Binscombe Tales - The Complete Series Page 25

  ‘A third.’

  Disvan shook his head sadly.

  ‘You haven’t changed, Reginald; not inwardly—for all your possessions and bodyguards. I know you were always a terror for the ladies but, now you’re the age you are, I can’t understand why you don’t settle down with a nice Binscombe girl.’

  Reggie Suntan retrieved the pictures of his ‘girlfriends’ and surveyed them with a wry smile on his face.

  ‘I know, Mr Disvan,’ he said, ‘inexplicable, innit?’

  ‘Your trouble is,’ said Disvan, ‘that you’re a worshipper of the female form, that’s all. Just like Mr Oakley, really.’

  Reggie turned and looked at me with renewed interest.

  ‘You too, eh?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t... er, say that exactly...’

  ‘You wouldn’t? Oh, forget it then.’

  He turned back and ignored me once again.

  ‘I’ve got a good lifestyle,’ he said, readdressing Mr Disvan. ‘I make no excuses for it—why should I? I live the way I want to live, and I’ve worked hard and taken risks to get that way. It’s my just deserts. But now—‘ and here Reggie’s voice hardened—‘someone’s disputing my right to live the way I like, and I want your help to sort ‘em out!’

  Mr Disvan’s face remained impassive. He appeared entirely taken up in the act of stirring his tea.

  ‘I must say that you surprise me, Reginald,’ he said. ‘I thought that sorting people out was more your line of work.’

  Reggie Suntan acknowledged this by nodding.

  ‘That’s the nub of it, Mr Disvan. As far as people are concerned, I— or my employees,’ he indicated his watchful bodyguards with a jerk of his be-ringed thumb, ‘can take care of things, if need be. However, when it comes to ex-people...’

  ‘Did you say ex-people?’ I repeated incredulously, despite myself.

  ‘I did, Mr Beakly. As I was saying, when it comes to them, I naturally turn back to my roots for help.’

  It was Mr Disvan’s turn to nod approval.

  ‘I think that that’s a very wise assessment of the situation, Reginald,’ he said. ‘Good boy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Reggie thoughtfully picked up a cream packed doughnut, twisted it about in his hand and then replaced it, having concluded that he couldn’t have both his cake and dignity.

  ‘No, indeed,’ he mused, ‘nothing I’ve ever learnt in my business career has equipped me for this situation.’

  He suddenly issued a curt and, to me, incomprehensible instruction in what I presumed to be Japanese. The appropriate bodyguard nigh on flew to our table and placed on it a tiny tape recorder. Reggie waved him away again and then pressed the play button.

  Despite the distortion of the medium and the fact that he was speaking in a foreign language, I recognised Reggie’s voice on the tape. He seemed to be involved in a serious fracas with another man. From time to time, their exchanges were punctuated by loud crashes and bangs which sounded not unlike impacting crockery and furnishings. At first, Reggie’s tone was reasonableness itself, but as the recording wore on, so his temper wore out. After passing through all the stages which divide calmness from berserk fury, interspersed with his dodging a fair tonnage of missiles, we heard Reggie end the exchange and sign off the tape with a burst of Anglo-Saxon derived words that I could clearly understand but won’t repeat.

  It was the second voice that held our interest, however. Even though I, at least, did not follow what was being said, the pattern of speech was arresting.

  Recalling the sound long after, I described it as like that of a distant radio station on a cheap transistor. Its waveband ebbed and flowed through the ether, occasionally bursting out with great clarity, at other times almost submerged in interference.

  I suspected that the language being used was Spanish and, with less evidence, that it was being used to issue threats—very calm and authoritative threats, but threats nevertheless. For some reason the second voice made me feel cold, and I impulsively mentioned the fact to Mr Disvan. He did not seem surprised.

  ‘Quite possibly, Mr Oakley,’ he said. ‘Even at second hand, the transmission would involve a degree of life energy drain.’

  I was interested to follow up this pronouncement but Reggie Suntan forestalled me.

  ‘You see what I’m up against,’ he said.

  Mr Disvan ‘hmmmed’ affirmatively.

