Wicked Beauty

by Susan Lewis

  Though Katherine’s cheeks paled slightly, as she glanced down at her hands, she merely said, ‘Yes, of course.’ Then lifting her head she warned, as gently as she could, ‘A lot of this isn’t going to be easy for you to hear …’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, just tell me.’

  Katherine paused, then after pushing a stray strand of wet hair from her face, she said, ‘Well, I guess I should start with when we got back to my apartment, after the celebrations … We had no idea, either of us, that anyone else was there. I guess we were too … wrapped up in the euphoria of it all, and we’d had a lot to drink. We went straight through to the bedroom, and well, it wasn’t until I got up, later, to go to the bathroom …’ She paused again, and took a breath. ‘I didn’t turn on any lights,’ she said. ‘Tim was sleeping … Or I think he was. He didn’t move when I got up, so I crept into the bathroom so’s not to wake him. But I was thinking that I’d have to soon, because he’d have to go home. Then I heard a noise in the bedroom. I guess I assumed it was him, getting up, but then there was this kind of fast whooshing sound, and …’ She swallowed. ‘I knew right away what it was. I guess it must have been instinct, because I’d sure never heard it before, except in movies, but I knew it was the sound of a gun with a silencer attached. I was so darned terrified I didn’t dare move. I just stood there in the darkness listening, convinced someone was going to burst in at any second. But no one did. Then I heard someone coming out of the bedroom, going down the hall. After the front door closed everything just stayed silent.

  ‘I don’t know how much longer I stood there, it might have been seconds, it might have been minutes, then when I felt sure no one was coming back I rushed into the bedroom, not daring to turn on the lights. Tim was lying face down on the bed. I could hardly see him, but there was blood on the pillow … I was calling his name, shaking him, like it might bring him round. I tried his pulse, I even attempted CPR, but it was already …’ She swallowed hard, as though forcing back tears. ‘Please understand, I was in a state of shock, I hardly knew what I was doing I was so afraid … I remember I even ran back to the bathroom to throw up. I guess some kind of survival instinct kicked in, because I suddenly realized I had to get out of there. The killer had obviously assumed it was me in the bed, and Tim who’d gone to the bathroom. And if Tim had heard anyone coming in the room, he’d probably thought it was me coming back.

  ‘All this was rushing through my head so much, it’s hard to remember now … But mainly I was just thinking that I had to get away. Time had run out. Franz had sent someone to kill me. I’d been living in terror of it for months, which was why Xavier had helped me to prepare an escape. I had false documents, open-dated airline tickets with half a dozen airlines, various safe-houses lined up from Morocco to Singapore, a laptop, pay-as-you-go cellphones and half a million dollars in cash. So I grabbed it all, used one of the cells to call Xavier, and then I ran. I didn’t contact the police until I got to the airport, and was about to board a flight to Marrakesh. Then I called and told them to go to my apartment. Maybe I should have gone to them. It’s all a lot easier and clearer in hindsight, but at the time I was so scared, and Franz’s contacts reached into so many high places …’ She looked at Rachel. ‘Tim was so suspicious of the people in his own department, I know you know that, so maybe you’ll understand how afraid I was to trust anyone. They’re so powerful in that Ministry, I just had to get away, but I swear, if he hadn’t already been dead, I’d have called the emergency services even before I left the apartment.’ She glanced down at her hands, then back to Rachel. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ she said, ‘I believe the bullet killed him instantly. I don’t think he knew anything about it.’

  Rachel lifted a hand to her eyes, then pushed it back through her hair. It was suddenly so very hard not to cry that she didn’t even attempt to speak. She just kept seeing him lying there, asleep and unknowing, in the bed of a woman that she had brought into their lives. Dear God, if she’d only known what she was doing, how malicious the fates were going to be … She’d berated and tormented herself so often for not staying at the celebrations that night, and for not telling him on the phone that he was going to be a father. He’d still be alive now if she had. She’d made so many mistakes, and none would ever be put right now. She could never tell him about the baby, and he would never be able to explain about Katherine. As the thoughts circled painfully, her hands covered the mound of her belly. To the very depths of her soul she wished she could hug the baby now, for she felt so in need of the contact with Tim, and so utterly wretched inside, that she almost couldn’t bear it.

