No Cherubs for Melanie. James Hawkins

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.

      Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

       J. Kirk Howard, President

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      Printed on recycled paper.

      To my dearest Amanda — my elder daughter.

      With all the love that only the proudest of fathers can understand.

      This is a story of relationships; where love, hate, good, and evil meet. It is of men and their daughters.

      ”Ye shall reap what you sow.”

       chapter one

      Death was very definitely in the air, yet not one of the hundred or so designer-clad women in the restaurant’s grand dining room — and only one of the overdressed men — felt the slight shift in ambience that signalled its presence.

      The cognizant man, sitting alone beyond the gleam of the chandelier, could have been a public health inspector, but his suit, though aging, was too sharp, his shoes too shiny, and he had a robustness about him that said he’d done more with his fifty years than poke fingers into U-bends and grease traps. Sitting, he seemed tall, but his length was in his trunk; his legs had let him down an inch or two. In deference to the August heat, he’d slung his jacket carelessly over the back of his chair and loosened his tie with casual contempt. However, he meditated over each morsel of food with the morose dedication of a culinary critic. Other guests, uneasily noticing the man’s introspective countenance, and feeling the scrutiny of his nervously watchful hazel eyes, might have quite wrongly imagined that he was the one preparing for the grave.

      Heads snapped around as a fat man erupted into the room through a panelled door. A whisper swept across the room, swiftly gaining strength, and was carried by waiters past the lone diner into the bustling kitchen, where it became a cacophony that drowned out the clash of pots and the hum of extractor fans. The chefs tried to pretend nothing was happening but the lower echelon gravitated into a grumbling huddle. “The old man’s pissed again!”

      Out in the grand dining room, beyond the soundproof swinging doors, the fat newcomer navigated drunk-enly from table to table and an excited murmur spread from mouth to mouth: The sideshow had started, the evening’s entertainment had begun. Whom would he ridicule tonight? What would he shout?“Are you mad, woman? Champagne with pheasant! Never! I will not permit gastronomic suicide in my restaurant. Mon Dieu!” “Fork! Moron. Yeah, you. You don’t eat oysters with a fucking fork!”

      But not tonight. Tonight he was too far gone for repartee, however abusive or one-sided.

      A foreign tourist, American judging by his tie, grabbed the arm of a passing waiter and drew his attention to the drunk with a concerned nod.

      Without a second glance the waiter leaned forward. “It’s alright, Sir, he’s the owner,” he said with confidence, as if recommending the plat du jour; as if such behaviour should be expected of all London restaurateurs.

      The pantomime continued as the slobbering clown fell from table to table, grasping at imagined safety rails, steadying his hand on expensively manicured heads. “Mind the wig, old chap, cost a bloody fortune,” they laughed.

      Around the room, twitchy fingers reached for cellphones. Whom to call? The police or the News of the World? The police, probably. Although the owner’s antics may at one time have smudged a column or two in the tabloids, the paparazzi and the public had long since found greater interest in other, more ridiculous, characters.

      With a wry smile and without a hiccup, the tuxedo-clad pianist twisted his bow tie drunkenly and swung from Dvorák’s “New World” to the drinking song from Romburg’s Student Prince; few noticed.

      Spouting gibberish, insisting that he should be heard, the owner clutched his throat. “Ah… urg… argh,” he gurgled and was misinterpreted by a wispy model-type. “Do you think he wants us to leave, Roger?” she asked her companion in a stage whisper.

      “Bloody scandalous… Absolutely disgraceful,” echoed around the room, but to some the drunk’s behaviour was consoling: those able to point and snigger, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as that!”

      “Wish I had a camera,” exclaimed one diner, and got a dig in the ribs from his skimpily clad female escort. (“We’ll have to be discreet,” she’d whispered saucily as they’d slipped away from her husband’s dismal book launch party. “Discreet!” he’d cried. “Wearing that!”)

      Another diner was suitably armed, toting a video camera brought to record a momentous family occasion. But the celebration of forty years of undying matrimonial fidelity couldn’t stop the husband’s camera eye from roving.

      “Please don’t!” implored the man’s wife, feeling the heat from guests at surrounding tables, but, shaking off her admonition, he continued filming.

      In less than a minute the bulky figure had reeled his way from one side of the room to the other, leaving a trail of bemused, disgruntled, delighted, and offended patrons. His goal, the kitchen, lay directly ahead of him, and diners on the far side of the room were already losing interest, returning to more mundane matters: platters of undercooked, undersized, and overpriced culinary creations.

      The padded service