received from Jess then I switched my phone off. We close early on a Sunday after lunch and I hadn’t been around for the Sunday service. I had left Andrea to get on with it by himself. This was the first time I’d communicated with Jess since the previous morning.
A cold rage was rising inside me.
Click. And that is how I felt now, click, as if someone had pushed a button in me. A button marked ‘anger’.
It’s your unlucky day, Andrea, I thought grimly.
Part of me is civilised and genteel. Part of me is hard-working conscientious chef. And part of me is a former ABA Southern Welterweight challenger and a man who did two years inside for violence. Sometimes, just sometimes, I can be a man who you really do not want to meet.
I followed Andrea now, up the road to Soho Square. Charlotte was going to get her money’s worth at last.
Soho Square is a small, rectangular garden surrounded by offices that used to be residential houses, and a couple of churches. Despite the proximity of Oxford Street and the Charing Cross Road, it’s often pleasantly quiet. The garden in the centre is mainly grass, with a kind of hut in it and a statue of King Charles II. I thought to myself that King Charles had doubtless seen a great deal of violence in his life and now he was going to see a bit more.
At lunchtime this place would be carpeted with office workers eating al fresco, but right now there was nobody but myself and Andrea. I caught up with him just as he went through the entrance gate.
‘I want a word with you!’
He turned around in surprise. He saw me and his expression changed from one of minor petulance to one of maximum irritability.
‘What are you doing here?’ He scowled at me.
I reflected that the Italian accent, generally so charming, was conspicuously not so pleasant coming from the sous-chef.
‘You’ve been harassing my staff,’ I said quietly, moving in close to him. Andrea was taller than me and I wanted to be in range.
There was, in all fairness to Andrea, no feigned indignation, no pantomime of incredulity.
He sneered. ‘What did that bitch say then? I just tried to play with her tette.’
He mimed, or started to mime, holding a pair of breasts. I’ve never really liked mime and I didn’t mime punching him; I hit him in the face with a right hook that sent him sprawling onto the grass. King Charles II stared stonily ahead, ignoring the commoners brawling at his feet.
Andrea sat up, or rather pushed himself upright with one hand, then looked at me, or in my general direction – he was quite dazed.
I glared at him. There was no question that the fight, if you could call it that, was over. Andrea shook his head to clear it and gazed at me with hatred.
I snatched the plastic bag off him.
‘Don’t ever come near my restaurant again,’ I said, pleasantly. ‘Oh, and by the way, Justin says he knows what you’ve been up to, and as of this moment, you’re sacked. And, if you cause him any more grief, I’m going to finish what I started here, OK?’
He climbed unsteadily to his feet and rubbed the side of his face. I had hit him on the jaw and cheekbone but the skin hadn’t split. I guessed that the next day he would have a stunning black eye. Good. I felt a lot calmer now and considerably more cheerful.
I thought he’d got off lightly. I was very fond of Jess and he’d really upset her.
He glared at me with hatred. He wasn’t savouring the moment, that was for sure. However, I didn’t like Andrea and I wasn’t going to pass on any mindfulness techniques to him. He spat at my feet.
‘Justin knows what?’ he demanded.
I frowned – maybe I wasn’t getting through to him.
‘About your stupid extortion, and if it carries on, I won’t tap you gently like I just did, capisce?’
‘Tell Justin, vaffanculo.’
He made an Italian gesture by grabbing his right bicep with his left hand and fist pumping the air. I don’t speak Italian too brilliantly but Andrea was clearly adept at miming. It was brave of him to do it since the first one had cost him a black eye and maybe a tooth or two (there had been blood in his saliva).
He got to his feet and dusted himself down, then turned on his heel and strode off in the direction of Oxford Street with his characteristic, jerky, high-shouldered walk.
Well, I thought, watching him depart, that was all over and had gone remarkably well. Two birds with one stone. I had avenged Jess and dealt with the blackmail problem. I felt very pleased with myself and a great deal richer.
I sat down on a wooden bench and contemplated Charles II, who returned my stare. Stonily. I looked around me to see if my tête-à-tête with Andrea had attracted any attention. It seemed not. The gardens were still empty apart from two stylish women in their twenties walking towards me from the direction I had come in. They obviously hadn’t seen anything untoward.
I opened the bag and took out a manila A4 envelope. I opened it and shook out its contents onto my knees. Not four thousand pounds in banknotes.
Two DVDs – Schoolgirl Super Sluts, and Office Orgy Secretaries – fell into my lap, their front covers lavishly, luridly illustrated. I picked them up, one in each hand, and looked at them disbelievingly. They were shrink-wrapped, the money obviously wasn’t hidden inside.
I stared at them again, the stupid way you do when you can’t believe something’s happened, like endlessly patting your pockets up and down if you’ve lost your car keys or wallet.
No. No mistake. Just then, the two women passed me on my bench while I stared at the DVDs, the half-naked women and Day-Glo lettering both highly visible.
I glanced up. Our eyes met. The women’s faces wore expressions of unalloyed contempt, disgust and dislike. I was holding a DVD in each hand and I smiled weakly and gave a helpless shrug as if to say, things are not what they seem, these are not mine.
I conspicuously failed to get my message over. I think it came across more as a kind of leer.
‘You effing old pervert!’ one snarled at me as they walked by.
‘You dirty old slaphead!’ added the other.
Their heels clicked angrily past me. Slaphead, I thought faintly.
I put the boxes back in the bag and the bag in the bin next to the bench.
Savour the moment, I thought gloomily thinking back to my mindfulness project. Savour the moment. I stared mournfully at the backs of the two women as they reached the far side of the square.
I was going off mindfulness.
One of them turned towards me, her fingers
