by Nick Louth
Simon considered the pre-Christmas leftover curry lurking in the back of his fridge. ‘No, I haven’t, not yet.’ His heart rate suddenly climbed, getting rather ahead of the evening’s events.
‘I’ll give you directions. Whereabouts are you?’ he asked.
‘Waiting right outside your flat.’
He leaned out of the window and looked down the three floors to the street. Right outside, gleaming under the streetlamps, was a shiny blue sports car. Beside it, standing waving up at him, was Anastasia.
‘Oh my God,’ he said, and rushed into the bathroom. He washed his face in cold water, slapped on some aftershave, and combed his hair. He sniffed his armpits, felt they were just about acceptable, and grabbed a shirt from the wardrobe. Luckily, he had an ironed white cotton shirt to hand. His hands were trembling doing up the buttons almost as much as they had been the last time he was in her presence. Then, of course, buttons were being undone. He grabbed his wallet, keys and phone and raced down the stairs.
Emerging onto the pavement, he saw her leaning on the bonnet of an Aston Martin Vantage roadster. It was easily the most gorgeous car he had ever seen. She looked the part too, wearing a thigh-length white wool coat, a silk scarf and black leather high heel boots. He had no idea why he had ever thought that she was plain. Made up the way she was, her hair thick and lustrous and those amazingly long shapely legs, she looked amazing.
‘Don’t just stand there staring, get into the car,’ she said.
Simon pulled open the passenger door and sank into the plush leather seat. ‘Is this really your car?’
She laughed. ‘No, I borrowed this. I wrapped my Maserati round a tree last month. I did consider getting my Porsche flown in from Switzerland, but Natasha said she’d get the other one repaired in a week or so.’
Anastasia fired up the engine, a throaty roar settling to a purr, then pulled out from the kerb. He stared at her open mouthed. ‘How did you know where I lived?’
‘You told me, the other day. You gave me your phone number, don’t you remember?’
He really couldn’t remember. He knew that he’d fallen asleep immediately afterwards. Like a dead thing, in fact. Maybe she had gone through his wallet. He dismissed the thought. His address certainly wasn’t anywhere in his wallet.
‘Say something, simple Simon,’ she said, as she accelerated hard onto the main road.
‘Oh, watch this junction. There’s a speed camera. Thirty. Thirty!’ He pointed ahead and glanced at the speedo, which was flicking up to fifty.
She hit the accelerator so hard, he was sucked back into the seat. They shot through the junction at nearly eighty. She laughed uproariously at the look of horror on his face.
‘Did you see the camera flash?’
‘Of course.’
‘That’ll be a hefty fine, you know.’
‘So?’ she turned to glance at him.
‘Slow down, you’re crazy,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll kill somebody.’
‘Maybe us!’ she grinned, overtaking a Peugeot at a zebra crossing. In the space of a minute, she failed to give way at a roundabout, shot a set of pedestrian lights and overtook a van on the inside. Then she reached the M25 and really put her foot down. The Aston Martin touched 140 miles per hour as she raced past a procession of lorries.
‘I’m a fast lady, aren’t I?’ She was looking at him now, but his eyes were glued to the road ahead, feet pressing imaginary brake and clutch as if he had the power to somehow safely guide the vehicle back from danger.
‘Anastasia, please please please slow down,’ he implored. ‘I’m a policeman. That was an ANPR camera. This vehicle will be noticed, there’ll be somebody on our tail in no time. I could lose my job.’ His whining was unbecoming, and he hated to do it when he so wanted to impress her. Finally, she did slow down. Eighty still wasn’t exactly a legal speed, but it felt like crawling compared to what they were doing before.
‘If you’re still seventeen, you must have passed your test right after your birthday,’ he said.
‘I’m driving on my forged international licence.’ She just looked at him and winked.
He clasped his hands to his face and groaned. ‘Oh God. That means no insurance. Please tell me this isn’t happening.’
She roared with laughter and banged the steering wheel with her hand.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘The Dorchester. My father has a table there.’
