5. Jimmy
“I’ve got an assignment for you.”
This was the day before Jimmy Lazenby found his estranged brother in a strip club with the woman who should have been the love of Jimmy’s life. A day when he still thought the biggest challenges in his life were secret service bureaucracy and the dull regularity with which a current person of interest would want him dead.
London. A wide corridor in an anonymous office block on the south bank of the river. Geometrically precise interior architecture and furniture, plain gray walls with abstract art hung at regular intervals between the doorways, a slate gray carpet without a mark on it, despite the regular foot traffic.
It could have been a financial services office, or a private medical facility, flawless in its anonymity and complete lack of character, but Jimmy knew better.
People were killed from here.
Not physically, but this was where the committees met to cast their judgments, where analytics and planning teams gathered around tables, pointing at screens, monitoring operations around the world. This was where they drafted orders to send to operatives thousands of miles away, to agents and dubiously employed third parties, for operations most of which would struggle to be described as legal if they were ever known about beyond these walls and a few select offices in Westminster and Whitehall. It was all about finding the right means to achieve the desired end.
Jimmy Lazenby stopped, mid-stride. “Really?” he said. “Are you taking the piss? I’ve just stepped out from the latest going over and you have something else for me already?”
Perhaps that wasn’t the normal way to respond to your controller in an organization that operated as a strict military hierarchy, but then Jimmy Lazenby had never been regarded as a normal Section Eight agent, and his relationship with his controller was more informal than most.
And he’d just emerged from a grueling three-hour review into his most recent assignment. That kind of thing was an increasingly common activity: to most, the Section didn’t even officially exist so could never be officially investigated, so instead they constantly found themselves under internal review to make sure everything was above board. When he joined the Section, Jimmy had never anticipated how much of his existence would revolve around audit trails and three-sixty degree monitoring of activity.
It wasn’t an aspect of the job Jimmy appreciated, and he’d made that clear to everyone around him more than once.
“I never take the piss,” said Douglas Conner. “You know that. Let’s walk.”
§
To the left, the iconic skyline of Parliament, marked by the scaffolding-clad towers of Westminster Abbey, Victoria Tower, and Big Ben; to the right, a gray stone wall, and then a line of nondescript blocky buildings, regularly placed leafy trees breaking up the harsh grayness of it all. The path the two men followed ran immediately by the wide river, where tourist boats and heavy industrial barges plied their trade, the boundary between path and river marked by a waist-high stone wall, and regular pillars topped by lamp-posts whose bases were dark statues of serpentine, monstrous fish.
Tourists strolled and sat on benches and the walls. Ragged pigeons and gulls strutted, squabbling over scraps. Business people and civil servants in suits walked, carrying briefcases and tablets, an opportunity to get away from their workplaces, get some air, talk about the kind of shit they couldn’t discuss in their offices.
“It’s sensitive,” said Conner, referring to the kind of shit he wasn’t willing to discuss back in the office. Conner was a square-shouldered man with a buzz-cut and a stiff, military bearing, who always had the air of a man bound to his desk who had been far more comfortable in his younger, more active, days in the field.
“When is it not sensitive?” Jimmy asked – not confrontationally, just an acknowledgment – and the two laughed. They both knew there was sensitive, and then there was the kind of sensitive best discussed out of the office.
As they walked, Jimmy was acutely aware of their surroundings: the distribution of the people around them, any glances in their direction, the phones and other devices people were using. He knew that was a false comfort, that any serious eavesdropping was just as likely to come from a carefully planted bug or a directional microphone pointed from a nearby window.
“So?”
“This one’s off the books,” said Conner. “Even more so than usual. And it’s personal.”
“Personal for you or for me?”
“It’s your brother.” That made it personal, but it was only the following evening when Jimmy saw Mel in the club with Glenn that he understood it was far more personal than just Glenn, that Conner had omitted a vital element: Mel. Conner’s daughter, and Jimmy’s lost love.
“Glenn?” said Jimmy, still blissfully unaware of the rest of it. “What’s he done now?”
“Almost certainly nothing,” said Conner.
“But he knows a man who has, right?”
Conner nodded.