  Finally she took a breath to ask the only question left that really mattered to her now, but at that moment the lights went out, leaving them in the soft glow of the candles that Laurie had already lit. Then Laurie was asking about Gustave Basim, the man who had been hired to kill, then had been killed himself, as much, Katherine thought, for bungling the job, as for having to be disposed of anyway. They went on to discuss where Katherine had been all this time, moving from one country to the next, always looking over her shoulder, expecting any minute to feel the shock of a bullet going into her back.

  It was barely sinking in, though Rachel knew it was all important detail for Laurie, and she wanted her to have it, but she also wanted her to leave them alone for a while so she could ask Katherine, in private, that still lingering but vital question about Tim that she so desperately needed, yet dreaded, an answer to.

  *

  In the semi-light of Stacey’s studio Anna was staring down at the computer printouts she’d found with Robert’s poems. They all seemed to be about Tim, which was making her extremely uneasy. What had Stacey hoped to find in all these media reports? How was she intending to use them? And was there any reason why they should have been shut up in the same drawer as the poems? It felt strange to the point of sinister. She shivered, and looked around. Even the normality in here seemed oddly malign tonight, though the weather was oppressive, and her nerves were as sharp as wire. She wondered where Stacey had been going just now, in such a hurry that she hadn’t even seemed to notice Anna’s car about to turn into the drive. It had completely thrown Anna to see her, when she’d assumed she was in the car that had left earlier; so much so, that Anna had very nearly just driven on and gone straight to Rachel’s. But in the end she’d sped up the drive, parked round by the side of the garages, and finding the door to the back stairs unlocked, she’d run straight up here to the studio.

  Now, unable to decide whether to take the printouts with her as well, she was still hovering in front of the desk when the sound of a car speeding up the drive sent a chill of panic right through her. She looked at the door, wondering if she should just make a dash for it, but the skid of tyres coming to a halt, and the heavy tread of footsteps running into the house, threw her into even greater confusion. Then the sound of Chris’s voice, thundering up through the stairwell, calling his wife’s name, almost made her cower.

  Knowing that the light made it certain he would come here, she glanced frantically around for somewhere to hide. With the terrifying tread of his footsteps storming along the hallway outside, she dived under the desk and pulled the chair in front of her.

  ‘Stacey!’ he raged, throwing open the door.

  Anna was trembling, and so afraid it could have been her his fury was focused on. She flinched as an easel crashed to the ground, and drew herself in tighter. Then to her unutterable relief, he left.

  Not until she heard the car engine starting up again did she dare to creep out of her hiding place. Frantic now to get out of there, she ran straight to the door, closed it quickly behind her, and dashed down the stone steps to the car. It was still raining heavily, and the wind was as wild as Hallowe’en demons, but all she was thinking about now was getting to Rachel’s, with the poems, as fast as she could.

  Throwing the car into reverse, she backed round in a semicircle, then lurched off down the drive at a reckless speed, not even thinking to lo
ok back at the house. But even if she had, she wouldn’t have been concerned about leaving the lights on, not when Chris had come back in such a rage that he probably wouldn’t remember how they’d been anyway. But it wasn’t just the lights that were a problem, it was the pale blue chiffon scarf that had floated in the draught she’d created closing the door, down on to a hot light bulb beneath.

  Chris was at the wheel of Nick’s Toyota Cruiser, his eyes blazing, his knuckles white from the grip. Nick was next to him, having driven to the airfield to get him. It was a miracle he’d been able to land in this weather, and he’d seriously upset the controllers for insisting. But to hell with them now, he hadn’t had any choice in the matter, and were he able to consider them his only problem he sure as hell wouldn’t be risking life and limb right now to find out if the woman Nick had called him about really was Katherine Sumner.