‘What, permanently—?’ He interrupted himself to point out another speed camera. But instead of slowing down she accelerated, ton-up as the Gatso flashed. Then another camera a hundred yards further on, another flash.
‘What did you do that for? You could get banned, assuming you even have a licence, just for the offences you’ve committed tonight.’
‘Stop moaning! I love to spend money.’
‘It’s not just money, Anastasia. You’ll be banned even before you’ve got the chance to legally drive.’
‘Simon says this, Simon says that,’ she muttered to herself.
Eventually the heavy traffic on the way to central London frustrated Anastasia’s attempts at speeding, firing her impatience. She banged the horn and shouted at other vehicles as they wound their way up the A23 through Coulsdon, Streatham, Brixton and on into central London. Eventually they arrived at the Park Lane entrance to the hotel. The forecourt was full, and there seemed no place to park, so Anastasia simply stopped in the road, double parked, blocking one lane of Park Lane. There was an immediate cacophony of horns.
‘You can’t stop here,’ Simon said. He watched open-mouthed as she got out, slung her handbag over her shoulder, closed the door and beckoned him to follow.
‘You really can’t just…’ he said. She shrugged and made her way to the pavement, stopping only to blow a kiss into the gale of honking traffic behind. After five seconds he realised she really wasn’t coming back, so he leapt out of the car, miming abject apologies to the angry drivers behind, and followed her, snaking his way through the parked vehicles across the pavement, into the forecourt and up into the Dorchester. A doorman in green coat and black top hat opened the door for her. She passed him the car keys and pointed to the car. The moment they entered the sumptuous reception area, the hush of luxury replaced the cacophony of traffic. She waved to the reception desk, and one of the male staff came round to greet her, bowing slightly.
‘This is Simon,’ she said. ‘We’d like my father’s table.’
‘Yes of course, madam, follow me.’
As they entered the lift, Anastasia said to him. ‘You see, Simon, that I have been educated for how to live. And it is rather fun, would you not agree?’
‘What about the car?’ he said. He had fallen in love with the car.
‘My father had a special arrangement for valet parking.’
The head waiter greeted her in exactly the same way as had the man at reception. Anastasia and he had a brief but obviously fluent conversation in French. The waiter seated them at a secluded table, not visible to other diners. White linen and polished silver. He surveyed the menu, which was entirely in French.
‘You’ve got to have the negronis here, they are fantastic,’ she said.
He didn’t know what a negroni was, but assumed it was some kind of cocktail. He deferred to her, and she ordered one for each of them, and a bottle of some wine of a particular year. The approving nod from the sommelier showed that she knew what she was doing.
‘You’re amazing, you’re absolutely amazing,’ he said. And he meant it. He’d never felt so alive as during that insane drive from Reigate.
‘But I’m crazy too, aren’t I? That’s what you think, right?’
‘I suppose so. I mean why did you deliberately break the speed limit? Are you trying to get in trouble?’
She laughed. ‘That car belongs to my brother, Oleg, the most annoying idiot in the world. I am trying to get them to take his licence away, to punish him for his transgressions.’
‘B
ut he’ll just point out he wasn’t driving.’
She shook her head emphatically ‘No, Oleg has so much coke up his nose most of the time he has no idea whether he’s driving or flying, let alone where. He will pay to get poor Wolf to take the points for him, like last time. But Wolf told me his own licence will be forfeit with another big speeding ticket, so he will refuse. Oleg will then try to get another member of staff to take the points, and I have already bribed them that I will double whatever he offers them, if they refuse. They all despise Oleg anyway, so it’s easy.’
The food was fabulous and the wine superb. He hadn’t any great experience in wine and had never been anywhere remotely as posh as this in his life. It began to dawn on him that Anastasia had offered to ‘take him’ to dinner, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was paying. He certainly hoped she was, because he couldn’t begin to imagine how much this would cost. The menu he had been given had no prices on it. He was pretty sure that it would max out his credit card. But aware that he had been whining and complaining his way through the evening, he was now going to show a bit of class.