  ‘It does sound like a bad case,’ he said.

  Disvan reminded me of a doctor discussing head colds—concerned, but not that concerned. At the risk of disrupting the flow of events, I felt impelled to interject.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said to Mr Disvan, ‘did you understand what was being said?’

  He seemed surprised that I should doubt it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you know Spanish as well as all your other languages?’

  ‘It’s only a smattering, Mr Oakley. Nothing to boast about.’

  ‘Mr Disvan was in the International Brigade in ‘37,’ said Reggie Suntan, ‘so of course he picked up a...’

  Disvan swiftly drew his finger across his throat and thereby silenced Reggie as effectively as if he’d shot him. There followed a moment of confused silence before Mr Disvan allowed the conversation to continue.

  ‘You were saying, Reginald?’

  Reggie Suntan had taken the hint. ‘Well, what I was gonna say was that... er, that you don’t know the half of the problem I’m facing.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose that we do, Reginald.’

  ‘So..?’

  ‘So what, Reginald?’

  ‘So what shall I do?’

  Disvan’s answer was ready and waiting for delivery. ‘Sell up, what else? Buy another enormous villa.’

  We then saw why Reggie Suntan had done so well in business.

  ‘No way!’ he said, chopping through the air between us with the edge of his hand. ‘Watch my lips: no frigging way! Got it? I bought that place fair and square, cash up front, the full fair price. I like that place. My favourite girlfriends like that place. I don’t move, he moves. Right?’

  We were tremendously impressed and remained silent.

  Reggie suddenly remembered both where he was and who he was speaking to. He darted a stealthy glance at Disvan.

  ‘No disrespect to you, of course, Mr Disvan,’ he said quickly.

  ‘None taken, Reginald.’

  ‘I’m just a bit overwrought, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course you are. But at the same time, try and remember you’re not in Beirut now.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Reggie, ‘I wound up that side of the operation.’

  ‘Too dangerous?’

  ‘Too religious. They insisted I convert.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Reggie, regrouping, ‘will you help me please? Like in the old days, eh? I would, of course, be overwhelmingly grateful.’

  Like a superpower about to adopt a humane policy, Mr Disvan hesitated just long enough to spoil the gesture.

  ‘Naturally, we’ll help, Reginald,’ he said at last, ‘if we can. Give us some of the background to your problem.’

  Reggie took out what appeared to be a snuffbox and a tiny mirror before apparently thinking better of it. Instead he produced an elegant ivory case full of Havana cigars which he passed around. I joined him with alacrity but Mr Disvan declined in favour of his customary meerschaum and, alas, customary smoking material. Very shortly the restaurant was under a cloud cover of expensive and exotic smoke. It gave the otherwise homely place a late night drinking club atmosphere, suitable for odd disclosures.

  ‘I bought the villa,’ said Reggie Suntan, ‘from a little old lady who lived there all alone. She was very trad, y’know—very uptight and Spanish, all dressed in black, mass every Sunday, crucifix in every room and all that crap. You get the picture?’

  We did.

  ‘Well, she drove a hard bargain—which was fair enough. I mean, I don’t exactly have to worry where the next meal�
�s coming from, and I assumed she wanted to provide for the time when she couldn’t look after herself. In those circumstances it seemed a bit mean to haggle too hard, and I let her have what she asked.

  ‘The only thing that worried me, though, was that she kept looking at me and grinning, all the way through the negotiations. Every time I looked up she’d have this smirk on her clock like I had my flies undone or something. It worried me enough to have my legal crew and the surveyor double and triple check the deal, but it all seemed kosher. I had to accept that the old lady found me funny in some way. Women are strange like that, aren’t they, Boakley?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Anyway, the deal went through without a hitch and then, blow me if the old girl didn’t pass away the very next day, leaving everything she had, including the sale proceeds, to some Papist charity. It was like she’d planned it that way all along.

  ‘Curious, I thought, but what more could I think than that? So, my friends and I moved in and settled down nicely. Some Yank came out and redesigned the whole interior. Jollied the place up a bit and put a slice of colour in it instead of just black and white like before.

