Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (23 page)

'I'm away for a slash,' Ger announced, as men were inexplicably wont to do. Mathieson watched him leave, then a few moments later, rather nervously broke his silence.

'Alison, c'mere a second.'

She glanced across. He wore a shaky smile, reminiscent of any number of trembling wee shavers standing before her as they mustered the bottle to ask for a dance.

'It's okay,' he said, though she wasn't convinced it was herself that needed assurance. She took a few steps across the floor, but kept a noticeable distance between them. 'I've been thinking about last night,' he continued. 'It wasn't pleasant, was it?'

'No.'

'It occurred to me I've never shown you anything. I've left all that to Ger. It's hard when you're running the show, believe me. But we're ahead of the game today, so let me teach you something now. Stand there, just where you are.'

He picked up a stack of the display crockery, four wide serving plates, and placed it on her left palm. 'Have you got that?' he checked. 'Okay in one hand? Not too heavy?'

'It's fine. They're lighter than they look.'

'The weight is all in their value,' he said, placing another stack in her right hand. 'These have been in the McKinley family since the Eighteenth Century.'

'You're making me nervous,' she said truthfully, and not just because of what she was holding. There was a sleekit, underhand nastiness creeping across his face.

'They're utterly irreplaceable,' he went on. 'You, on the other hand, are not. So if you drop them, you'll be out of a job. Bear that in mind during the next few seconds.'

With a hateful smirk, Mathieson reached out with both hands and grabbed Alison's breasts. She began drawing her arms in as a reflex, but the weight of the plates, in her mind at least, prevented her from being able to fend him off. Instead she stepped backwards, but found her path blocked by the fridge. Mathieson looked her in the eye, his hands still mashing and fondling.

'See, the lesson is, if you want to get on, you need to know your own worth. And if that isn't much, then sometimes you just have to put up with things you don't like and keep your fucking mouth shut.'

'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' demanded a voice. They both looked around to see Ger in the doorway to the hall.

134

'Alison and I are just enjoying a wee lesson in kitchen hierarchy.'

'You'll be enjoying a wee lesson in bollock removal if you don't back off.'

'No, Gerard, you don't understand. I wanted you to see this, to remind you as well what the score is round here. See, what you said last night got me thinking. The pair of you can go running to Sir Lachlan if you like, but apart from it being your word against mine, what's the chances of him firing his chef in the middle of
this
weekend?'

'Let's find out,' Ger replied.

It was worse than if she'd just let him away with it. The humiliation of even saying it to Sir Lachlan was almost as bad as the deed itself, to say nothing of standing in a small room with three men at the time. Mathieson must have been loving it. He kept glancing at her chest. She felt like she wanted to be wearing the world's thickest, baggiest jumper, not this flimsy little blouse. Sir Lachlan was looking about as comfortable as Alison felt. She could see where it was going. The guy was marooned, his wife out of the picture and so many of his eggs in this basket. All those centuries of grief and one last chance to turn it around in the name of his ancestors. Was he going to throw it all away just because a minor member of staff got her tits felt?

Mathieson was playing it perfectly, too. He was calm, relaxed, even slightly apologetic, not denying anything happened but seeking to trivialise it instead, the perfect out for Sir Lachlan in the circumstances. Kitchens are different places, blah blah blah. Intense working environment, a lot of physical familiarity, misread signals, things can get out of hand, everybody needs to calm down, job to be done at the end of the day.

Sir Lachlan was nodding along rather impatiently with every word, his decision clearly made. Alison felt sick. She was wishing she'd just dropped the priceless crockery and nutted the bastard.

'We all have to put up with indignities sometimes, in order to get the job done,' Sir Lachlan agreed, looking at his desk, not making eye-contact with anyone. 'There's few of us can afford to be so proud that we can't tolerate a degree of unpleasantness when our livelihoods are at stake. I know I can't.'

He looked up at last, eyeing Mathieson. 'That's why I've tolerated having you around this long, Peter. You're a turd. You insult my wife, you abuse my staff and you act like this is some career bus-stop where you're killing time waiting for your lift to turn up. Pride, as I've said, is a luxury, but self-respect is a right. It would cost Alison her self-respect to have to continue working under you, but not as much as it would cost mine if I kept you in my employ. Get out. Now. I want you out of the building in fifteen minutes.'

