Don't Come Looking by AJ Campbell (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

with him, but on the Wednesday I was alone. ‘I’m meeting clients tonight, so you’ll have to make your own way home,’ he said as we left the building.

‘What a shame,’ I said, punching the cold air with elation as he strutted off.

I don’t know what came over me but, whatever it was, I’m thankful it did. I followed him. He walked for ages and ages, all the way up to the West End, through the tumult of passers-by and the squeaky brakes and honking horns of exasperated taxi drivers. I kept having to stop in shop doorways to cough out the mix of the icy winter air and choking traffic fumes tormenting the back of my throat – bloody asthma.

Despite falling snow, I was sweating by the time he turned left up Shaftsbury Avenue. Gathering pace, he marched on to turn right into Dean Street and stop outside an establishment that didn’t surprise me in the least. He nodded at a hulk of a man who moved aside a rope barrier and waved him in. Pete glanced behind him before disappearing into the other side of righteousness.

‘Good night?’ I asked him the following morning as we walked to the Tube.

‘Very good.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Met a friend up West for a bite to eat. Nice place. I’ll have to take you there when you’re older,’ he said with a smirk. He stopped and turned to me. ‘You know what? I’ve got a client meeting today. I know the guys pretty well, so you can come along too. Wouldn’t be fair not to show you the perks of the job. I won’t bother ordering food in today. I’ll give the guys a call, and we can make it a late lunch.’

Around two-thirty, he told me to get my coat, and we caught a cab up to the West End, stopping outside a Japanese restaurant near the club he’d entered the day before. I inwardly groaned. I’m not a lover of Oriental food. Too much salt, and noodles have always felt like eating worms. And who wants to endure that?

‘This is going to be such a one-of-a-kind experience for you, lad,’ Pete said, stepping out of the cab. How right he was. Much to my astonishment, he handed the driver a fifty-pound note and told him to keep the change. The guy’s jaw dropped as if he couldn’t believe his luck, and off he sped for fear his generous client might change his mind.

‘So, how’re you finding your work experience?’ he asked as he led me up the street.

‘Good, thanks. The work is fascinating,’ I said with spurious enthusiasm.

He looked genuinely pleased.

Sometimes I really impress myself with my ability to say what people think they want to hear.

After a couple of minutes, he stopped outside an unassuming black door wedged between an upscale French eatery and a licenced sex shop. He pressed the gold-plated buzzer and stated his name into the intercom. The door clicked open. ‘After you,’ he ordered, and I entered a long, light hallway, empty save for an old-fashioned coat stand holding an array of brightly-coloured umbrellas, but little else. ‘Move along. All the way to the end.’

I felt a little nervous. Where was he taking me? But I needn’t have worried. At the end of the hallway stood another black door out of which burst a busty blonde, smartly dressed in a red trouser suit. ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ she said and politely asked for our coats. A uniformed waiter appeared and led us through a lively, packed restaurant – the type with minimal food choice, but an extensive wine list. Invisible bank notes floated through the air – fivers and tenners, twenties and fifties – you could smell them in the fabric of the Savile Row suits and expensive leather brogues.

Manoeuvring through the crowd, we arrived at a glitzy booth with high-backed seating already occupied by two suited men who Pete introduced as James and Rupert. ‘Ah, the schoolboy,’ said James, smoothing his tie. They were odious energy traders, dressed in tailored suits and shirts with pound-coin cufflinks, who waffled on about the prices of crude oil and natural gas, in the most monotonous of tones, the entire afternoon.

Stiff white cloth covered the table, and the oversized cutlery had a new shine. Staff floated around, on-hand to deal with the non-stop summons of over-demanding pricks like these three men I was unfortunate enough to have ended up wasting an afternoon in the company of. The place was mobbed with them. I could hear their toffee-nosed chatter over classical music playing from speakers camouflaged in the unusual collection of artificial pot plants.

It did, indeed, turn out to be an interesting afternoon which spilled into the early evening by the time the waiter finished pouring their sixth bottle of champers, politely asking them if they wanted another. Pretending to be interested in what they had to say, I learned a lot. Most importantly, not only were my thoughts on not wanting a boring career in the City confirmed, but I learned about the type of person I never wanted to be. A dull knob who truly believed that frequenting those kinds of repugnant places signified the pinnacle of a successful life.

As James flagged down the waiter for the bill, Rupert kept trying to rest his head on his open hand propped up on the table, but his elbow kept slipping and shunting his floppy fringe into his glasses. James kept belching and apologising even though he wasn’t remotely sorry. When the waiter arrived with a column of paper, folded several times on a silver dish, the pair of them bantered over whose turn it was to pay, shoving the dish backwards and forwards to each other until it toppled to the floor.

After we’d said goodbye to his tedious acquaintances, Pete opened his wallet, swung me two fifty-pound notes and told me to find a cab. ‘I’m meeting up for one more drink with the boys. You can’t come to