He sat and listened as Anastasia chattered about the people she knew and the places she’d been. Only when she went to the bathroom did he dare look at his mobile, and the text he had received from Sally asking him where he was. Knowing he was off duty, she’d come round to his flat with a Christmas gift to surprise him but had could get no reply to the doorbell. A wave of guilt passed over him.
On Anastasia’s return, a sumptuous dessert was brought, and after a cognac the bill finally arrived in a thick leather ledger. ‘Shall we go halves?’ Anastasia asked, offering it to him. The bill was well over two thousand pounds, of which three quarters was for the wine. The look of panic that flashed across his face amused her enormously, and she rested a delicate hand on his sleeve as her gurgles of laughter continued for some time. She called over the waiter and asked for it to be put on the family account.
‘Simon, I brought you here because the account will probably be closed soon, since my poor father is dead.’ She looked sad again, momentarily. ‘So I have to use it while I can.’
‘Phew,’ he said. ‘I’ve had about five heart attacks in one night.’
‘My father has a suite here. Would you like number six?’ she asked, raising a beautifully shaped eyebrow. ‘Follow me, naughty boy.’
PC Simon Woodbridge tried very hard to restrain the smirk but failed. They took the lift to the ninth floor, and she led him to a grand suite. In fact it was more like a three-bedroom apartment. He oohed and aahed over the décor and furnishings, as she led him towards one of the bedrooms.
‘Now, I want you to look at me.’ She then took off her scarf and pulled her dress over her head, so she was standing only in her underwear.
What he saw was not what he expected.
Chapter Thirteen
Her slender pale neck was circled in thick purple bruises, and the signs of some kind of rope. Her upper arms too showed that she had been gripped, hard.
‘Who did this to you?’ Simon asked.
‘My bodyguard and ex-boyfriend Jason. He knows about us, and he was punishing me.’
‘The blond guy with the ponytail?’ Woodbridge recalled the lantern-jawed six-footer he had run into outside her room. He was handsome, with the build of a personal trainer.
‘Yes. He’s always been jealous and possessive, and he has a nasty temper. He used to be a jujutsu instructor. You’re lucky you’re a cop. He would kill you otherwise.’ She smiled cruelly. ‘I had my own reasons for getting you out of the room by nine yesterday, before he came on duty. If he had found you, he would have murdered you on the spot, and probably killed me as well.’
Protective male pride blossomed. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. ‘I’ll look after you, Anastasia. No one needs to put up with violence and possessiveness. You can report this and we can have him arrested. First thing tomorrow. I promise I’ll look after you. The British police take this kind of thing quite seriously these days, believe me.’
She kissed him hard on the mouth and ran her hands through his hair. ‘Simon, I’m so glad I met you. I’ve been afraid for so long, and with my father dying I’m in even more danger.’ She kissed him again, and then looked into his eyes. ‘You are so brave. I trust you.’
‘I wouldn’t let you down,’ Simon said, his hand straying to her buttocks. She did not resist.
While Anastasia went into the bathroom, he undressed and lay naked on the enormous bed, a giant smirk spreading across his face as he thought about what would come next. Then he remembered Sally. He reached for his phone to see if she had messaged him again. She had, but there was also an email from someone he didn’t know, headed: Look at this IMMEDIATELY. From the header it was clear it had also been copied to Anastasia’s email.
The message was short and to the point. Watch, then wait for the call. There was an attached video, and as he opened it his blood ran cold. The view was from above, in Anastasia’s bedroom in Westgrave Hall. The canopied bed was distinctive, but it was the sound, the moans of ecstasy, the begging and pleading for sexual release, which dominated.
His voice.