  ‘I had the pools and the jacuzzi installed, put up some erotic—but tasteful, mind—murals and so on and on. It was all very simpatico, even if I say so myself. Then, one night we were having a party and things were, I admit, getting a little out of hand. I happened to look round and there was this stranger glaring at me, like the death’s-head at the feast. I only caught a glimpse that time, but it was no picture, I tell you. He looked a biggish sort of chap—for a Spaniard, which he obviously was—but starved or sick, and very angry about it. That time I didn’t really notice, but later on I saw that he was wearing a grey military uniform which was all tattered and torn, plus lots of oddments like blankets and rags. There seemed to be a kind of strong wind playing about him ‘cause his hair and clothing were sort of lifted up and moving as if they were in a draught.

  ‘ “That can’t be right,” I says, “the designer guaranteed this place was draught proof.” My second thought was, how the hell did this gatecrasher get through security?’

  ‘Well, with these questions in mind, I got off the girl I was on and was going to speak to him when the swine threw a bottle at me. As it happened, the bottle was full at the time, and the next thing I knew was waking up six hours later in hospital.

  ‘That was the start of the business. After that, there was rarely a day when he didn’t pay me a visit, especially if I was doing anything considered immoral—as defined by, say, Oliver Cromwell with a headache. I couldn’t sleep with a woman I wasn’t married to, or have a drink, or snort or smoke or anything, without matey materialising out of nowhere and hurling a sofa at me.

  ‘Pretty soon I was a wreck, I don’t mind telling you, gents. I was driven out of my own house, if I wanted to live a normal life and indoors I had to live like some plaster saint. My friends wouldn’t come and visit me—not unreasonably, since one got her skull cracked by a flying stereo. And, since I couldn’t talk shop on the phone without screaming as a carving knife came hurtling towards me, my business associates were starting to ask questions about my reliability. That, as you’ll appreciate, gentlemen, was a very dangerous development.

  ‘Actually, for someone who’s fought hand to hand with the Hezbollah, I must admit I was shaken. It was his looks, you see, rather than his appearance. As soon as he arrived and thrown something, he’d give me this otherwordly stare and, at the risk of sounding poetic, I felt that it was risky looking into his eyes. He knows things that we’re not supposed to. Not yet, anyway. Each time I stared into that face, I was sharing that knowledge—and consequently getting a little bit nearer the grave. Don’t ask me how I can be sure of that; I just am.’

  ‘It’s quite plausible,’ confirmed Mr Disvan. ‘The very fact that you could see him meant that you were partly in his world, just as he was partly in ours. You were meeting in some no-man’s land of your own.’

  Reggie Suntan considered this and grimaced.

  ‘That would explain,’ he said slowly, ‘why no one else can see him. In effect we’re having private meetings.’

  ‘Which again makes sense,’ Disvan continued, ‘since it’s with you that he obviously has business to conduct.’

  Reggie nodded, gradually taking this in and processing the information through his formidable mind.

  ‘With him setting all the appointments,’ smiled Disvan.

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ said Reggie, grimly, ‘I get the picture. Anyway, just to round off the story, I can tell you that we soon had the full SP on this bloke. I had my people ask the locals and there was no problem in identification. He was, and I mean was, the brother of the old girl who’d sold me the villa. She’d inherited it from him when he got killed in ‘43.’

  I thought I’d make an impression by seizing on this point. There seemed a fair chance that it was relevant. ‘Killed, eh?’ I said

  ‘That’s right, Mr Booty. He was one of the Blue Division volunteers that didn’t make it back.’

  Any attempt to tot up points floundered due to my ignorance. ‘The blue who?’

  ‘Blue Division, Mr Oakley,’ said Disvan. ‘They were a special unit sent by the Franco regime to fight alongside the Nazis on the Eastern Front during the War.’

  ‘Oh... so he was like that, was he?’

  Reggie nodded.

  ‘Apparently. He was one of the old school who thought the world was being run by freemasons and Jews and probably Jewish freemasons at that. Come 1941, he said that Franco and the Pope had gone wishy-washy on Communism and felt obliged to go to Russia to stem the Bolshevik tide himself.’

