The Honey Trap (13 page)

Fiona took the call.

‘Unfortunately,’ she explained to the woman, ‘in this instance we won’t be able to help, but the Honey Trap is hoping to expand and cater to those precise requirements.
If I could just take your number . . .’

The Honey Trap turning down work? Something weird was happening to Fiona. She handed me a coffee and sat back down.

‘I’m getting the snip, Issy, it’s official. The appointment has been made,’ she said, flicking through some letters.

‘I noticed your hair had grown.’

‘Issy, I’m having the chop.’

‘But short is more masculine. I think your hair suits you as it is.’

‘I am having my operation.’

‘What? Your operation?’

‘Yes, it’s imminent. Very shortly I will be as nature intended.’

‘Isn’t that kinda subverting reality?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Are you nervous?’

‘Issy, do you get that smell?’

‘Huh?’

I sniffed, nothing untoward unfurling in my direction.

‘I seem to have been followed by a bad smell all day. I thought it was the hormones I’m taking. They change your body odour.’ She was sniffing her pits. ‘No, it’s
not me. I’m sure I smelt it over by the kitchen.’

‘I’ll check it out.’

Up I got and popped my head round into the kitchen.

‘Yeah, I get it now, but it’s coming from over here.’

A strange smell was emanating from the doorway, though not from outside. It seemed to be coming from the coat stand.

Nostrils flared as my nose approached the target.

Fiona’s beautiful coat hung draped off a peg.

The smell stemmed from the coat.

Or to be more specific from the hemline of the coat.

Oh dear Christ.

As it wasn’t caked in shit I had a feel and . . .

Remember the finger? It must have slipped through the lining and . . .

‘Fiona, I think I know what it is.’

‘What?’

‘I think something is rotting in the lining of your coat.’

‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘When was the last time you wore it?’

‘Today’s the first time in ages.’

‘You mean ages, as in the night I borrowed it?’

‘Yeah, the night I opened the fridge and found the fing –’

We looked at each other; we looked at the coat.

Fiona started screaming.

‘Issy, get that damned coat out of here!’

‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘Now!’ She was dry-retching. ‘To think I’ve spent the day walking round with a decaying human finger in my coat. Get it out.’

Of course after I extracted the finger, I had the coat dry-cleaned.

Fiona didn’t want it back after that. Looking at it only made her feel sick.

And that’s how I came to own the beautiful black coat.

Finding the decomposed finger unleashed within me a strange sense of optimism. The finger provided a means to several ends: the end of guilt on my part, having lost it in the
first place. For Sarah, well, she could finally rest in one piece. For the investigation, it was a prime piece of evidence. And finally, I confess, it could aid my desire to conquer Mr America. I
would call Stephan and triumphantly declare, ‘I found it, your mother’s finger!’ and he’d come post-haste over to my side. The abrupt ending of our last encounter would be
forgotten, forgiven, glossed over, and we’d go at it like rampant rabbits. Oh yeah, almost forgot, and then he’d declare undying love, and we’d all live happily ever after.

Wishing my life away as Max does, convinced at present he is four and stretching his arms up over his head, to reinforce the point.

‘No, Max, you’re nearly four.’

‘I’m four.’

‘Nearly four.’

‘Three and four.’

‘You can’t be two ages at the same time.’

‘You can!’ he declared defiantly, ‘I’m three and four,’ before storming out of the kitchen and into the sitting room where he immersed himself in his current
obsession, Bey Blades.

See, the business with Stephan niggled, and being female I took his failure to perform personally. I’d mulled over the scenario a zillion times. Had my eye really put him off? Had I been
too pushy, forceful? Was my seduction technique due for a revamp? (I guess, in retrospect, ‘Sock it to me, big boy,’ is not the most seductive of mating calls.) Perhaps I should have
played the girly card more? I tried to fantasise about us but ended up back at the same point. Deflated.

