as if making up his mind. In truth, he was trying to control his anger.

‘My father made a big sacrifice to send me to Eton. I wish he hadn’t, because it killed him, one way or another.’ Max’s voice had wavered. ‘So of course I want this job. Otherwise it was all for nothing. This bloody job is all I have to show for his sacrifice.’

Corbett’s face had betrayed his relief. It was exactly what he’d needed to hear. Passion. And maybe the beginnings of regret. If he was to justify hanging on to him, he needed to believe that was what Max was feeling.

‘You’re going to have a couple of very boring years riding a desk. Step inside a casino and all bets are off.’

Max turned away from the casino and crossed the road to admire the fountain. Not just any fountain, either. Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror.

His mind flickered to the dacha outside Moscow. Corbett being shot in cold blood. If nothing else, this mission could at least destroy Pallesson.

Wrestling his thoughts back to the present, Max admired the way the mirror reflected both the sky and the casino. As he watched his own reflection, he noticed someone standing on the steps behind him. When he turned around, the guy walked off towards the harbour. He didn’t look back.

Max loved the adrenalin of being out in the field; loved the feeling of being on his toes. Being alert. Ready to react to anything. All the more so because it was such a rare occurrence these days, though he was certain nothing would happen in Monte Carlo. Or at least nothing he couldn’t cope with.

He walked around to the other side of the square. There was a policeman standing in the middle of the road doing nothing, as far as Max could see. Nice work if you can get it. The policeman took a long look at him, as if he’d read his thoughts.

Max glanced at the clientele of the Café de Paris as they sipped their coffees. A man on his own with a newspaper open on the table seemed to be looking at him. Or was he looking at the leather document holder?

Finally, Max left the square and headed downhill towards his destination. He stopped just around the corner by the Zegg & Cerlati watch shop to see if anyone was following him. The watches were mesmerizing: Zenith, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breitling, Franck Muller, Patek Philippe. They were all stunning. But one particular watch by Vacheron Constantin caught his eye. The 1907 Chronomètre Royal was a watch that Max had always thought was perfectly him. It looked classic, unembellished, but distinguished. He loved the eleven Arabic numerals in black enamel and the burgundy-red twelve, all set against a white face inside rose-gold casing. And definitely a brown strap, not black. Max looked at the price. Thirty-five thousand euros. That was about right.

After a while, Max realized that he was being scrutinized by a woman inside the shop. She beckoned for him to enter. He still had time to kill, so he went inside.

Gemma arrived at the end of the long, empty white marble tunnel. Instead of turning left into the hotel spa, she turned right, out into the street, and set off down the hill towards the harbour. She pulled up the hood of her coat, but resisted the urge to look back towards the hotel. Max would be long gone by now.

After fifty metres she walked past the Théâtre Princesse Grace. At the bottom of the hill she took the first steps on her left towards the water, then doubled back on herself along the seafront. All the big fuck-off yachts were moored next to each other along the harbour wall. Gemma was familiar with a few of them. There were a couple belonging to the Formula 1 crowd, a medium-size vessel from an oligarch’s ever-growing fleet, plus the flagship of a minor Saudi prince, which she’d been aboard more than once.

Gemma walked past Clementine, Paloma and Lady Nag Nag – a joke, the cost of which didn’t make it any funnier. The yachts were registered in Georgetown, the Cayman Islands, Monaco and Douglas, though the one she was heading for was registered in Montenegro.

Two crew members in immaculate white shirts and blue shorts were waiting for her at the end of the walkway. Gemma knew the form. She handed her shoes to one of them before she boarded. A third member of staff offered her a hot hand towel. Not for her own comfort, she suspected, but more in deference to her host’s OCD.

He was waiting for her beyond a large set of double glass doors. It was a bit too cool for sitting around on deck.

‘Gemma.’ Alessandro Marchant beamed gushingly. ‘Great to see you. Like the refurb? My new designer helped me.’

Gemma was relieved to see there were crew everywhere. At least he wouldn’t be able to try it on, as he had done when her husband Casper and she had been staying with him in Corsica.

The ‘refurb’ had obviously cost a fortune, and had clearly been done by someone who’d had a taste bypass. They’d had one idea in their mind and stuck with it. Gold.

‘My chef is cooking lobster for lunch.’

My this, my that … He hadn’t changed.

Gemma was disgusted by her husband’s craven submission to Alessandro Marchant and, even worse, the creepy Pallesson. So dark and vile was Pallesson that no one even applied a first name to him. And when he said jump, Casper leapt.

After they first got married, when she’d challenged Casper about it, he got very agitated and ranted that he would have no hedge fund, and she would be living in a council house, if it wasn’t for Pallesson and Marchant. Now the whole subject had become off limits.

When she drank too much, she invariably brought the subject up. And threw in the likelihood that any money Casper was handling for them would almost certainly be bent. If he’d had too much – which increasingly seemed to be the case – he became abusive. Their marriage was falling apart. It was hardly surprising that she needed Max.

‘Champagne?’ Marchant asked expansively.

‘Coffee.’ It was a statement, not a question. She had to toe the line with Alessandro, but only up to a point.

‘So what else brings you down here, Gemma?’ Alessandro asked as he lay back on a sofa that had been made all but uninhabitable by a plague of cushions. He knew there would be a cover for her bringing him the memory stick.

‘I’m here with a girlfriend. We’re looking at an interior design job. It’s going to be amazing.’ At least, that was what she’d told Casper.

‘You should use my girl,’ Alessandro interrupted. ‘She did all this.’

‘Yes,’ Gemma replied, with the minimal amount of appreciation. ‘Probably not quite what we’re looking for though.’

‘You must both come and have dinner tonight.’

Gemma’s stomach tightened. Monaco was too small for her layers of deceit.

‘We can’t, sadly. Hooked up with our client, I’m afraid. Obviously not allowed to say who. Oh, before I forget, your memory stick. Casper said he’d kill me if I lost it.’