Simon Green - Property of a Lady Faire

“How long has this been going on?” I said. I was honestly shocked. Wulfshead security was supposed to be second to none.

“Almost three weeks now,” said Harry. “The management thought they could handle it themselves at first. But it seems they can’t. So they found me, to find you. They want you to discover exactly how the club’s privacy is being compromised, and why, and who’s behind it. And then they want you to put a stop to it.”

“But why me, of all people?” I said, honestly curious. “I mean, given the mess I made the last time I was here?”

“That was a Drood,” said Harry. “You expect things like that from Droods. The management wants Shaman Bond. Because he is a regular here, and knows everyone. And everyone knows him.”

I frowned. “They think this is an inside job?”

“Has to be,” said Harry. “Someone here is telling tales out of school. We need you to find out who.”

“What do I get out of it?”

“I have been instructed to tell you,” Harry said carefully, “whatever you want. The club’s management agree to owe you a favour. You personally, that is; not your family. There are limits. It will be a personal favour to you, that you can call in at any time.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said cheerfully. “But you do realise I won’t be able to keep this from my family?”

“Understood,” said Harry. “The management merely asks that you be . . . discreet in how much you tell them.”

“Understood,” I said. A thought occurred to me. “If the club’s management is so concerned about what’s going on, why haven’t they called in their own security big guns? The Roaring Boys?”

Harry winced. “Because you don’t use a nuke to crack a walnut. The Roaring Boys . . . do tend to favour a scorched-earth policy. You can do this, Eddie. People will talk to Shaman Bond, where they wouldn’t talk to anyone else. Because they think he’s one of them.”

He got up abruptly, strode over to the opposite door, and pulled it open. Savagely bright lights and disturbingly loud music blasted in from the club beyond. I rose unhurriedly and strolled to the door. Wild drinks and wilder music, just like always. I stepped through the door into the club, then stopped and looked back as I realised Harry Fabulous had stayed in the office.

“You not joining me, Harry?”

“Best not,” he said. “I don’t need the temptation. Can’t afford to risk it these days.”

“What did you do, Harry?” I said.

He smiled briefly. “Let’s just say I met someone who was better at the art of the big con than I was.”

He shut the door firmly in my face, and I moved on, into the Wulfshead Club.

• • •

The joint was jumping-loud and colourful and packed with all the usual unusual suspects. People coming and going, along with a few individuals who weren’t in any way people, talking in small groups or muttering in corners or crowding together at the long bar. Winding down after a long day, or night; or gathering the courage of their convictions before they went out to do appalling things in the world. Some were plotting cons, or jobs, or glorious insurrection; others were just letting their hair down in convivial company. Lots of loud, blaring music. Apparently tonight was Let’s Celebrate Sixties Film Music Night. I recognised the theme from the original version of The Italian Job : “We Are the Self-Preservation Society.” A lot of people were singing along.

I strolled easily through the packed crowd, smiling and nodding, and being smiled at and nodded to. Shaman Bond has a carefully cultivated reputation for being part of the Scene: a well-known face, always around, always just turning up . . . always on the lookout for a little profitable trouble to get into. No one was surprised to see Shaman Bond at the Wulfshead, because no one was ever surprised to see him anywhere. I clapped my hand on a few shoulders, kissed a few cheeks, and kept moving.

Everywhere I looked, people were drinking and dancing and making deals. Laughing and shouting in the hot, sweaty atmosphere, the bright lights shining in their eyes and in their minds. Bright primary colours blasted down from above, constantly changing, while the walls were covered with giant flat plasma screens showing ever-changing views from secret locations around the world. Many of which didn’t officially exist. Scenes from underground bunkers and secret laboratories, the hidden lairs of the Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny. And even interesting peeks into the bedrooms of the rich and famous. (Along with other, less salubrious locations.) Lots and lots of well-known faces, doing all sorts of things that would do their public image no good at all.

I couldn’t help wondering whether someone whose secret life had been spied on, and perhaps revealed, might not have decided on some appropriate revenge.

I headed for the long high-tech bar at the far end of the club, a nightmare Art Deco structure of gleaming steel and glass, with computer-assisted access to more kinds of booze than most people even know exist. You want a Wolfsbane cocktail, with a silver parasol in it? Or perhaps angel’s tears, with a depleted uranium swizzle stick? Or perhaps you desire a deep purple liqueur distilled from a kind of moss found only on Mars? Then it’s no wonder you’ve come to the Wulfshead Club.

It is said by many and believed by even more that the club management keep their bar stock securely locked away in a pocket dimension only tangentially connected to the bar. Because the bar staff are afraid of it.

I eased my way through the crowd, being pleasant and friendly to all the right people, because it’s never wise to start a fight you can’t be sure of winning. I caught the nearest barman’s eye and ordered my usual bottle of Beck’s. It arrived almost immediately, ice cold, with little drops of water beading on the glass. I nodded familiarly to the barman. His face was familiar, but it was hard to tell whether we’d ever actually met before-on account of there being a dozen or so barmen moving up and down the long bar, all of them with exactly the same face. Because they were clones. It’s a lot easier to be sure of the honesty of your staff if you grow them all in vats.

I put my back against the bar and looked around me. Just Shaman Bond, chilling out, soaking up the atmosphere. Fitting in, letting myself become part of the crowd and part of the scene, so people would just accept my presence. So I could take advantage of them. I felt a little alone, even in the midst of so many, being there without my partner and my love, the wild witch Molly Metcalf. But I couldn’t call her to come and join me, because it was widely known, in places like this, that Molly Metcalf was currently stepping out with a Drood.

I couldn’t ask her to help out on the Vatican job either. Because while I could get in without being noticed, Molly’s presence would have set off even more security alarms than my Drood armour. Molly had done many impressive and destructive things in her time, to the detriment of organised religions. And as a result, they all really disapproved of her. That’s what you get for boasting you’ve been to Heaven and Hell and everywhere in between.

I studied the crowd carefully, taking my time. You can find all sorts at the Wulfshead-if they don’t find you first. I made no move to approach anyone specific, or join in any conversation. Not yet. I just kept my ears and eyes open: seeing who was in tonight, and who they were with; who wasn’t there but perhaps should have been; and who was getting involved with things and people they would quite definitely come to regret in the morning. Love and lust, or things very like them, hung heavily on the hot and sweaty air. Temptation comes as standard at the Wulfshead. No wonder Harry Fabulous was hiding. I tilted my head surreptitiously this way and that, listening in on the latest gossip. Who was out, who was having who, who’d died, and who was responsible.