Ger balled both hands into fists as the chef stared at Sir Lachlan in incomprehension. 'You heard the man,' he said. 135

Mathieson left the room without a word, let alone a parting retort, rendered speechless by sheer disbelief.

'Thank you, sir,' Alison said quietly, frightened her voice would break.

'Not at all,' Sir Lachlan replied. 'My apologies for what you had to put up with. Just don't sue, please.'

'But what are we going to do?' she asked, feeling suddenly guilty about the consequences. 'We're short as it is.'

'I'm sure my new head chef and his assistant can manage dinner for twelve. And in keeping with what I just said, I'm not above pouring drinks and waiting on tables if that's what's needed to keep the show on the road.'

He stood up and bent down to a nearby cupboard, producing a bottle of single malt and three pewter quaichs.

'I don't know if a toast is appropriate under such circumstances, but I do reckon we're all going to need a drink,' he said.

There were no dissenters.

They sipped their malts and discussed the evening's menu, watching at the window as Mathieson stuffed a holdall and some plastic bags into the back of his Peugeot convertible.

'Good riddance to bad rubbish,' Sir Lachlan said.

'It was almost worth it for the look on his face when you fired him,' Alison said. 'Rendered catatonic.'

'Yeah, it wasn't like him not to get the last word,' Ger agreed. Ger finished his whisky then did a double-take as Mathieson climbed into the car and closed the door.

'What?' Alison asked.

But he was gone, running from the room, and so was Mathieson, with a huffy squeal of tyres down the drive.

Ger returned a couple of minutes later.

'He did get the last word. He's fucked off with all the meat.'

136

Running Up That Hill

Emily had seldom been so grateful for the simple delights of a sandwich. This one, to give it its due, was not all that simple - pesto, roasted peppers, fontina, Parma ham and rocket between two wedges of focaccia - but it could have been Dairylea on two slices of white pan and been equally welcome. According to her watch, only three hours had passed since a very hearty breakfast, but between that and this hillside lunch there had been the trials of the tunnel and a long ensuing trudge in wet clothes.

The hamper had appeared like a desert mirage, suddenly in sight but seemingly so far out of reach that it felt as though they might never get there. The hideous yellow fleeces at least had the mercy of being comparatively quick-drying, but said comparison being only with denim, which in conjunction with their uniformly squelching footwear had made their progress like wading through an endless swamp. Unquestionably, after that the sandwich was a feast, but Emily would have traded a twelve-course tasting menu at a Michelin-starred eatery for dry boots and a change of socks. Rory was not alone in querying the purpose of tackling the tunnel fully dressed. Baxter's point was true enough with regard to the 'reality' of negotiating such a hazard, but in reality there was no actual need to go through the bloody tunnel in the first place, so why drench everyone when there's miles of hillside trekking ahead? Their guide wasn't saying, but Emily suspected that this wasn't because he lacked an answer. There had been no oversights so far, nothing undertaken without a tangible pay-off later.

The purpose of tackling the tunnel in itself only became clear from the other side. She'd never have believed that the distance between wanting to strangle Rory Glen and wanting to hug him could be measured in a few metres. Toby had impressed her too, and not by his swimming skills. Emily had caught a few glimpses of Joanna as they all stood waiting for their turn to take the plunge. Yesterday, Joanna had been happy to make jokes about her comparative immobility, but Emily had yet to meet an overweight woman who couldn't be reduced to crippling self-consciousness under the wrong circumstances. Joanna looked more scared with each turn that brought her own moment closer, but Emily suspected she was even more scared of bottling out 137

or asking for extra assistance for fear of drawing too much attention to the reason why. Toby, under the auspices of playing a prank, had engineered a way of speeding her passage without even acknowledging to her that he was doing so. Of course, it was possible that he was actually a selfish bastard who neither trusted Parlabane's towing abilities nor fancied his own solo task of hauling the big fat bird, but Emily doubted it. There was something humbly solicitous about Toby, which made his contemporary political allegiances all the more surprising. Or maybe it just made her own political prejudices more conceited.

