OUR WORSHIP OF RICHES
A Phil Timmins story
By Hunter F. Goss
Copyright © 2012 Hunter F. Goss
All rights reserved.
Cover design: Hunter Goss
Photo: Daveybot (Dave Morris),cc-by-2.0
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Our Worship of Riches
Hunter F. Goss
Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches.
Seneca wrote those words over two thousand years ago and they were a perfect description of what I’d just been through; the things I’d witnessed and the call for help that caused me to set an absurdly simple trap and catch three of the City’s biggest securities brokers with their pants down around their ankles. Now that it was over, I needed clarity. And that was why I was on the Vincent heading up the M40 toward Oxford and beyond.
* *
The whole bleeding mess started just over three weeks ago. I’d gone to London, where I have a house on a quiet little street at the edge of Belgravia. It came to me as a spoil of war, so to speak, having belonged to a competitor in the Brighton drug trade. But that’s another story.
After my little adventure with Julie Saunders at hospital, it took several weeks for the storm in Brighton to die down. I lay low the entire time but was eventually exonerated of all charges except for a few traffic violations. My lawyers managed to get those reduced to two counts of speeding on the Vincent. But I needed a change of scenery, so off to London I went. It helped that Julie had emailed and said she’d be at the mag’s offices that day and so at going home time, there I sat curb side on the Vincent. When Julie appeared, I kicked the bike over and was rewarded with a quick turn of her head. I also got to witness the appearance of a huge smile on her face. She ran up to me.
“I’d know that sound anywhere,” she said. I believed her. Vincents are notoriously difficult to kick over, but when they come to life, there’s not another sound like it. And it’s something people tend to remember. “I wasn’t sure you were even going to come.”
“Now why would I turn down an invitation from you?” I said. “Especially after all the trouble we got into together?” Julie laughed.
“Trouble seems to be your stock in trade,” she said. “Especially from what those detectives in Brighton told me.”
“You mean Parker and Rollins? You didn’t take them too seriously, did you?” At this, Julie’s face went all serious. And for a minute I thought she might even turn and walk away. Disappointing, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Then she spoke.
“They said a lot of things about you. Are they true?”
“Some of them,” I admitted. Shit. Why did I do that? But I knew why. Julie had gotten under my skin in a way no one else had. Ever. “But a lot of it is supposition and innuendo,” I went on. Maybe I could save my reputation a little. “Those two detectives aren’t exactly angels themselves. And if you’d bothered to ask, you’d find I’ve never even been arrested.”
“I did. And you haven’t,” Julie said. “But I know who the real Phil Timmins is. You showed him to me that day at the beach.”
Uh-oh. The alarm bells started going off in my head. We were about to enter touchy-feely territory, which I hated. But just as I was about to set Julie straight, someone called to us.
“Julie! Phil!” It was Alison, the editorial assistant at the mag and a fantastic looker in her own right. It was through her that Julie and I met. She was waving to us and as she approached I couldn’t help but notice that her outfit, which was technically modest, hugged every one of her curves as if it had been painted on. What a specimen.
“Phil, how are you?” she said, extending her hand. I took it and she gave me a warm and firm handshake. It was genuine.
“What say we go for a nosh?” Julie said.
“Lovely idea. There’s a great place just a few blocks from here,” said Alison.
A nosh was just what I had in mind, but only for Julie and me. I wanted to spend more time with her now that she was out of hospital and recovered. I didn’t let on I was disappointed, though.
“What am I going to do with the bike?” I asked. Maybe I could beg off and still get Julie to myself. Alison thought for a minute.
“You can park it in the courtyard,” she said. “Follow me.”
Alison led me round to the side of the building and into an alleyway that was almost like a little ten-foot you might find in a residential neighbourhood. Too small for a lorry to get into or out of, but just right for walking the Vincent along. What was more, you couldn’t see it from the main street.
“This is where a lot of us lunch,” Alison said, nodding at some tables and chairs that could’ve been nicked from some trendy café. “Your Vincent will be safe here.”
I must have looked at her with a certain amount of suspicion because she went over to the back door of the building and called for someone. A minute later, out stepped a guard. A real one. Not some pensioner trying to earn a few extra quid. He was big, too. A weightlifter type.
“Make sure no one touches that bike,” Alison said to him. “Until Mr. Timmins returns. He’ll holler for you.”
“Right, Miss Wheeler,” the man said.
Wheeler. Now I had a surname for Alison, who whirled back around to look at me in a tangle of hair and bouncy parts.
“All right with you?”
“Fine,” I said. And then, “thanks.”
Once around to the street again, Alison and Julie took me in tow for ten minutes, ending up at a little place just on the other side of Hanover Square. It was one of those painfully fashionable looking places with painted heating and ventilating conduits hanging exposed from the ceiling, hovering over skinny multicoloured glass fixtures that shone little spots of light on the bar and tables. I just wouldn’t want to be the poor bloke that got to clean the duct work.
The place looked as if it had been staged for a mag shoot. And the patrons were all turned out for their spread. Lots of artsy and fashion types along with a few Sloanies caught outside their territory at cocktail hour.
The drinks list was a big two-page affair the same size as the menu with all sorts of wines from places I’d just barely heard of and had no idea how to pronounce. I ordered a beer. Some German thing. Hell, it wasn’t even a proper pint, and it was overpriced, but I bit the bullet. Julie and Alison ordered what I assumed was some sort of posh grape piss along with something the place claimed was a pizza, but didn’t seem to have anything remotely resembling a tomato on it. What I wouldn’t have given for a real pint and some cottage pie just then. But Julie and Alison had visited my world down in Brighton and hadn’t complained even once that I knew of, so it was only right I return the favour.
We were half way through the alleged pizza, which was surprisingly tasty, when Alison’s mobile went off.
“Uncle Chris. Hi,” I heard. Then a lot of silence and a serious expression passing over her face. I was good at paying attention without seeming to, especially when someone was taking a call. In my business, you got good at telling what was going on just by tone of voice and expression. That is, if you wanted to stay alive. Something was wrong on the other end.