2. Mel
Guilt.
That was the other reason she paid so much attention to that nagging fear, why she believed something awful had happened to Harriet even before she knew for certain her friend was missing.
A couple of weeks ago, she’d been out on the town with Harriet and a couple of the other girls. Just a normal night out. Pizza, a movie, a couple of drinks in a pub near Harriet’s apartment. A bad choice, as it turned out: the barmaid knew Harriet from college, and for once it wasn’t only Harriet’s pubescent looks that stopped her getting booze but a barmaid who knew she was most certainly underage.
Then, standing at the bar to get another round of drinks, Mel had heard a familiar soft voice.
“Hey, there, how you doin’?”
Glancing to her right, she saw a face she struggled to place at first. Thick, dark stubble on slightly rounded features, a long scar above dark eyes that fixed you to the spot.
“Glenn?” she said. “Glenn Lazenby?”
When he smiled, his whole face lit up, the same smile as his brother, Jimmy.
“Look like you just smelled something bad,” he said, still grinning.
“I just did.”
How did it get from that to him paying for the drinks she’d just ordered and helping her carry them back to the table? To him standing there, all wide boy charm, and insisting he wouldn’t join them, explaining he was just buying them drinks for old times’ sakes, then backing away, leaving the other girls to press Mel on what he’d meant by ‘old times’.
Harriet, in particular, had been intrigued, drawn to that rough charm and the chance of some juicy snippet from Mel’s past. “Go on, doll, spill. Is he an ex? Did you dump him, or him you? Look at him. How could you not...?”
“No,” Mel had finally admitted. “Not an ex. An ex’s brother.”
After that she’d had to let them extract some of the details from her, enough to feed their curiosity. As little as she could get away with.
Yes, the brother shared those rough good looks. Yes, he had that glint in his eye, too, and the way of just looking at you and making you feel as if you were the center of everything, if only for a moment. No, there weren’t any more Lazenby brothers to go around, but if there had been her friends would have been welcome to them all as far as she was concerned... and that’s when she’d clammed up, didn’t want to spill anything more. Didn’t want to have to explain how nothing good ever came of getting close to the Lazenby family – that their father and uncle were just the same, charmers with the attitudes of men who owned the world and an underlying subtext of chilling brutality.
“You okay, Mels?”
It was Harriet, leaning in close. She’d always had the ability to be sensitive to Mel’s moods, when she could be bothered.
Mel nodded, smiled.
“Good, ’cos your man’s watching us, and if you don’t want him I might just...”
“You’re sixteen!”
“Seventeen in a couple of days, and as you always say, I have the intellect and maturity of someone much older.”
“Mind of a trooper, I think I said.” The two had laughed, and later, when Mel found herself at the bar with Glenn Lazenby again, she said to him, “Hands off, okay? She’s only a kid. I’ve seen the looks you’re giving her.”
He played innocent, holding hands up, palms facing Mel. “Don’t know what you mean, girl,” he said, even though he clearly did. She’d seen him eyeing Harriet up. She knew the look. Then he added, “Anyway, I only have eyes for you, Mel. Always had. You know that.”
She’d tried to be pissed off with him, not to let that roguish charm do its thing, but it wasn’t easy. Damn those Lazenby boys, that had always been the way.
It should have been nothing, that evening. Just an encounter with someone from the past. A bit of flirting, a bit of a laugh. Nothing more.
Even when Harriet had asked about Glenn the next day, gently teasing out a few more snippets from Mel’s past, the alarm bells didn’t go off.
“So did he really just happen to be there?” Harriet had asked. “Just bump into us like that? Or was he hoping to bump into you, Mels?”
She’d wondered the same thing. In a city of nine million people and however many thousands of pubs and clubs, how likely was it that she’d encounter him?
There was something in Harriet’s expression, just then. Something that made Mel pause, reassessing. “What is it?” she asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”
That enigmatic expression broke into a smile, the cat that really had found the cream. “I think he liked me,” Harriet said. “A girl can tell. Or at least, I can.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He spoke to me. You were off in the ladies’, powdering your nose or whatever, then you went straight to the bar. He came over to introduce himself. Proper gent, he was.”