  ‘Whereupon, so it seems, either the Bolsheviks or the winter bought an end to his crusade.’

  ‘Definitely the former, Mr Disvan,’ said Reggie. ‘You can quite clearly see the bullet holes all over him. Very distressing, that is—seeing bits of the opposite wall through someone.’

  ‘And, on reflection,’ Disvan continued to muse, ‘I think I should have said that the Russian bullets only temporarily ended his crusade.’

  Reggie Suntan was suddenly alert and interested. It seemed he’d spotted a new angle on the problem.

  ‘What do you mean, temporarily?’ he said with great deliberation.

  ‘Well,’ replied Disvan, ‘it was one thing to rest in peace after dying for the cause far from home. But when home itself is occupied by the forces of Godless, communist, weirdo degeneracy—as represented by yourself, Reginald—then perhaps the great struggle has to go on, even from beyond the grave.’

  ‘Me? A communist, Mr Disvan? Leave it out, I’ve never even voted.’

  ‘Maybe so. But when was the last time you went to church?’

  ‘Mum’s funeral.’

  And before that?’

  ‘ To be baptised.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ said Disvan triumphantly, like a magician producing a rabbit out of a hat. ‘Solid evidence of atheistic, communist tendencies—to a Blue Division volunteer.’

  Reggie Suntan started to nod in agreement.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And what with my parties...’

  ‘Degenerate, bolshevist, free-love orgies.’

  ‘And... substances.’

  ‘Decadent, opium-crazed, corruption.’

  ‘And my friends...’

  ‘Rootless cosmopolitan scum. Are you getting the picture?’

  ‘Only too clearly. I take offence at all this, you know.’

  ‘Well,’ said Disvan, ‘perhaps you shouldn’t be too harsh. How would you like it, for instance, if a tax inspector or a senior member of Interpol moved into the house you grew up in?’

  ‘It’s hardly likely, Mr Disvan. Why would bastards like that move into a two up, two down with no central heating, in Binscombe?’

  ‘Don’t evade the question. How would you feel?’

  Reggie gave this some thought and then conceded the point.

  ‘I’d feel pretty rough abo
ut it.’

  ‘Exactly. But he only throws bottles. From what I remember reading about that fracas in Constantinople, if the tables were turned I suspect that you’d throw something a little more lethal...’

  ‘Maybe I would, Mr D but I don’t purport to be defending Christendom. In the meanwhile, what’s his price?’

  Mr Disvan shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘What makes you think he has a “price”, as you put it?’

  Reggie Suntan put on a smug facial expression that implied he knew something we didn’t.

  ‘Everyone, without exception, has a price, Mr Disvan,’ he said. ‘That’s the one great lesson of my life.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’ said Disvan abruptly. ‘Then what was your mother’s price?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, Reginald; it’s a simple question. What was your mum’s price?’

  Reggie, obviously an honest debater, considered the hole he’d dug himself into.

  ‘An infinite number of pounds,’ he said, at length, ‘which she’d then give to charity.’

  ‘Not bad, Reginald, not bad at all,’ said Mr Disvan, smiling. ‘You should have been a politician.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Mr Disvan.’

  ‘Take it how you like, Reginald. However, returning to the matter of price, you’ll find us a lot more reasonable than your late mother. A mere £100,000 will purchase our full assistance.’

  ‘That’s a bit steep,’ said Reggie, poker faced.

  ‘Consider it as a “consultant’s fee” if it makes you feel better. And rest assured, it’ll be put to good use. You see, I’ve always felt that Binscombe could do with a social centre—for flower festivals and the Cubs and Brownies and all that. Your consultant’s fee would just about cover providing one.’

  Reggie Suntan looked fixedly at the ceiling, perhaps considering which bank accounts could be juggled in order to raise the cash without attracting unwanted attention.

  ‘It did look like a very comfortable villa, Reggie,’ prompted Disvan slyly.

  Reggie snapped his attention back to us.

  ‘Okay,’ he said briskly, ‘Eighty thou for the Village Hall—if it’s named after me—plus a substantial contribution of hardware to the Concrete Fund.’