Sometimes I wonder if I couldn’t somehow manage to make a living out my neuroses. How perfect would that be? If I could just package all my anxieties and then offload them in a financially
viable way.

‘Mum, are you listening?’

On the phone, having our ritual catch-up chat. Me, baring my soul to her and all she could do was scoff at my predicament.

‘Mother, can you be serious?’

‘Issy, I don’t know . . . do some performance art or something.’

‘What, don my black leotard and tights and express my emotions through movement?’

My mother and I were struck by the same mental image. Yes, we both remembered that painful moment. I was twelve, pudgy, and on the precipice of puberty – and I don’t think I’ll
ever forgive her for allowing me to make such a colossal prat of myself. It was the school’s Christmas variety show, and I was naive and centre stage, dancing, or rather ‘physically
emoting’, to . . . wait for it, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The audience laughed. It wasn’t meant to be funny. I swear it was one of the most cruelly humiliating moments of my
life. I fled the stage in a complete state of shock, only to be dragged on again to uproarious applause. Afterwards my mother consoled me, promising that by the next day everyone would have
forgotten it.

My whole school career was blighted by that incident.

‘So what happened to the finger?’

‘Damn detective. I mean at the least you’d have thought he would have been grateful.’

When Fiona booted me out of the office, I’d handed the finger in to the police station. Bambuss wasn’t there, so I’d left it with the duty officer and that was that, no
acknowledgement, no thank-you call, no nothing. So much for being the good citizen, for being a responsible, law-abiding, honest person who pays their taxes, toes the line, keeps to the kerbside
but in a middle-of-the-road sort of way.

‘Oh and Freddie sends you and Max his love.’

‘Sorry?’

‘He’s here at the minute.’

‘Christ, like he could have told me. How long has he been there?’

I could hear my brother grumbling in the background, pretending he was me.

‘He arrived last night, it was a spontaneous decision, and don’t be horrible to him.’ (Who, me?) ‘He’s feeling a bit down.’

‘Oh boo hoo, poor little lambikins.’

‘Issy!’

‘Well, make sure he brings me and Maxy back some good presents.’

Sod, wish I could jet off to sunny New Mexico at the drop of a mood.

Unbelievable as it may sound, the glamorous world of Honey-Trapping is not always what it’s cracked up to be. Many of the dicks I come across live up to the name and, of
course, it’s not all bars, bistros and booze. A lot of the time is spent waiting, an activity I am not particularly good at.

My next mission was to test my capacity for boredom. His better half sought out our services because she was anxious (see, it’s not just me!). There was something amiss, probably not an
affair, but something was definitely wrong.

She explained, ‘Jonathan is of a generation where being emotional or opening oneself up is considered to be unmanly.’

‘OK, so he’s anywhere between twenty and eighty.’

Not a bit of it, he was a fifty-three-year-old solicitor. A mild-mannered, well-turned-out, well, gentleman. My mission was to tail him for a few days. He had been working late, a lot. Same old,
same old, but you can never be certain, a lesson learnt on one of my early assignments.

I’d thought it was a clear enough case, having espied my dick verbally canoodling with another woman. Let’s call him D, ’cause I can’t remember his
name. He had a suit job and I would loiter outside the firm and then tiptoe in his shadow, watching his every move.

One evening, after leaving his office in the City, he took a slow stroll from Fenchurch Street over the river to Waterloo, a good couple of miles, only to end up in the Goose and Fox, a
non-descript working man’s pub. He hadn’t clocked me – after all, I was clad in black (mama mia, mama mia!). I waited outside for a while before entering. When I did, he was with
a young woman. They sat at corner table chatting, and it was clear to me that this meeting had been prearranged. I noticed how he touched her hand, how he leant in to catch her words. She played
with her hair and would look directly into his eyes: there was definitely something between them.

What else but a young mistress? Chuffed with my detecting skills, I assumed I had the case wrapped up.

D’s wife came by the office the following day and I broke the news to her as gently as I could.