“Believe me,” said Mel, “there’s nothing either proper or gentlemanly about Glenn Lazenby. What did he say? What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing. Just asked how I was, how I knew you. He made out he was interested in me, but I reckon he was digging about you.”
Mel saw then that her friend had produced something from her purse, a business card. She reached across and took it, ignoring Harriet’s look of mock outrage. Saw Glenn’s name, a couple of numbers, an email, a LinkedIn address. The words ‘fixer and facilitator’.
“The Lazenbies,” said Mel, trying to impress on Harriet that she was being serious, “they’re a bad lot. Old-school gangsters in a modern world. Glenn’s father is mixed up in all kinds of things, and the sons are just the same. I learned that the hard way. I got too close, and I got burned. I just hope last night was a fluke, bumping into him like that, because I really hope I never set eyes on him or his family again.”
Looking back, though, it was obvious Harriet didn’t get it. Didn’t get it at all. She’d smiled, raised her eyebrows, pursed those rosebud lips, and then said, “That spark’s still there, isn’t it, Mels? Well I never... I never knew you had a bad boy thing going on. A bit of rough.”
It was only now... now that she looked back, reassessing everything, that she realized it wasn’t just Mel who had a thing for bad boys. It was Harriet, too.
And so she felt guilty.
Guilty that she had inadvertently introduced Harriet to Glenn Lazenby. That the encounter had clearly made an impression on the girl. And scared that there might possibly be anything more to it than that.
She hoped desperately that Harriet – or Glenn – hadn’t followed up that interest. Because, as she’d tried to convince her young friend, nothing good ever comes from getting involved with the Lazenby family.
§
She called him on the mobile number on the business card he’d given Harriet, and asked to meet. And even as she thumbed the number, she wondered if that had been a ploy: leaving the card with Harriet, knowing the two would talk and so Mel would at least see the card, the number...
“Don’t go getting ideas,” she said. “I just want a few minutes of your time.”
“Even so little would make my day complete, darling,” he said in that deceptively soft voice of his, and she wondered how it was that he could simultaneously make her skin crawl and make her feel a thrill of... of something. She didn’t know what it was. Didn’t like it. Didn’t like any response to a Lazenby that didn’t involve a healthy dose of distrust.
“Glenn, I’m serious. Just a few minutes, yeah?”
She didn’t know what to expect – a seedy pub, a greasy spoon café, perhaps, but not this, an up-market wine bar in the West End, all darkened glass and chrome and tall, jagged-leafed pot plants. Or him: patent leather shoes and a gray designer suit that probably cost as much as a small house back in their home town. The shades pushed back on the top of his head, the heavy rings on three fingers of one hand – had he worn those the other night? She hadn’t noticed them.
When he saw her he stood, reached for her hand, kissed the knuckles with a soft brush of lips and a rough scrape of stubble.
“Hey, good to see you again. Drink?” Without waiting for an answer he raised a hand, signaling to the bar, and as they lowered themselves into either end of a deep leather sofa a waitress in a ridiculously short black skirt came over with a glass of white wine and what looked like a whisky on ice. “Sorry, I presumed. You said you only had a few minutes so I thought we’d save time on the logistics.”
Briefly Mel considered taking the whisky, then the moment was gone, Glenn taking the chunky square glass and cradling it, leaving her to reach for the elegantly shaped wine glass. In the background, anonymous jazzy music played, merging with the murmur of voices. It was funny seeing Glenn like this, all grown up and almost managing to pull off sophisticated.
He sat studying her, waiting, in no obvious hurry to open the conversation, despite his claim of making efficient use of their time.
She would have thought it was a power thing, a ploy to get her to make the first move, but, to be blunt, she didn’t think Glenn Lazenby had ever had the smarts to do something like that. He’d always been direct, like her father. He didn’t do psychology.
“So... serious, you said?” He kept his voice low, soft, hard to catch above the background noise.
She smiled. She’d won that round, got him to break the silence. She was better at this than him.
“Sorry, yes,” she said. “I... I don’t know who to turn to. And then I found your number.” She didn’t explain how, didn’t tell him the number was on the card he’d given her then-sixteen- year-old friend. If that had been a ploy she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it had worked.
She hated playing the ditzy blonde, but sometimes, particularly with men like Glenn Lazenby, it was the best approach.
