Ex-soldier Birmingham-gangster bets his life on luck and illegalities, adroit wit and burning passion streaking his blood-stained fingertips as a dire quarrel commence between himself and the disturbed Dane who purloined his lover.
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POXY PROSPECTS
INES SPENT THE MORNING searching the manor for her diamond necklace though without luck, thinking now that she was back home perhaps they magically would reappear. At least with a somewhat clear mind and an evidently exhausted husband in her bed, she figured she herself might go about feeling home again. Once Nikolaj woke up, he found her in the living area. Pen in hand and cigarette smoking itself in a receptacle, papers spread out before her on the glass table and tea steaming to her side. A maid kept her company, sitting lazed and talking as if though in the company of a friend, and Nikolaj cleared his throat and furrowed his brows.
"Allow us a moment," suggested Nikolaj, unaware of the maid's name, too, caring little to go out of his way and find out. Red-faced the young woman rose from her seat, muffling a humbled 'thank you' and rushed away.
"Good morning, dear," Ines greeted and craned her head to allow Nikolaj to place a kiss on the side of her mouth, her strenuous eyes fixated on the paper before her. Nikolaj spared it a glance, finding it to simply be Lenz Leather paperwork needing handling. They appeared to have no application to him, regardless, he huffed at how he in the period of time-consuming bewilderment, had seemingly and completely neglected the prosperous companies in which his name was bound. Her poised mien indicated she had not yet heard a word of the heat concerning Hive Automatics, and he went to sit before her with a pleased mind knowing he had been in the right to have the newspapers removed; a mere precaution taken in order to obviate what uproar might have chanced. She replaced the pen with the cigarette and crossed her legs, leaning back and offering him her attention. "So. . . What was so pressing it couldn't be solved over the telephone now?"
A notion deviated from his channel of thoughts and Nikolaj stood tall to take a seat beside Ines, thinking he in that way might appear less glazed; more decisive, emphatic. "There are some things I have been meaning to tell you."
Ines sat still in her place, composed as her eyes tried to catch a sense of divulging emotion in his eyes but none seemed apparent, only that of his tentative demeanor.
"I fear I haven't been completely frank with you, my love. Like, I told you, I have become as wealthy as I have because I have made some conclusive and sordid, I regret to say, decisions in my past. When I was back in Copenhagen some weeks back I made an agreement with a man, Hans Vang; he would do me a trivial favor, and in return get to invoke one in a time of need. Hans Vang broke that promise and it has generated a rather—" Nikolaj paused, tilting his head with a squint as he tried to find the right word. "—Cynical response and. . . And, well, I—it appears I have reached a temporal hindrance of sorts."
In a daze of confusion as well as uncertainty, Ines found it difficult to piece together where exactly he was leading this admission. Come to think of it, perhaps it should have waited until after breakfast, at a time when the sun perhaps had crept out of its hiding in the trees down the faraway horizon.