  Downshifting hard, he rounded the bend at Roon Moor, narrowly avoided the post office, then accelerated again, heading for the brink of the hill. On the back seat his mobile kept ringing, but he was in no position to answer. This had to come first. No matter that Franz Koehler was dead, it had to take priority. Rudy would understand that. He knew from the radio that arrests were happening by the hour in Dubai, and were it not for Nick’s call he’d be right in the thick of it, probably even in handcuffs himself by now. So maybe he should be thanking Katherine Sumner for this maniacal race through the night, instead of wishing her to any place with a gag, lock and key. As for his damned wife who had orchestrated this nightmare turn in events, may God help her, wherever the hell she was, for if he got his hands on her tonight he might not want to be held accountable for what happened.

  The lights had come back on so Rachel could see Katherine’s face more distinctly again now. She still looked sad, and concerned, and nervous too, since Laurie had gone upstairs to give them some time alone.

  Hearing the wind whistling around the walls, and the windows rattling in their frames, Rachel felt the poignancy of them being here together like this, as though trapped by the stormy fate that had tied them together. She wondered how Katherine felt, surrounded by everything that was Tim’s, including his wife and unborn child. Then she looked away, knowing that no amount of reflection, or distraction, was going to make it any easier for her to ask the question that she was still finding so hard to summon. The problem was that whatever answer Katherine gave, she would have to live with it for the rest of her life, and if it turned out not to be what she wanted to hear, then she didn’t really want to hear it at all.

  ‘I think I know what’s on your mind,’ Katherine said eventually. She was still sitting at the table, rain continuing to drip randomly from the ends of her hair down into her neck, while her hands were pressed loosely together on her lap. Her eyes seemed very blue and deep, her beauty somehow more vivid in the redness of her mouth and honey tone of her skin. ‘You want to know if that was the only time that Tim and I slept together,’ she said.

  Rachel’s heartbeat started to slow. She almost wished the power would fail again now, for if Katherine’s face were in shadow she might, if she needed to, be able to convince herself later that she was lying. ‘Was it?’ she said quietly.

  Katherine’s eyes lowered, then came up again. ‘I knew, before coming here,’ she said, ‘that you would want an answer to that question. That even if it was going to break your heart, you’d need to hear how it had been between us. So I thought about it a lot, trying to find the words that would help you to understand that, even though it wasn’t the only time, he never once betrayed you in a way that mattered. By that I mean he never loved me, or even pretended to. He only ever loved you, and he never made any pretence about that either. All there was between us was an attraction that was extremely powerful, and that maybe we should have done more to try to control. But in hindsight, that’s always easy to say, because unless you’re actually in the grip of an attraction like that … It’s not very rational …’ She paused, then after taking a breath, she said, ‘You meant everything to him. He didn’t want or need anyone else, because his life with you was fulfilled and happy and just about perfect in every way. So it didn’t make any sense to him that he couldn’t keep away from me, when he loved you so much. For a man like Tim, who was always so in control, it was anathema. But there was never any question of him leaving you: in fact until the morning he was killed, we’d been successfully managing to avoid being alone together for a while, and it wouldn’t have happened then, had the opportunity not arisen when we were in the thrall of victory. It was the first time he’d ever been to my flat, which is how I know that Franz would never have sent someone there to kill him. We’d always avoided going there before in case anyone recognized him, so there was no pattern, no established routine, no reason to expect him to be there.

  ‘I guess it was drink that made us reckless that morning, and the fact that we knew it really would be the last time. The campaign was over, I was on my way out of your lives, and as far as helping me with Franz, he’d already told me that he was ready now to hand everything over to the PM and intelligence services, and would keep it monitored from a distance.’ She swallowed hard and pressed her hands in under her chin. ‘He suffered a lot for what he was doing to you,’ she said. ‘I know, because I could see how much he loved you. I don’t know if you understand what it’s like to want someone sexually, or to have feelings for someone else, when you ought not, but if you do then you’ll know it’s not something you have control over. It just happens. You don’t have any choice, in the person, the timing, in anything, it’s just there. It’s how you feel, and even if you try to deny it, work round it, ignore it, it’s still there, and the more you try to resist it, the more powerful it seems to become. So please, try not to judge him, or me, just know that your memories are safe, and intact, because he truly did love you, and I was … I was nothing.’

