Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

She didn’t, in the end, but only, she realized, because Steve thought of himself as sophisticated. The proposition would no doubt come after. Still, Steve only let his pants rule his head so far. Enough to let Layla – and the rest of the girls – know that he’d be taking half their tips tonight. Anyone who tried to hold anything back would be out on her ass.

Layla didn’t care about the tips. That wasn’t why she was here, anyhow.

Now, she stood meekly with the others while Steve walked the line, checking everybody over.

“Got to look sharp out there tonight, girls,” he said. “Mr Dyer, he’s a big man around here. Can’t afford to let him down.”

He seemed to have a thing for the name badges each girl wore pinned above her left breast. Hated it if they were crooked, and liked to straighten them out personally and take his time getting it just so. The girl next to Layla, whose name was Tammy, rolled her eyes while Steve pawed at her. Layla rolled her eyes right back.

Steve paused in front of her, frowning. “Where’s your badge, honey? This one here says your name is Cindy and I know that ain’t right.” And he made sure to nudge the offending item with clammy fingers.

Layla shrugged, surprised he picked up on the deliberate swap. Her face might not stick in the mind, but she couldn’t take the chance that her name might ring a bell.

“Oh, I guess it musta gotten lost,” she said, all breathless and innocent. “I figured seeing as Cindy called in sick and ain’t here – and none of the fancy folk out there is gonna remember my name anyhow – it don’t matter.”

Steve continued to frown and finger the badge for a moment, then met Layla’s brazen stare and realized he’d lingered too long, even for him. With a shifty little sideways glance, he let go and stepped back. “No, it don’t matter,” he muttered, moving on. Alongside her, Tammy rolled her eyes again.

Layla had the contents of her canapé tray hurriedly explained to her by one of the harassed chefs and then ducked out of the service door, along the short drab corridor, and into the main ballroom.

The glitter and the glamour set her heart racing, as it always did. For a few years, she’d dreamed of moving in these circles without a white cloth over her arm and an open bottle in her hand. And, for a time, she’d almost believed that it might be so.

Not any more.

Not since Bobby.

She reached the first cluster of dinner jackets and long dresses that probably cost more than she made in a year – just for the fabric, never mind the stitching – and waited to catch their attention. It took a while.

“Sir? Ma’am? Would you care for a canapé? Those darlin’ little round ones are smoked salmon and caviar, and the square ones are Kobe beef and ginger.”

She smiled, but their eyes were on the food, or they didn’t think it was worth it to smile back. Just stuffed their mouths and continued braying to each other like the stuck-up donkeys they were.

Layla had done this kind of gig many times before. She knew the right pace and frequency to circulate, how often to approach the same guests before attentive turned to irritating, how to slip through the crowd without getting jostled. How to keep her mouth shut and her ears open. Steve might hint that she had to put out to get signed on again, but Layla knew she was good and he was lucky to have her.

Well, after tonight, Stevie-boy, you might just change your mind about that.

She smiled and offered the caviar and the beef, reciting the same words over and over like someone kept pulling a string at the back of her neck. She didn’t need to think about it, so she thought about Bobby instead.

Bobby had been the bouncer in a roadhouse near Tallahassee. A huge guy with a lot of old scar tissue across his knuckles and around his eyes. Tale was he’d been a boxer, had a shot until he’d taken one punch too many in the ring. Then everything had gone into slow motion for Bobby and never speeded up again.

He wore a permanent scowl like he’d rip your head off and spit down your neck, as soon as look at you, but Layla quickly realized that was merely puzzlement. Bobby was slightly overmatched by the pace of life and couldn’t quite work out why. Still plenty fast enough to throw out drunks in a cheap joint, though. And once Bobby had laid his fists on you, you didn’t rush to get up again.

One night in the parking lot, Layla was jumped by a couple of guys who’d fallen foul of the “no touching” rule earlier in the evening and caught the rough side of Bobby’s iron-hard hands. They waited, tanking up on cheap whisky, until closing time. Waited for the lights to go out and the girls to straggle, yawning, from the back door. They grabbed Layla before she had a chance to scream, and were touching all they wanted when Bobby waded in out of nowhere. Layla had never been happier to hear the crack of skulls.

She’d been angry more than shocked and frightened – angry enough to stamp them a few times with those lethal heels once they were on the ground. Angry enough to take their overflowing billfolds, too. But it didn’t last. When Bobby got her back to her rented double-wide, she shook and cried as she clung to him and begged him to help her forget. That night she discovered that Bobby was big and slow in other ways, too. And sometimes that was a real good thing.

For a while, at least.

“Ma’am? Would you care for a canapé? Smoked salmon and caviar on that side, and this right here’s Kobe beef. No, thank you, ma’am.”

Layla worked the room in a pattern she’d laid out inside her head, weaving through the crowd with the nearest thing a person could get to invisibility. It was a big fancy do, that was for sure. Some charity she’d never heard of and would never benefit from. The crowd was circulating like hot dense air through a fan, edging their way up towards the host and hostess at the far end.

The Dyers were old money and gracious with it, but firmly distant towards the staff. They knew their place and made sure the little people, like Layla, were aware of theirs. Layla didn’t mind. She was used to being a nobody.

Mr Dyer was indeed a big man, as Steve had said. A mover and shaker. He didn’t need to mingle, he could just stand there, like royalty, with a glass in one hand and the other around the waist of his tall, elegant wife, looking relaxed and casual.

Well, maybe not so relaxed. Every now and again Layla noticed Dyer throw a little sideways look at their guest of honour and frown, as though he still wasn’t quite sure what the guy was doing there.

Guy called Venable. Another big guy. Another mover and shaker. The difference was that Venable had clawed his way up out of the gutter and had never forgotten it. He stood close to the Dyers in his perfectly tailored tux with a kind of secret smile on his face, like he knew they didn’t want him there but also knew they couldn’t afford to get rid of him. But, just in case anyone thought about trying, he’d surrounded himself with four bodyguards.

Layla eyed them surreptitiously, with some concern. They were huge – bigger than Bobby, even when he’d been still standing – each wearing a bulky suit and one of those little curly wires leading up from their collar to their ear, like they was guarding the president himself. But Venable was no statesman, Layla knew for a fact.

She hadn’t expected him to be invited to the Dyers’ annual charity ball, and had worked hard to get herself on the staff list when she’d found out he was. A lot of planning had gone into this, one way or another.

By contrast, the Dyers had no protection. Well, unless you counted that bossy secretary of Mrs Dyer’s. Mrs Dyer was society through and through. The type who wouldn’t remember to get out of bed in the morning without a social secretary to remind her. The type whose only job is looking good and saying the right thing and being seen in the right places. There must be some kind of a college for women like that.