Jimmy’s controller knew the Lazenby family well. Not just because Jimmy had once dated his daughter. Not just because Douglas Conner had somehow seen something in Jimmy, the kind of character traits that might allow Conner to mold him into a good agent. Not just the traits, but the determination to turn things around, to do something good with his life rather than drift into the kind of life Glenn now led.
Douglas Conner knew plenty about the Venn diagram of gangs that overlapped on Lazenby territory, the kind of people Jimmy’s brother and late father fixed things for. He knew exactly what kind of life he’d guided Jimmy away from.
“There’s a girl,” said Conner. “Missing. The daughter of an old friend of mine. Harriet Rayner. You’d have met her, back when... Ten years ago. She was only seven then.”
Seventeen now. In any other circumstances, most likely a runaway after an argument at home, or absconded with a boy in the vain hope that love was not only an actual thing but one that might last. But those circumstances didn’t require an out-of-office discussion like this.
“What makes this different?” asked Jimmy. It was clearly more than a runaway friend of the family.
“Last seen by her friends Friday evening. Everything normal. Last located on CCTV Saturday morning, climbing into the back of your brother’s car. Her mobile phone went offline moments after getting into Glenn’s car.”
Nobody just switched their phone off these days, and the chances that the battery had died at that moment were laughable. So either she voluntarily gave up her phone, in which case Glenn must at least be helping her to disappear, or Jimmy’s brother had moved quickly when the girl got into the car and so must be responsible for her disappearance. Either way, Glenn Lazenby was at the center of this.
“You’ve checked the clubs?” The family owned several strip clubs and thinly disguised brothels in London and the Home Counties. Glenn wouldn’t normally recruit for them personally, but Jimmy knew he liked to take an interest.
Even now, though, Jimmy found it hard to believe his brother would put a seventeen- year-old on stage in a strip club. Or worse...
“Nothing,” said Conner. “She first met Glenn a couple of weeks earlier, and they’ve been in touch by SMS and a couple of calls in the intervening period. We have transcripts of the texts, but they don’t give anything away.”
“So they’ve been chatting. What makes you suspect foul play? And why is the Section involved?”
“She was last seen getting into Glenn’s car, Jimmy. And he’s a Lazenby.”
It wasn’t meant to be an insult, just a statement of fact. The Lazenby family were trouble.
“Your brother’s mixed up with some bad people,” said Conner. “He’s upped his game in the last year or two. Given the circumstances, if anyone knows what’s happened to Harriet it’s him.”
Jimmy nodded. “You know the old man’s dead? Last week.”
Conner nodded. “I do. It’s the perfect in for you.” No sympathy; he knew Jimmy would not be mourning. Conner reached into a jacket pocket and then passed a pen drive to Jimmy. “The files. I’m giving you a couple of weeks’ family absence. Compassionate leave, and all that shit.”
“I’m touched.”
“This could get messy, Jimmy.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Do what a Section Eight operative is trained to do. You’ll have the usual protection. Get into the thick of it and make the best choices on the ground. That’s what we do, isn’t it? I trust you, Jimmy. More than anyone. Maybe more even than I’d trust myself.”
The usual protection. The Section Eight equivalent of diplomatic immunity from prosecution, in case lines were crossed, laws transgressed.
In case things got messy.
§
Harriet Rayner. Seventeen-year-old daughter of Geoffrey and Penelope. Geoffrey deceased three years ago, a senior civil servant, which could mean almost anything. Penelope Rayner, variously addicted to prescribed painkillers, alcohol, and just about anything that could distract her from the real world. Mother and daughter pretty much estranged, with the mother as occasional stalker of her daughter when she was more lucid.
Add to that the rich kid lens that magnified every tiny flaw in the girl’s life – not that Jimmy was prejudiced, at all – and the kid had plenty to run away from.
And it certainly was a rich kid’s life. Most of her father’s family wealth was held in trust funds, used to pay her way through an exclusive college where she was studying for A-levels – good grades, no complaints from teachers – and paying for the north London apartment where she nominally lived with her mother. In reality, Penny Rayner had another place a mile away, her finances governed closely by the terms of Geoff Rayner’s will – a protection against her excesses and inability to cope, Jimmy presumed.
Might money be a driver, here? Harriet was a good potential target for extortion: plenty of money, and not exactly living a secure, protected life.