The hamper was waiting for them at the edge of some woodland, close to where a narrow track, wide enough for one vehicle, emerged briefly from the trees before bending back on itself. They approached along a gently climbing valley floor, a long spur rising to their left, truncated maybe a quarter, a third of a mile past their goal. It was the professionally sharp-eyed Parlabane who spotted it, Baxter having told them only that lunch would be waiting for them. Rather oddly, Baxter needed Parlabane to point out what he was talking about, the hamper evidently somehow not matching his expectations. He'd glanced at his watch and muttered something about there being still time, then relayed the incentive of Parlabane's discovery to the damp and tiring horde. While the rest sat down to eat, Baxter stayed on his feet, frequently checking the time and pacing around close to the bend in the track so that he could see both approaches. That was when Emily decided to make her move, both the sandwich-assisted waxing of her courage and the opportunity of getting him alone finally coinciding. On the march, he'd usually been buttonholed by another guest, and when he wasn't, she'd lacked the nerve to broach the issue. Her trepidation existed on a number of levels, one of which being that neither of them would be comfortable if what she had to discuss was overheard. The main one, of course, was the possibility that she'd got it totally wrong and he wouldn't have an earthly what she was on about.

She was pretty sure, though. The more she looked at him throughout the morning, in light of what had come to her last night, the more it explained not only why he was so familiar, but why he hadn't reciprocally recognised her. Or rather, why he wasn't letting on as much.

She wandered over, putting a good dozen yards of privacy between the pair of them and the group.

'Something up?' she asked, bottling it a little and opting to procrastinate. He turned around. She looked in his face for some clue to whether her presence provoked any unease, bearing in mind that he might not want this.

'It's Francis. He was meant to be here with the minibus.'

'We're getting a lift home? Why eat out here, then?'

'Not a lift home, just a precaution in case anybody was struggling or turned 138

an ankle or whatever.'

'Do cold, wet tootsies count?'

''Fraid not. He must have had to deal with something back at the hotel. At least he left lunch.'

She swallowed. Time to nibble the muzzle, if not fully bite the bullet.

'He told you all about dinner, then. It got pretty heated, and not just the flambe dessert.'

'Yeah. But there's nothing like cold water to douse the flames.'

Ooh, fleet little sidestep.

'Could have done with you there to even up the teams,
Daniel
.'

He fixed her with an intense, indignant look for a moment, then melted with a sigh and a smile.

'I was bound to get my cover blown eventually. I didn't see the need to blow it myself. That's why I never said anything to you. Couldn't be sure if you'd recognised me, and, just as important, couldn't be sure you wouldn't pretend you hadn't anyway.'

'Why would I do that?'

'Because it would be easier,' he said. 'For both of us.'

'I'm sorry,' she replied, realising what he was saying. 'I wasn't trying to out you or anything. I just needed to know it was you. It was driving me crazy. It's been what, fifteen, sixteen years? You changed your name?'

'I changed a lot of things. I had to make a clean break from the past. Danny Brown no more.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I should have sussed why you weren't playing happy reunions. I'll leave it, okay?'

'No, don't be daft. I was just a bit wary; didn't want you calling me a bourgeois traitor for where I've ended up.'

'Oh come on, look where I am. He who fucks nuns, eh? I guess when the revolution never came, we all had to pay the rent.'

'Insane times. Best forgotten, if you ask me.'

'After last night's dinner, I'd second that. But if you're on the lam, so to speak, why did you come to Seventh Chime for PR?'

'That was Francis's call, not mine. Someone recommended Seventh Chime to him. Bloke at a party gave him a card - Kathy's card, as it turned out. By the time I found out you were her partner, things were already too far along.'

'That explains the brevity of your phone calls.'

'To be honest, I wasn't sure how much you'd want to dredge up the past either. But in fact we really do, as a matter of policy, stick to email wherever possible. It means you've a ready-made transcript of everything for reference and clarification. It makes for an efficient, dynamic and undistracted business 139