3. Mel
The Flag and Flowers was an old town-center pub, owned by the Lazenby family for as long as Mel could remember. It stood alone, a red-brick building with a parking area on one side and derelict land to the other side and the rear.
Last time she’d been here it was to tell Jimmy Lazenby it was over between them. He was too wrapped up in his family business, too much in the thrall of his villainous father. The Glenn she was coming to know now was very much the kind of man she’d feared Jimmy would become back then.
She breathed deep, suddenly anxious. Was she out of her depth? Would she even know when she was out of her depth, or would it sneak up on her until it was too late?
These people are far worse than you could ever imagine.
Did her father know she was here, that she’d been talking to Glenn? Had he been warning her against getting involved with the Lazenby family again?
She’d taken it too glibly before. She knew that now. Thinking she could run rings around Glenn, that she was far smarter than him.
How much of that brash persona was front, she wondered? The sharp suit and the rough, almost brutish, charm. His father was just the same: giving an impression he wasn’t as smart as those around him, when in truth he had the ability to see right through people, read a situation, and always stay at least a step ahead.
She pushed the door and stepped in, determined to keep her wits about her this time.
It was like stepping back in time. She recognized Sandra behind the bar, her hair pinned up in the familiar bun, perhaps a slightly whiter shade of nicotine-yellowed gray. Game machines lined the back wall, just as they had ten years ago, and the walls were the same dull wood paneling. Even the light had a sepia tint to it, reinforcing the sense she had stepped back a decade.
People were looking at her, and she tried not to feel intimidated. She nodded at Sandra, who hadn’t recognized her at first but now gave a slight nod in return, a flash of recognition in her eyes.
“Glenn around?” Mel asked. “He’s expecting me.”
Just then, Sandra turned, and a door behind the bar opened and Glenn stepped out.
The sharp suit he’d worn at the wine bar had gone, and now he wore blue jeans, a white shirt, and a black leather jacket.
“Come on through, darling,” he said, waving a hand at the door, then stepping forward to lift the hinged part of the bar so she could step through.
As she slipped past him, she breathed leather and a heady cologne.
The door opened onto a large office, an old wooden desk arranged diagonally across one corner. A big aquarium full of jewel-colored fish stood against one wall, surrounded by tall pot plants. Another wall bore a big screen, paused partway through what looked like a shoot ’em up game.
Unnoticed at first, a tall black girl stood by the room’s one window. She wore a black vest top and short skirt that did nothing to conceal ridiculously long supermodel legs.
Glenn stepped past Mel, nodded at the girl, and she slipped past them and out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Don’t mind Suze,” Glenn said. “She’s my PA.”
Mel didn’t say a thing, just looked at him until he laughed, shrugged, held his hands up, palms out, a gesture that covered just about everything for him.
Even with the door shut, muffled sounds drifted through from the pub – voices, music, the jangling clatter and chimes of the games machines.
“Good to see you,” said Glenn. He waved to a sofa, said, “Please,” and sat at one end of it, one knee drawn up so he could twist to face her.
She sat upright at the other end, elbows on her knees, hands clasped, not wanting to give in and sink back into the sofa and inadvertently mirror his position.
“So,” she said, “Have you found anything?” Too abrupt. She gave a little smile, and added, “And thanks for saying you’d ask around. I really appreciate it.”
Now she worried she might be over-compensating, that her appreciation might seem too much like acknowledgment of a favor to be returned. That comment about dinner and ‘taking it from there’ still hung over her, unclear if he would hold her to it, or if he’d been teasing her in that way of his.
“Straight to the point, eh? No small talk? No telling me about your life and at least pretending you like me?” He was smiling – hadn’t stopped since emerging from that doorway. Glenn liked it when people wanted something from him, liked the feeling of being in control. He’d always been that way.
Again, she was reminded of the paradox that was Glenn Lazenby: a man who could be charming and attractive, and simultaneously quite the opposite.
These people are far worse than you could ever imagine.
“Sorry,” she said. It wasn’t hard to play the pathetic girl role this evening. Four days now, with nothing from Harriet; she had run out of ideas and nobody else seemed to be doing anything. “I just...” She shrugged. “I’m not in a small talk place, right now, okay? You want to know about my life? It’s not that interesting, believe me. I’m a postgrad student at UCL. I live in a tiny room in a house I share with four near-strangers. What more do you want to know? Right now the only thing that matters to me is that one of my closest friends has disappeared off the face of the Earth and nobody seems to give a shit.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Was that actual kindness in his voice? “You know me: no matter how bad things get I try to turn it into a joke. It’s a defensive thing.”
