The Girl Can't Help It (The Artie Taylor Series Book 1) by John Nicholson

Author:John Nicholson [Nicholson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head Publishing
Published: 2014-07-21T07:00:00+00:00

Brent Cahill's office was on Speedway, a lane that ran the length of Venice, right by the beach.

Kaz pressed the intercom and they were buzzed in.

To say it was an office was to totally overstate the status of the room where Brent Cahill sat. Rather, it was a square of bare space set behind a plywood door. There was a small, cheap office desk, a computer monitor and a can of coke on the desk and that was pretty much it apart from a shelf with some lever arch files on and a small art picture of a palm tree, quite randomly, almost accidentally, hanging on a cream wall. Behind the desk sat a man in his late 50s with a bald head, glistening with a sheen of perspiration, wearing a denim shirt with the cuffs rolled up and a pair of chinos that looked like they had needed a wash the previous year and were now about to start decomposing.

He got up as they walked in and came out from behind the desk like a large, moist Danish pastry. Thick rolls of fat wrapped themselves around what underneath had to be quite modest frame. Somehow, he looked fat in a very specifically American way; like the weight was loose, wet and wobbly jelly. His shirt had dark sweat rings on it under each layer of blubber. As he stood up, his fat hands hung heavily by his side like small joints of meat in a butcher's window. It was hard not to find him offensive, not least because there was no air con in the room which meant it was about 85 degrees and stuffy and smelled of something unpleasant and that something had to be Brent Cahill.

'Hello, Mr Taylor, thanks for coming,' he said, holding out a meaty, damp paw. Both his hands and his feet were too small for such a large man.

'Call me Artie. This is my friend, Kaz Clarke. We work together. She was at the photo shoot with me.'

'Right, yes. Hello Miss Clarke.' He looked at some notes and then closed a Venetian blind to block out the bright sun. He didn't seem like the sort of bloke who would be a private detective. He sure as hell couldn't chase after anyone, not unless they were not actually moving. Artie briefly wondered if this whole thing wasn't some sort of scam. Would a big hotel like the Mondrian really employ this obese man to be something to do with their security and wouldn't he have a better appointed office than this? Stupid thoughts kept crossing his mind. Had Coll set this up, or Fay, or someone else? All the lies and deceit were making him paranoid.

'Well, thank you for coming down to see me. I really do appreciate it. I won't take too much of your time up. Take a seat both you, we're gonna have a little movie show.'

'What position do you have at the Mondrian, Brent?' said Artie.

'None as such. They called me in to establish what happened to KK May the day before yesterday.

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