But anyone who researched the family would know the money was securely locked away, and would be difficult to release for any pay-out. And there had been no ransom demand, yet. Why wait, if money was the motive?
Certainly if Glenn was involved. Jimmy’s brother may be many things, but patient wasn’t one of them. He was ruthlessly efficient, too: if he was responsible, there would be a plan, a schedule to follow, no dithering or delay.
And kidnap?
Glenn Lazenby was no better than their dead father, but kidnap had never been a family pursuit. Extortion, prostitution, protection rackets, yes, that was all there on Glenn’s file – no surprises there – but kidnap took a certain type of mind.
It didn’t add up.
There was a connection, yes – the sighting of Harriet in Glenn’s car on Saturday, shortly before her mobile phone went offline – but there was something missing.
He should try to put the personal aspects aside, he knew. Not assess the Glenn he’d known, but the one in the files Douglas Conner had handed over on that pen drive.
There had been diversification in the family’s activities, which must be down to Glenn. The changes predated their father’s illness, but perhaps there had been some handing over of operations before that. Does a bastard like Trevor Lazenby ever retire? Maybe. He had a place in Spain, and a stake in... had the old man taken up golf, for God’s sake?
It was hard to picture his father riding around on a golf cart with his clubs. Easier to view the golf club he owned near Estepona as a front for money laundering, though. Much more realistic.
Anyway... Diversification. The properties overseas. Drugs. The latter had always been a no-no for the old man, but Glenn had never had the same standards.
Jimmy had to keep an open mind, though. His father had been a master at slipping through the gaps, and had never done jail time, only ever convicted for a couple of minor traffic offenses, and that was one standard Glenn had maintained. But the files on the two of them were full of part-built cases that had never reached court, the result of good lawyers and even better friends in the criminal justice system, Jimmy was sure.
Pretty much any major money-related crime had been dropped into their files at some time. In addition to the extortion, protection rackets, and prostitution, there were allegations of insider trading, money laundering, involvement behind the scenes with major robberies and people trafficking rings, forgery, and drugs.
He stopped reading.
It was strange raking over all this stuff. Trying to separate out what he read in the files from all the shit in his head.
Home. Family.
He’d abandoned all that a long time ago. Walked away from it all. His family was the Section now. His home wherever they sent him. He didn’t get involved.
Even now, Harriet Rayner wasn’t a teenaged kid, probably cowering in some locked room somewhere or lying face-down in a ditch; she was a file, a problem to be solved.
And so, too, was Glenn Lazenby. No more than a problem to be solved.
§
Mel.
Of course.
Douglas Conner probably at least gave a shit about the missing daughter of an old family friend, but not enough to subvert a Section Eight agent, and associated resources, on a personal quest to find her.
But his own daughter... that was something else entirely. The kind of daughter who was so headstrong she was likely to throw herself into the thick of things just as an agent like Jimmy Lazenby would do, but without any of the training, experience, or understanding. The one whose friend was missing, but any reference to whom had been curiously absent from the files on that pen drive Conner had handed over.
That was different.
That really was personal.
And Conner had known damned well that if he’d let slip that this was really all about Mel, Jimmy wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the assignment. So Conner had suppressed that element, so he could throw in an agent who, once committed, could never turn his back, not now he knew the girl he’d once loved was putting herself in danger.
Finding Harriet Rayner would be a bonus. In truth, this was all about protecting Mel Conner, and as soon as Jimmy laid eyes on her in that seedy little club the family owned, he understood completely, just as Douglas Conner had known he would.
So, the club. He really should have stuck with the stripper. Let her charm him into a private dance and whatever else was on offer in one of those curtained-off booths at the back. Pretend he hadn’t seen Mel sitting there with Glenn and giving Jimmy the Sweet god, not him stare.
Instead... the chat. The skirting around anything he really wanted to discuss with his brother because that would mean exposing what he was doing there, and he couldn’t have Mel know any of that.
And later, finally alone with her at the bar. Telling her she just had to get out of there and leave it to him, and even that was telling her too much.
The slap.
That girl sure did pack some power.
That was a slap with meaning, a slap with the weight of history behind it.
He’d suggested it. He’d told her to slap him and walk out, use it as cover to make good her escape. Instead, she’d used it to go back to Glenn. A slap that gave her new credibility in his eyes. Jimmy had to credit her with that: it was a smart move, albeit one that dug her in deeper.