So maybe he did do psychology sometimes, after all.
Mel gave a little shake of the head. It was nothing. She just wanted to get to the point.
“I know some people,” said Glenn. “Contacts in the police. Contacts... elsewhere. I’ve been asking questions about your friend.”
“And...?”
“Nothing,” he said, with a shake of the head. “Sorry. But that’s maybe not so bad a result. The kind of people I know... well, let’s just say, the business they’re involved in – if they were able to actually tell me anything about your friend’s absence then you’d have a lot more to worry about. Kid like that...”
He was trying to reassure her, in his clumsy way, but his words drove a chill deep through Mel’s core, opening her mind up to possibilities she’d been shutting out.
“She’s only a child,” she said.
Glenn just raised an eyebrow, driving that chill even deeper.
“Like I say,” he finally said, “nobody’s heard anything, so we’re good. And my friends in blue are aware – they haven’t entirely dismissed the concerns of her mum, even though they know all about her.”
“Thank you.” She swallowed, then went on. “These... contacts. You trust them?”
He laughed. “On this?” he said. “Yeah, I do. They know not to fuck me around, you know what I mean?”
“If they’re lying. If your friends have done anything to Harriet... I told you: she’s a child, she’s off limits.”
“Trust me,” said Glenn, “I’d know if they were lying. I’m on your side, darling. You just need to see through all my bullshit, you know?”
That hint of kindness in his tone again, another revelation in this mature version of the Glenn she’d once known.
“You just need to tread carefully,” he went on. “Leave the dirty work to grafters like me. I know you’ve been asking around, but you don’t want to get mixed up with the kind of people I deal with.”
“You sound like my father.”
There was a flash of something in his look then. Hostility? Wariness?
“Have you got your old man onto this too?”
She shook her head. “He’s not interested,” she said. “He told me I should leave it to the grown-ups – pretty much the same as you’ve just told me.”
There was something in what he’d said that bugged her – not just the hostility to her father.
“Why have you been looking into me, too? Why does it matter to you what questions I’ve been asking?” She didn’t like that he’d clearly been investigating Mel when he should have been focused on Harriet.
“Because I care, Mel. If you’re asking help from a bastard like me, then I just worried who else you might be asking, that’s all.”
Why did she feel as if everyone was fending her off, trying to placate her? Was she the only one who really cared?
“I’m not going to back off,” she said. “Not until I’ve found her.”
“Okay, okay.” Hands up, calming. “I’ll keep digging, okay?”
“I...” Her shoulders slumped. She wasn’t any good at all this.
“So...” said Glenn. “How about that dinner you promised me?”
“I... I’m sorry, but...” She didn’t know what to say, what to do. “I’m tired,” she said. “I wouldn’t be good company. I–”
“It’s fine. No worries. Look, just give me another twenty-four, okay? We can get together again tomorrow evening, take it from there, okay?”
§
He messaged her the name of a club the next day, and a time: Ryders. 7.00pm.
She’d taken an Airbnb room in a small terraced house a few minutes’ walk from the town center. After retreating there from the Flag and Flowers the previous evening, she’d slept surprisingly well, and spent the next day continuing to dig. Phone calls to Penny and to Harriet’s friends. Trawling through social media for any sign of activity from the missing girl. Searching the depressingly large number of sites and groups dedicated to tracing missing persons. Googling news stories for anything that might be relevant.
But... nothing.
So, drinks with Glenn.
She hadn’t expected a place like this. A strip club? Really? What kind of point was he trying to make?
It must be the wrong place. Another club with the same name. Were there two Ryders clubs in town?
As soon as she set foot in the club she was aware of eyes on her. The giant of a bouncer, eyeing her up. A group of suited businessmen at a table near the bar. Another suited man sharing drinks with a near-naked dancer close to the small stage. A girl hanging from a pole, a statuesque redhead with one side of her scalp shaved close and rose and barbed wire tattoos twisting down both arms, bare breasts swinging in a way no natural breasts would ever move.
As well as the dancer on stage and the one sharing drinks with the lone guy, there were at least four other girls working the club, stopping at tables to chat and flirt, no doubt hoping to get asked for a private dance in one of the curtained-off booths at the rear of the club.
All that naked flesh on offer, and yet Mel felt exposed in pale gray jeans and a deliberately unshowy over-sized top. A lone woman in a place like this, obviously not one of the dancers – was that what it was? That she was clearly not on offer? Forbidden fruit. If she’d turned up in a basque and stilettos she’d probably barely have got a glance.
“Hey there.”
