I sip the champagne which is forbidden to him and reflect on my regained freedom.
The Shard is pleasant, in a sub-Dubai sort of way. It still overlooks London, a major flaw. Give me turquoise oceans and beaches poured like cream around their edges. Give me sunlight and give me staff.
This place manages one from that list, and those are so resentful as to make a mockery of their role. I demand grateful servitude, in all things, of all people. I have sent the general manager away to find me better staff. He took my thousand pounds and went to fulfill my wish, my every wish, any wish I might, and will, invent.
I have money, and time, and inclination. The world is mine to claim. I only wait for the moment to begin.
I have been here twenty hours and am yet to launch my scheme. I need rest, of course. I have been imprisoned in a grim American gaol and my skin alone will take weeks to recover. My mind, I have occupied whilst shut away. My body I have tended as best I could, given the limited facilities. Women are as tiresome as men.
I will rest another day. It will help solidify my idea before I begin. It must not have any weaknesses - it has none, I am certain - but another twenty fours hours' contemplation will cost me nothing - quite literally as I have no intention of honouring the hotel bill - and will insure me against -
Interference.
I have been unlucky once before. Now I will control my fortunes.
He will not have another chance.
He is far away, enmeshed in his mediocre puzzles, allowing his brain to continue the rot which began with the drugs, allowing himself to fall to waste. He keeps unworthy company. That woman, sour and monosyllabic, dogging his steps like some leaden groupie.
He thinks he values her. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Perhaps he believes he sees in her some potential, some shadow of me. His partner, he says. Another contradiction. It suggests she is his equal. That cannot be.
-Of course he has fallen very low. I saw it. America. Drugs. Helping the local police with the crumbs of cases they dole out to him. Living off his father's charity. Low indeed from the high place he and I could have held together. But he was not worthy of me. I saw it in time. I do not think of him as my equal, now. He is too degraded.
He failed himself. Failed me. I can bear the disappointment. Personally it means little. Professionally I am aware that it is a regret. He could have been useful to me. But he is not the man I imagined. He is a fool. He loved me, or, the persona I fooled him into accepting. A double fool. He exists beneath me, on the distant ground, down there with the grey Thames, laden with petty craft, small ideas. He is worthy of her, then.
She must be very good in bed for him to tolerate her.
Impossible thought. He would never lower himself.
-He is weak. And that bitch might make a virtue of mere availability. Men are only men after all.
No.
-The new staff will have to sweep up that champagne flute. It will never hold liquid again. And the doorframe is chipped. I might move rooms; this one is spoiled.
I will start my scheme tomorrow. He is irrelevant. He can never catch me and he will break his heart all over again, trying. Excellent.
He did not catch me last time.
She did. The woman.
Unthinkable. It was him. He gave her the credit out of ... pity. She hangs on him, as well she might. That blank face! Her lack of expression surely denotes a lack of some vital spark in her brain. A chemical deficit. Yes.
There is something wrong with her, that she trails him so tirelessly. Plenty wrong with him, that he allows it. His weak nature, again. It keeps him in my wake.
The bottle is empty and I have not even selected a companion, a pastime, for this evening. I will summon one now. I saw him earlier. Young. Willing. High forehead. And he had those hazel eyes I prefer. He is the height I favour, too. No doubt he has more tattoos than those I glimpsed as he checked me into the hotel. I will discover them.
He can bring me more champagne.