‘Is she pretty?’ she sniffled.

‘Not a minger but she’ll never be a model.’

‘And thin?’

‘Not a grosser, size twelve-ish?’

Unfortunately his wife was a good size eighteen.

‘And . . . and how old?’

‘Much younger than you. Twenty-five or thereabouts.’

She began sobbing, deep, throaty, heartachy sobs.

I really felt for her and asked Trisha to take over. Trisha does empathy and compassion so much better than I do. Guess it’s because she’s a divorcee and could relate more.

Anyhow, it turned out I’d misconstrued the whole scenario. The woman was his daughter, the result of a fleeting affair with his landlady, a year or so before D had met his wife. Having had
no prior knowledge of her existence, to his credit he welcomed her into his life. And so did his wife. It was a rare case for the Trap, in that it had a happy and humanly uplifting outcome.

This experience taught me not to be so presumptuous and eager to jump to conclusions. Reality doesn’t always match one’s rational logic. All of us are apt to prejudge: being a single
mum is a prime example. When pregnant with Max I thought how cool, what an adventure. I had no negative feelings about doing it solo. It was quite a shock to learn that having a child alone does
not garner you with social kudos, the stereotype being a young woman, strung out, benefit-dependent, of loose morals, uneducated, who spends her days in front of the TV, dreaming of being on
Jerry Springer
.

The past couple of hours had been spent at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton. Not for the benefit of my soul, I hasten to add. It was mission work. Jonathan
Taylor’s nocturnal wanderings were restricted to a brisk stroll from his office to the nearest praying house on the Brompton Road. There he would stay for the evening service. It was all very
tedious. I remained outside, on the steps of the church, dressed as a Romanian gypsy. It worked a treat, I was conspicuously inconspicuous and even managed to make a bit of money. However, when the
real McCoy turned up, I’d had to abandon the pitch. So having shivered my arse off, I then tubed it home only to find –

Outside the flat, I screeched to a halt and rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

In plain view (hadn’t yet got it together to replace the net curtains, top of the list for the past few weeks) where anyone could have seen them, were – get this – Maria and
Bambuss. Yep, the babysitter and detective were sitting on my sofa and he, our very own cor-blimey Columbo, was gingerly kissing the tips of her fingers. The tips of her fingers! I noted a bottle
of wine on the coffee table.

Come again.

Listening to the friggin’ Fugees – hadn’t played that CD for ages – and then he made his move, went for the lunge.

One time . . .

An outrage, I tell you. I wasn’t having that.

Two time . . .

Oh for Chrissakes.

And who’d have thought?

Their lips within millimetres of touching.

I surveyed this tender moment, grossed out yet voyeuristically captivated. Hands cupped as binoculars, pressed close to the glass, the gravel giving way, bush rustling, and then, the siren
shriek from Maria when she glimpsed me Tom-peeping. Next thing, she was reeling off a list of saints I’d never heard of, and Bambuss jumped up, as if ready to balance out my bruises.

‘It’s me,’ I yelped.

‘Issy! What you doing?’

Excuse me? I could well have asked the same of them.

Three sets of eyes sent pinball-whizzing. I didn’t know where to look, didn’t know what to say.

Maria gulped and mouthed, ‘You gave us such a fright.’

Likewise.

‘The Detective and I . . . We were just . . .’

I raised a flattened palm. After all, we were all adults.

‘Issy, you back early. I didn’t expect you,’ gasped Maria.

‘Clearly,’ I countered.

She was in a right old fluster, puffing up the cushions, while Bambuss pulled on his navy double-breasted blazer and then had the audacity to say, ‘Taken to begging, Ms Brodsky? I could
arrest you for that.’

Very funny . . . Not. I threw him a stinker of a look. Besides I was truly miffed that I was the only one to have not yet got my leg over on my own sofa. I mean why the hell was he in my
apartment in the first place? I’d made it clear to Maria that boyfriends weren’t welcome.