“Yeah, darling? What is it?”
For all his lack of moves, Glenn was hard to work out. As far as she could tell he didn’t appear to be hiding anything, but he lived in a world where hiding things was as automatic as breathing out after you’ve breathed in. For the first time, she considered the possibility maybe she was the one out of her depth here, not him.
“My friend. The girl I was with that night we bumped into you. Harriet. Have you seen anything more of her? Have you been in touch with her?”
Still, he gave nothing away. He shrugged, spread his hands, palms out, in that innocent, defensive way of his. “Been in touch with her? I wouldn’t know how to. And besides, why would I do that? You said hands off, she’s a kid.”
She didn’t say because Harriet not only had a thing for bad boys, but also she had daddy issues and Glenn Lazenby’s rough, worldly charm reminded Mel of her friend’s late father.
Challenging Glenn would get her nowhere. He had an ego to protect.
“I... I don’t know. I’m just worried for her.”
“Hey, hey there,” Glenn said, reaching for her, pressing a hand to her shoulder and caressing the soft flesh above her collarbone with his thumb, a strangely intimate touch.
She pulled away, reminding herself how any response to a Lazenby other than distrust was a dangerous thing.
“What’s up, darling?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s just... Well, Harriet’s gone quiet. Not answering calls or messages. Not showing up for things we’d arranged. Her mother’s worried, asked me to ask around. I guess that’s freaked me out a little. I’m out of my depth, and I don’t know who to turn to. I’m just talking to anyone who’s run into her over the last week or so. You... well, you seemed to show an interest.” You gave her your card, you bastard.
“And you wondered if she’d fallen for me?” Glenn laughed, hands up, facing out, again. “No, no, it’s okay. Don’t apologize. Like I say, she’s a kid. I’ve done some bad shit in my time, but none of that. And like I say, when I’m in a room with someone like you, how could I ever look anywhere else?”
He was joking, laying it on so heavy it became a comical thing, and they both knew it. He’d always done that. It used to wind his brother Jimmy up no end.
“Maybe that’s it,” he continued. “Maybe I thought I’d get to you through her, so I gave her a bit of the old chat. But that’s all it was.”
He leaned back and took a drink. “Okay, darling. You said serious. I can do serious. I can see you’re worried. So what can I do? I’m guessing the Old Bill aren’t being much use, or you wouldn’t be chasing this yourself, right?”
Mel shook her head. “Harriet’s mother tried but, well, she has issues, and they didn’t take her seriously. I don’t want to leave it until they’re forced to.”
“Makes sense. So...?”
She looked at him, wishing she was a whole lot better at this. She’d thought as far as coming here, looking him in the eye, and trying to work out if he knew anything about where Harriet might be, but that had failed. He gave nothing away. The last few minutes had blown away her first impression that she was the one with the wiles and she could outsmart him. If she wanted to wrap Glenn Lazenby round her little finger she’d have to try another tack.
“Well, I guess... I remember how things were. You, your family. You were always the one who was in the middle of everything, the one who knew people and could make things happen. You had... connections.” Was there any less obvious way to say he was a gangster in a family of gangsters and maybe he could help?
“You want me to put some feelers out?” He understood. He got it. And this was the first time today she’d been able to read him easily: she was asking him for a favor and right now he was busy working out the price.
Even as she understood this, she almost felt relieved: that old distrust of the Lazenby family kicking in again. That had to be healthy!
“That’d be great, if you could? As I say, I don’t know who to ask.”
“Tell you what. Can you get back to the old town tomorrow evening? I have family business to take care of back there, but I’ll have had time to ask around by then. I’ll be at the Flag and Flowers. You could meet me at seven and we’ll grab dinner somewhere, take it from there. What do you say?”
The price. There was always going to be a price.
“That’d be lovely, thanks. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Sure thing, darling. You just leave it to me, you hear?”
§
Outside, the street was busy with stop-starting traffic, and pedestrians rushed all around her.
She was glad she’d given herself a get-out, told him she wasn’t going to be here for long. The rush of emotions was heady, the memories it brought back, the feelings. That had been a different Mel, back then. She’d been in love, briefly, with this man’s brother, and she remembered the rivalry between them, the way Glenn had always encouraged her to play the two Lazenby brothers off each other.