  Except the person who cost him his life, Rachel thought. But she didn’t say it, she merely looked away, took a breath, then let it go slowly, shakily as she tried to accept the reality. Her head was heavy with the pain of knowing he could have felt such a passion for somebody else, such an irresistible desire that he’d put both his career and his marriage at risk for it. Yet as hurtful and even repellent as the images of them together were, how could she say she didn’t understand, when she only had to think of Chris to feel all the guilt and shame of an untimely attraction, that try as she might she still couldn’t deny. But not for a minute had it ever stopped her loving Tim – it was just something that seemed to exist separately, or maybe laterally, it was hard to say. Would she ever have felt that way if they’d met while Tim was alive? She’d never know now, but she thought it was likely, though how far it might have gone, or how forgiving Tim would have been had he found out, could never be an issue now, so there was no point in imagining.

  Lifting her eyes back to Katherine’s she was about to speak when the sound of footsteps running up the path to the kitchen door stopped her. She frowned, curiously, then jumped as someone knocked loudly. Realizing it must be Anna, she got to her feet. ‘It’ll be my sister,’ she said. ‘Did you lock the door?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Katherine answered. ‘Does it lock itself?’

  Pushing the door to the stairs closed as she passed, Rachel stepped up into the kitchen, and looked at the latch. No, it wasn’t locked, so why was Anna knocking? She started at another thump on the door, then, staying where she was, she called out,

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Is Katherine in there?’ a female voice called back. ‘She left something behind.’

  Rachel turned to look at Katherine.

  ‘It’s the woman I’m staying with,’ Katherine said. ‘Stacey Greene.’

  Rachel’s eyes opened wide in alarm. She was staying with Stacey Greene?

  ‘We should let her in,’ Katherine said. ‘It’s filthy out there.’

  For a moment Rachel panicked, unable to think of an objection, then standing aside, she said, �
�You go. She obviously has something for you.’

  As Katherine passed, Rachel returned to the sitting room and went to stand in front of the hearth. She was trying hard to make herself understand why Katherine would be staying with Stacey, and how it linked to Chris, who’d been so adamant she shouldn’t see Katherine, and now here she was, a guest in his house. So was Stacey really here just because Katherine had forgotten something? Feeling almost dazed, she listened to their voices, and hoped against hope that Katherine would just take whatever Stacey had brought, and not invite her in. But then she heard the stomping of Stacey’s feet on the doormat as the door closed behind her, and a moment later Katherine came back into the sitting room, her eyes seeming to ask if it was all right, as behind her Stacey appeared in the arch, wearing a long black raincoat and nothing over her hair.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling pleasantly at Rachel.

  Rachel looked at her, her heart pounding with unease. What did she want? What was this really about?

  ‘Katherine forgot her key,’ Stacey explained, ‘so I thought I should bring it.’

  Rachel’s eyes darted to Katherine, then straight back to Stacey, as she said, ‘Oh dear, you forgot this too.’ She pulled a small black purse out of her pocket and held it up for Katherine to see.

  To Rachel’s confusion, Katherine’s face instantly paled.

  Stacey was unbuttoning her coat. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said to Rachel. ‘It’s so chilly and wet out there, and you know what they say, I won’t find the benefit later.’

  ‘Stacey, I don’t know what this is about,’ Katherine began, glancing anxiously at Rachel.

  ‘No, but you will,’ Stacey assured her, shrugging her coat off and draping it over a chair back. She was wearing a white crêpe dress and thick, heavy boots, while her wet hair clung like tangled seaweed to her neck and shoulders. ‘I’ve been going over and over this, all day,’ she said, turning back, and pantomiming confusion, ‘and frankly I’m still not sure what to do. Incidentally, you have told her about my husband, haven’t you?’ she said to Katherine. ‘She does know all about him now?’