But he couldn’t do anything right now. He was powerless.
He couldn’t just drag her out of there. Even if he was able to overpower Mel, Glenn had enough security guys around the place to easily stop him.
So all Jimmy could do was finish his water, stand, and walk out, hoping Mel hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of her life.
§
Outside, it was still mid-evening, still light. It was so easy to lose track of time in clubs like Ryders, a deliberate ploy on their part to lull the punters into staying for longer than they’d intended, spending more.
Jimmy waited in a fast food place over the road from the club, the only non-takeout customer. He sat at one of the four Formica-topped tables by the windows, cradling coffee in a polystyrene cup, breathing air heavy with grease. A steady trickle of customers came in and left a minute or two later with kebabs, burgers, boxed pizzas, hot dogs.
Jimmy hadn’t eaten since first thing, but he wasn’t tempted to remedy that now. The weak, characterless coffee was bad enough.
He watched the street. The shops were mostly closed by now, lit from within by lights that would burn all night. Occasional traffic drifted by. Smokers stood outside a pub, and at one point jostling broke out among them before things calmed down again.
The town hadn’t changed much since Jimmy had left ten years before.
Ryders was anonymous from the outside, just a doorway between two shops, opening onto a small lobby area and a staircase that led up to the club. Two bouncers stood just inside, occasionally emerging for a smoke, and once to talk to someone who pulled up in a silver Mercedes.
While Jimmy watched, eighteen customers entered and six left, the place slowly filling up for the evening. Clientele were mostly suited men, plus a group of young guys in jeans and sports shirts, and two couples who met outside with hugs and laughter and went in together.
Jimmy made mental note of all this, by force of habit as much as anything else. Building up a picture of what he must assume was a typical Wednesday night at one of the family businesses.
For a time he forced himself to imagine how things might have been.
He could have stayed. Become a part of this. And by now he would have been Glenn’s junior partner.
Could he imagine a world where he would have fitted into that role?
Easily.
He wasn’t that man now, though. He’d seen and done too much. Changed too much. He and Glenn had fallen down opposite sides of a great divide. But back then... It would have been so easy. Far easier than the route he’d chosen.
Mel saw him straight away. She emerged from the club, stood with her arms wrapped around herself looking briefly vulnerable and exposed, then looked up and saw him watching her from his window seat.
For a moment he thought she was going to turn and walk away. He wouldn’t have blamed her. Then she straightened, checked the road, and crossed.
He stood as she entered. Said, “Coffee? I wouldn’t.” Then sat, as she lowered herself into the seat opposite him.
Behind the counter, the young server gave him a dirty look, clearly having overheard.
They sat in silence.
Jimmy Lazenby was always in control. He could judge a situation, assess the main players. He always had the right thing to say, the strategic way to play the people around him. He could blend in or stand out, support or challenge. He could be the wit of the party, or the straight man.
All were skills he’d assiduously learned.
He was good at what he did. One of the best.
But now he sat opposite Mel Conner, aware of an unfamiliar tension in his jaw, the fullness of words that wouldn’t come.
The silence drew itself out, his mind racing.
He felt the sting of her slap again, but knew it was only in his mind – the pain had been no more than fleeting. It had only been a slap. He’d felt far worse.
“So,” he finally said, “how’s your life been?” It was perhaps the lamest thing he’d ever said.
She was breathtakingly beautiful. That choppy haircut suited her, complementing blue eyes that were exactly as he remembered. Had he noticed the nose stud before? A little diamond glint that occasionally snagged the attention away from those eyes.
He looked away, out of the window to where another duo of suited men had paused in the Ryders doorway.
Forced himself to focus.
“Ups and downs,” she said, and it took a few seconds for him to realize she was answering his lame question. Her life: ups and downs.
“Relationship shit, you know,” she went on.
Relationships. She’d had relationships. Of course she had, he just didn’t think of her in those terms. Didn’t think of her at all until today.
“You?”
He shrugged. Looked away again. “It’s strange being back,” he said. “After so long.”
“Your father,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be. I’m not.”
