Val McDermid - The Vanishing Point

Leanne pulled a scornful face. ‘I know I’m not. I thought I was, to begin with. But now I know I’m not. A couple of nights ago, I had a bit of an upset tummy. I was in the bathroom for about ten minutes. In this club, right, you come down the hall to the main VIP area and there’s like a lobby off to the side before the main area. And there was a lass there who hadn’t been around when I left. Anyway, she didn’t see me come back and neither did Joshu. And they were going at it hammer and tongs, out there away from the main room. She was telling him he couldn’t just pick her up and drop her like she was a packet of fags. That she was fed up of hearing about other women he’d shagged, fed up of hearing him bullshitting about leaving his wife, fed up of him being Mr Unreliable.’ She stopped, visibly shaken at the memory, and lit another cigarette.

‘What did you do?’

‘I wanted to rip the bitch’s hair out, for our Scarlett’s sake. But I knew if I did that, it would turn into a major ruck and it’d end up all over the papers. And our Scarlett doesn’t deserve that. If anybody deserves to be humiliated, it’s that little shit Joshu, not her. So I sneaked back down the hall to the loo then made loads of noise coming back. I pretended I was shouting back at somebody in the bathroom. And when I got to the lobby, they were gone. She was in the VIP area, but I think Joshu must have gone down into the main part of the club because he turned up on the decks about twenty minutes later. Did a guest rideout, all scratching and scribbling and generally showing off like the prize pillock he is.’

Elbows on her knees, Leanne sighed and stared gloomily across the pond. ‘I can’t stand that he’s making a fool out of her.’

‘You’re going to have to tell her.’

She gave me an ‘are you crazy?’ look then shook her head vigorously. ‘No way. She wouldn’t believe me. She’d think I was after him for myself or some muppet thing like that.’

‘You have to tell her because if there’s a loose cannon bitch out there, it’s going to come out in the press. It’s going to come at her out of the blue. It’s going to be sensationalised and exaggerated and she’s going to be utterly humiliated. That would be so much worse. Not to mention the fact that she’s going to realise you must have known about it. She’ll end up feeling stupid and humiliated and betrayed twice over – by Joshu and by you. And you’ll come off worse, because he might be a twat but she loves him.’

Leanne muttered, ‘Fuck’s sake,’ under her breath.

‘I don’t see that you have any alternative. And you need to do it sooner rather than later. Because that bitch is out there and she’s not going away.’

20

Ireally tried to get out of holding Leanne’s hand while she told Scarlett the tacky truth about her husband. But gradually I realised that if I wasn’t there to lend moral support, Leanne was going to bottle it. I can’t say I blamed her. The news she had to deliver was the sort of thing nobody wants to hear. When Marina came back from the toddler group, I dug into my wallet and paid her extra to take Jimmy up to his nursery for the evening.

It was almost seven when the studio car brought Scarlett home. She was on a high after an afternoon of being pinned and tacked into a succession of sexy dresses. My presence was a bonus, she said, heading straight for the fridge and opening a bottle of Prosecco. She poured three glasses in spite of my protestations and gave me a kiss on the forehead as she handed mine to me. ‘Chill, sister,’ she said. ‘You can always stay over if you want to have a drink with me and Leanne. Right, Lee?’

There was no point in holding back. This was not a conversation that would improve with keeping. ‘You might not want either of us in the house when you hear what we’ve got to say,’ I said.

Scarlett stopped in her tracks and frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’ She looked from me to Leanne and back again. A flare of panic lit her eyes. ‘It’s not Jimmy, is it? I mean, I’m assuming he’s gone down for the night, yeah?’

‘No, Jimmy’s fine. Marina’s got him up in the nursery. We didn’t want him to see you upset.’

‘That only leaves Joshu.’ She sat down heavily, her mouth a hard line. ‘Spill it, then. Has he wrapped that stupid bloody car round a tree?’

‘No, nothing like that.’ I looked at Leanne. ‘Though you might wish he had by the time we’re done.’

‘Spit it out, then. Jeez, Steph, it’s not like you to beat around the bush.’

‘OK.’ I took a deep breath. Like that ever made anything easier. ‘It looks like Joshu’s been putting it about a bit.’

Scarlett didn’t move a muscle. She sat, frozen, staring straight ahead, not even blinking for what felt like an impossible length of time. I could only imagine the hurt. She’d been serially let down by every adult who owed her care and love. And still she persisted in loving. I found it impossible not to admire that.

At last, she looked away, delicately wiping her mouth clean of lipstick with her index finger. It was a curious gesture, as if she was removing the very taste of him. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said, hard-edged Yorkshire to the core.

So Leanne told Scarlett what she’d already told me. Halting and nervous, she got through her story. Scarlett sat stony-faced throughout, sipping metronomically from her glass. At the end, Scarlett’s face twitched once, a momentary lapse of control. Then she was back in charge. ‘Do you know who she was, this slag?’

‘I think I heard somebody call her Tiffany. But I couldn’t swear to it.’

‘Ha!’ Scarlett’s cry was bitter. ‘Not Tiffany – Toffany. Stupid fucking made-up name. Toffany Banks. She’s always wanted him. Well, she’s welcome to him. Come on, girls. We’ve got work to do.’

That night, Scarlett confirmed what I’d believed for some time. She was not a woman to mess with. First, cool as a cucumber, she called Joshu. ‘Hey, babe,’ she said. ‘Are you working tonight?’

When she came off the phone, she said, ‘He’s running the decks at Stagga. Then he’s going on to a party in Fulham. So the night is ours.’

Next she called a local van-hire firm that Joshu had an account with. ‘He uses their vans for festivals and private gigs,’ she explained. She arranged for them to drop off a Transit at the hacienda on Joshu’s account. Then we headed upstairs to the bedroom with a roll of black bin liners. Scarlett threw Joshu’s clothes out of wardrobes and drawers and we filled the bags. As soon as the bags were full, she’d tip in a bottle of cologne or aftershave lotion or one of the other expensive toiletries that colonised Joshu’s half of the bathroom. ‘He always likes to smell nice,’ she said with grim satisfaction as we carried the reeking bags down to the garage.

When the van arrived, we loaded up all the equipment from his studio, his boxes of CDs and vinyl and the bags of clothes. It took us till gone one in the morning, but we’d been through the entire house and cleared it of every trace of the two-timing little shit. ‘Where to now?’ I asked, wiping my hair out of my eyes.

‘It’s on his account,’ Scarlett said. ‘I think we should drive it down to Stagga and leave the keys with one of the lads on the door. What do you think, Steph?’

‘Sounds good to me. You drive the van, I’ll follow in your car and bring you back here.’

‘I’ll go in the van with you,’ Leanne said. ‘Keep you company.’

We both gave her an incredulous stare. ‘I don’t think so,’ Scarlett said. ‘We don’t want the doormen thinking they’re seeing double.’

Leanne slapped herself on the forehead and burst out laughing. ‘Shit, I forgot. What am I like?’