His body, naked, spreadeagled and bound, his sleeve of Celtic tattoos more distinctive than his partially obscured face. Anastasia, still in her bathrobe, worked on him expertly, teasingly, with hand and mouth. One of the dogs looked on, fascinated by what his mistress seemed to be eating, and she kept having to push his snout away. Simon’s limbs were trembling, his hands and feet flexing in their bonds. Every time she lifted her face away, he was on display for the world to see, his manhood pointing directly at the camera.
There was a scream from the bathroom, and an explosion of tears.
She must be looking at the video too.
Anastasia burst out and threw herself into Simon’s arms. ‘It’s Jason, the bastard has rigged up my room!’
‘Oh my God, this is terrible,’ he said.
‘We should go to the police, yes?’ she asked.
His throat was dry. ‘Let’s not rush into anything at this point.’
‘But you said they would take this seriously…’
‘Yes, but Anastasia, this would ruin me. I’d be sacked for what we did.’
‘Simon, it’s only your job. For me it’s my reputation: all over the newspapers, the spoiled sex-mad daughter of a billionaire!’
‘Does Jason have copies?’
‘Of course! Of course he’ll have copies, simple Simon, he’s not stupid!’
Anastasia’s phone rang, and she answered tremblingly, her eyes wide and resting on Simon in a look of total trust. ‘Jason, of course. Yes, we’ve both seen it.’ She listened, interjecting the word okay a few times, then handed the phone to Simon. ‘He wants to speak with you.’
Simon picked up the phone.
‘Well, well, not smirking now, are you PC Woodbridge?’ The accented voice was Jason’s, the one he had heard in their brief conversation in the Westgrave Hall corridor.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘The papers would love this, yes? Your nice British tabloids. And the police, ha, you’d be fired, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve told her what I want from her, and this is what I want from you.’
Ice seemed to run down Simon’s spine as he listened to Jason.
‘I couldn’t,’ he muttered. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘Yes, you can, and you will do it tonight. I’ll text you the exact details shortly. If you try contacting the police, then you know exactly what will happen.’ He cut the call. Simon handed the phone back to Anastasia, and they stared at each other in shock.
Simon spoke first. ‘Does he just want you to take him back?’
‘Yes, but he wants money too, of course. He always wanted money.’
‘How much?’
‘Enough to set him up in a security consultancy, now that this gig working for my father is coming to an end. Ten million.’
>
‘Ten million pounds!’
‘Meh, it’s not so much.’ She waved it away. ‘That is easy. I’m more worried about his brutality, against me and you. What did he want you to do, Simon?’
‘Oh God! I can’t tell you, Anastasia. I really can’t.’ He squeezed his eyes shut and reached for her hand as if he was drowning. He had never felt so helpless, his entire life circling in a whirlpool of shit. He could refuse to do what Jason asked, but this video. Oh God! If this ever came out Sally would hate him for ever. Her parents, who had been so kind, and had lent him money when he was broke, would never speak to him again. Even his own mum and dad. He’d be fired from the police.
What if he did what Jason wanted? If it was ever discovered, he’d be jailed for years, decades even. Either way, he’d be unemployable for any position of trust. He could see himself in twenty years’ time, some middling provincial burglar alarm salesman, with only memories of a few fantastic hours to hold on to.
He really couldn’t do what Jason had told him to.
But he had to. There was no choice. He’d just have to make sure no one ever found out.
* * *
Gillard had left a message for Yelena Yalinsky, and he was just about to board his flight back to Gatwick when she returned the call. After pleasantries were exchanged, he said: ‘We have evidence that you did not disappear into the panic room the moment the shooting started. You may have tried to clear it up, but there is blood still detectable on the spiral staircase leading down. And that would not have been there had you not walked it in.’
There was no reply.
‘Do you hear what I’m saying, Ms Yalinsky? You had to be out there long enough to tread in the blood.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Okay, bear with me, I’m just going out on the balcony where I can’t be overheard.’ The click and squeal of the sliding door, and the roar of traffic beyond came through to Gillard.
‘Ms Yalinsky, I need to know what you saw,’ he persisted.
She said nothing. All he heard was the rumble of traffic.