In the intervening years she’d made herself forget the positives, the reasons why she’d got involved with the family in the first place. But now... Glenn was just the same equal mix of charming fun and irritation he’d always been.
She took a deep breath. Held it until her lungs hurt, before letting it go.
She must look a freak standing here, while everyone rushed about her.
She started to walk.
Had he been genuine? He seemed so. He really seemed to want to help, or at least to use his help as a bargaining chip to make her go to him, spend time with him, and whatever else he hoped for.
Did he really want that, after all this time, or was he just playing with her, having a laugh, as he always did with people?
She didn’t know, so she didn’t know whether to feel flattered or frustrated, and it was just the same as it had always been, and that was strangely reassuring.
As she walked she tried not to feel annoyed at all that the two men she’d turned to – her father, and now Glenn Lazenby – had both, effectively, patted her on the head and told her to go away and leave it to the grown-ups.
Not annoyed at all.
§
She sat on the train, her bag on the seat next to her, guarding her solitude. Her phone buzzed, and when she glanced at the small screen her first reaction was to dismiss it.
Her father.
Why now? He never called, always leaving it to her to make the move to establish contact. That was just the way it was, the way he was.
And it was only that fact that made her slide her thumb across the screen to accept the call. The curiosity. He must have a reason to be calling now.
For a second or two, she held the phone, staring at it, before raising it to her ear. There was no-one sitting nearby, just a young woman with a small child in the seats on the other side of the carriage, and a couple of seats down a teenager with big earphones on, leaking a hiss of muffled music. Outside her window, outer London peeled itself away in a succession of shabby industrial units.
“Melissa.”
“Dad. How’re you doing?”
“Oh, you know.” Then silence, as if he was waiting for her to strike up conversation, even though he was the one who’d called.
“So, how are you doing?” he finally asked. It wasn’t a general question, the kind of thing people say: Mel knew that in this case it was specific, to the point, referring to their last conversation.
“Oh, you know.” She could play that game too. She didn’t want to admit she’d spent the last couple of days chasing shadows and getting nowhere. Not to her father. Not to herself, either.
She’d left Harriet another message this morning, but still no response. There had been no sign of her friend on social media, either, which was so out of character.
More silence on the line, until Mel relented. “Penny’s frantic,” she said. “She’s tried reporting it, but the police aren’t interested – they see her as just a hysterical addict screaming at them.”
“I’ll have a word.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. That was the first offer of help. She didn’t know if he meant in some kind of official capacity, or if he would step in as a friend of the family, but she didn’t ask.
“Listen, Melissa,” he said. “I think perhaps you’ve done enough for now. You’ve raised the alarm when no-one else took this seriously, but now... Well, if anything’s happened, if Harriet has got caught up in anything, please don’t expose yourself, too, Melissa. Do you understand?”
Oh yes, she understood. It was the same old thing, another pat on the head and instruction to leave it to the grown-ups. He’d obviously paid enough attention to know she was asking around. She just wished he’d invest that effort in actually bloody helping.
She understood now that she didn’t know whether she could even trust her own father. Yes, he was saying the right things at last, but was he actually doing anything, or was he just fobbing her off?
Right now, the only thing she truly trusted was that she was the one person she knew for a fact was out there for Harriet.
“Harriet’s missing, Dad. It’s been four days. I’m scared for her and nobody else seems to be taking it seriously, so I’m not going to let go, whatever you say.”
A pause, then: “I know. But I had to ask, at least. Where are you now? What are you doing?”
Just then the train went over a junction and there was a loud rumble from the track. She hoped he hadn’t heard.
“Sitting outside Starbucks,” she said. “Watching the traffic. Trying to work it out. Asking around.”
“Don’t get in too deep, Melissa, you hear? These people are far worse than you could ever imagine.”
“I won’t.”
It was only after she hung up, and had sat staring out of the window for a time, that she started to wonder what he meant by that. What people did he mean? Did he know more than he was letting on, and if so, just how bad was it for Harriet? And did that warning imply he knew who Mel had been talking to, and she might be heading along the right lines, or was it just a generality?
Don’t get in too deep, Melissa, you hear? These people are far worse than you could ever imagine.
I won’t, she thought. I’ll only get in as deep as I need to.