That familiar soft voice. The leather-jacketed guy at the bar turning on his stool, grinning at her. Glenn.
He extended an arm, as if to welcome her into his embrace.
“Drink?” he asked.
She’d been wrong about him: he really did do psychology. He must have understood how exposed and vulnerable she would feel walking in here alone, and how, now, that grin, that territorial extended arm, offered protection, sanctuary.
She walked to the other side of him and perched on a bar stool, forcing him to drop the arm and turn. She could play mind-fuck games along with the best of them. You’d think he’d remember that about her.
“Aberlour,” she said, in response to his raised eyebrows. “Thanks.” It was the only decent scotch on display behind the bar.
Glenn nodded, perhaps in acknowledgment of good taste or in recognition that he’d ordered for her without asking last time they’d had drinks.
She took a sip, let the burning amber liquid slide down her throat, a good burn.
“Any news?” he asked.
She dipped her head, gave a little shake from side to side.
“The police have spoken to her mother,” she told him. “They seem to be treating it as a family rift, a runaway.”
Glenn nodded again, and Mel looked at him, suddenly alert. “What?” she said. “What is it?”
“Did you know she was using?”
She’d suspected as much. That look in Penny’s eyes, the fidgety manner. It was hardly a surprise, given current circumstances.
Then she understood.
“Harriet? You mean Harriet?”
A sad smile.
“But... she was always so angry about drugs. She’d seen what it did to her mother. She–”
“You can’t escape your family, can you?” said Glenn. “It’s in the genes. Like mother, like...” That shrug, the spreading of the hands.
She couldn’t believe it. “How? How do you know?”
“I know people,” Glenn said. “That’s why you came to me, isn’t it, Mels? My connections. The family’s never been in the drugs trade – we’re old-school, we don’t touch that stuff – but I know the people who do. Your friend’s a wild child, just like her mum.”
He put a hand on her shoulder again. She hated how he did that, what it implied and the fact that on some level that touch actually got through to her, calmed her and... did the opposite of calming her. That Lazenby connection. That annoying spark.
“Again, I know it’s hard to accept,” he went on, “but that’s actually a good thing, right now. Chances are she’s lying low at a mate’s house, sleeping off the old crash and burn, you know what I mean? You just need to give her some more time, then come down on her like a ton of bricks and try to stop her following the path her old mum took, you hear me, Mels?”
A squeeze of the shoulder, and then his hand dropped away as he stood. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go and sit somewhere more comfortable, and I’ll tell you all I know.”
§
It all happened in a rush, then.
They walked to a booth, a U-shaped leatherette seat around a circular table. She sat and, instead of dropping into the seat opposite, Glenn sat next to her, draping an arm along the back of the seat, and she let him because her mind was still rushing, trying to work out the implications of what he’d just said, what she’d just heard. And right now, the only thing she knew for certain was she didn’t want to piss him off, didn’t want to alert him to the fact that he’d let something slip.
He’d called her ‘Mels’.
Nobody ever did that.
Or rather, only one person ever had. Harriet.
Her father always called her Melissa, as had her late mother. Penny Rayner called her Melissa, too. Everyone else called her Mel, except for one old college friend who called her ‘M’.
She thought back to that night at the pub in north London, when Glenn had shown up out of the blue and bought them drinks. She was sure Harriet hadn’t called her Mels in his presence – she’d hardly said a word.
She knew Glenn had spoken to Harriet later, when Mel had gone to the ladies’ and then to the bar.
That would be the simple explanation: that the two had talked about her – Harriet had seemed convinced Glenn had only spoken to her then to get close to Mel – and Harriet must have referred to her as Mels. Glenn would have noticed that, perhaps been amused or intrigued that the girl used a different variant of her name. Maybe he had started using it deliberately because he thought that’s what people called her now.
That had to be it.
A simple, innocent explanation.
As if there was ever a simple, innocent explanation where the Lazenby family was concerned.
And then, as her mind still rushed to convince her of the innocent explanation, he walked in. She sensed it first in Glenn’s response – a tensing, a straightening – and then she followed his gaze and saw him, Jimmy Lazenby, standing just inside the club’s entrance, his eyes fixed on the dancer on stage. A different one now, a blonde with angel wings tattooed across her shoulder blades.
“Always had an eye for the birds,” said Glenn with a chuckle. “Particularly blondes.”
She looked away, down at her empty glass. She couldn’t remember draining it.
Not him. Not now. Not here.
She needed to focus. Needed to work out what, if anything, Glenn had just given away.
She didn’t need distractions.
And distractions could not come much more extreme for Mel than Jimmy Fucking Lazenby.