She looked shocked, even though she knew Jimmy’s father had never been a good man. Now, Jimmy was reminded of how Mel had always been a fundamentally decent person. Of course she was shocked at such brutal disregard for how most people feel about family. But Jimmy had distanced himself from all this for so long, he didn’t even think in those terms: family bonds and all that.
Again, he was lost for words. No easy, quick response. No obvious way to manage this encounter.
“You walked away,” she said. He’d forgotten how Mel didn’t do easy either, how she had never been one to turn away from the harder things.
“You told me to go,” he said. Those blue eyes... He couldn’t look away from them.
“And you believed me.”
He had, but only because she’d meant it. He’d seen it in her eyes, the loathing of who he was, and who he would inevitably become. He didn’t say that, though. Not now.
Especially now.
That look, back then, that moment of true connection, had changed his life. Had made him the man he now was. That was the moment when he’d fallen on the other side of the great divide from his brother.
“You made me see some truths,” he said, instead. “About who I was. About who I was becoming. You deserved much better than that. I wanted to be that kind of better, but I didn’t know how.”
“And do you now?” That stopped him in his tracks. What did she mean by such a question? What would she do if she knew he had become, if not that kind of better, than at least some kind of better?
He looked away. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so out of his depth.
“I’m a different person now,” he told her, the best he could do.
“So am I.”
Vulnerable. That’s how she made him feel. Not for any of the stupid old emotional reasons, but for the uncertainty she created, for his sudden loss of the ability to read another person, to even begin to know what might be in their head.
He took a deep breath, stared out across the road again, away from those eyes, the glint of the diamond nose-stud.
“You should go,” he said, turning back to her, seeing that she was studying him closely and had probably been doing so all the time he’d looked away. “Get out of here. You’re not safe here.” Again, the dilemma of how to convince her to go without giving anything more away, information that might simply dig her in deeper.
This kind of thing was so much easier with complete strangers. To them he was just the anonymous agent, the guy who was making them safe; they didn’t have a history with him, and they wouldn’t have a future where their understanding of him was different.
They didn’t complicate things.
“You said that before,” Mel said. “Inside the club. You said I was in danger and should run away. You said I should just leave finding my best friend to you and your people. What did you mean by that? Who are your people? What are you doing here?”
He should know never to underestimate Mel Conner.
“I know what you’ve come here for, Mel,” he said. “I know about Harriet Rayner. That’s why I’m here too. This is what I do. This kind of thing. If she can be found I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her back.”
Again, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking from the way she looked at him now.
“I made choices,” he told her. “Back then. I turned my back on the family, all the things they represented, the things you hated.”
“You did this, whatever this is, for me?”
He shook his head. “No. I did it for me. I chose to become one of the good guys. And now I’m going to find out what’s happened to your friend and get her back.”
“Why should I believe that?”
That stung. Not just the words, but the weight of history they carried: why should she ever believe something he told her?
“It’s what I do.”
Why was she shaking her head now? Looking away, clearly frustrated...
“You can’t do this, Jimmy. You can’t just stroll back into my life and expect me to trust you. To believe in you. You walked out ten years ago. You can’t go claiming the noble high ground now, expecting me to believe you walked out on me so you could be – what was the term you used? – one of the good guys. You were running away.”
Without a thought, he reached across the table and covered her hand with his, and they looked at each other, startled by the contact.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “You don’t have to trust me. You just need to not get in the way and complicate things. Can you at least do that?”
As soon as the words came out, he understood how cruel they sounded. Perhaps he’d even meant them to sound that way, a shock to break through her defenses, the verbal equivalent of that slap.
Fending her off.
He couldn’t do this. The emotions she stirred. The feelings and responses. All of them, vulnerabilities.
The shock on her face turned to... to something else. Eyes wider, glazing with unspilled tears. A tremble of the lower lip.
“Let me do this,” he said, more gently now. “And then I’ll be gone again, forever.” And he would make damned sure Doug Conner never sent him on a babysitting expedition again.
She stood. Straightened with an angry roll of the shoulders.
Looked down at him, and said, “Fuck you, Jimmy Lazenby. You and your family, you’re all the same, and you always will be. Fuck the lot of you.”
He had time to see he’d been wrong about that look on her face. She wasn’t upset: that look was a flash of frustration and defiance, of biting back a response
And then she turned and walked out.