Wicked Beauty

by Susan Lewis

  Katherine looked at Rachel.

  Rachel’s heart was thudding.

  ‘Oh! Does this mean you haven’t?’ Stacey said, frowning. ‘So I don’t suppose she’s told you about their affair either.’

  Katherine’s lips parted in shock. ‘Oh God, Rachel, please tell me that’s not true,’ she implored.

  Rachel’s eyes were frightened and angry as she turned them on Stacey. ‘For your information Chris and I –’

  ‘Don’t pair yourself with my husband,’ Stacey spat. ‘There is no Chris and you. Do you hear me? There is no Chris and you.’

  ‘Then we can’t be having an affair, can we?’ Rachel said cuttingly.

  Stacey turned to Katherine. ‘I hope you didn’t let her put you through it for what you did with her husband,’ she said scathingly, ‘not after what she’s been doing with mine.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing with your husband,’ Rachel shouted.

  ‘Oh dear, a faulty zip,’ Stacey said, tugging at the black purse. ‘But no, it’s OK now.’

  ‘Stacey, for God’s sake,’ Katherine cried, as she took out the gun. ‘Just give it to me.’ She was holding out her hand and glaring angrily. ‘I said give it to me.’

  Stacey dropped the purse then pointed the gun at Rachel.

  Rachel’s heart twisted with terror, as she took a step back.

  ‘Stacey, for God’s sake,’ Katherine cried again. ‘I don’t know what’s been going on here … She’s pregnant, for Christ’s sake. You’re scaring the hell out of her.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Stacey responded. ‘But it’s going to scare her a whole lot more when you shoot her, don’t you think?’

  Katherine balked in amazement. ‘Are you crazy?’ she gasped.

  Stacey shook her head. ‘No, just undecided,’ she answered.

  Rachel’s hands were clasped over the baby. Adrenalin was pumping so fast through her veins it was making her giddy. This was the first time in her life she’d ever even seen a gun at such close quarters, much less had one pointed at her, and she didn’t know what the hell to do. Panic was rushing through her mind like a tornado, ripping out strange, unreal thoughts …

  ‘I’m just not sure why you would kill her,’ Stacey was saying to Katherine, still looking as though she was trying to figure it all out. ‘So that means it would have to be a murder/suicide situation, where you kill her first, then yourself, so no one ever gets to question why you did it.’

  Katherine’s eyes were wide with shock as she started to back off. ‘You really are crazy,’ she murmured.

  ‘Or,’ Stacey continued, ‘since she has every reason in the world to want to kill you, as we all know, I could do it for her, then swear that she was the one who pulled the trigger. After all, it’s only us here, and since you won’t be in much of a position to call me a liar …’ She nodded towards Rachel. ‘She’s the one with the motivation, so it would stand to reason that she did it, and plenty of babies are born in prison.’ She looked puzzled again, and put a finger to her lips as she thought. ‘It’s a difficult choice,’ she said in the end, ‘but either way, Katherine, I’m afraid you don’t get to tell the tale. And as for you …’ Her eyes became suddenly hard as she turned them on Rachel, ‘I’d have thought you’d have had the common decency, never mind human compassion, to keep your hands off someone else’s husband, when you know how it feels to be the wife. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have any feelings for anyone but yourself? What kind of mother is that going to make you? What kind of life is that child going to have when your only consideration is for yourself?’

  ‘Stacey, please,’ Rachel said shakily. ‘I haven’t slept with Chris …’

  ‘You spend eight days in the Caribbean with him, and you think I’m going to believe you never slept with him?’ Stacey cut in, mockingly. ‘Would you?’ she said to Katherine. ‘If it were your husband she’d been with? Would you believe nothing happened? And if you did, think how everyone would laugh, the way they’re laughing at me!’

  ‘Her husband’s only just died,’ Katherine answered. ‘And if she says there’s nothing going on with yours …’ She looked at Rachel. ‘Do you know that her husband works for Franz?’ she said.

  Rachel nodded.

  ‘Are you aware of what he does?’

  Rachel’s eyes were wide as she looked at her, for it was obvious Katherine would know a lot more than she did, but maybe she didn’t know the entire truth either. ‘More or less,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Oh sure, I know what he does,’ she answered, ‘and you’ve got to face it,’ she said, turning back to Stacey, ‘he’s going to jail. We all are.’

  ‘Oh but not me,’ Stacey corrected. ‘I’m not involved. But I’m prepared to wait for my husband.’

  ‘Then it’ll be for a good long time,’ Katherine snapped, ‘because the kind of double-dealing he’s been pulling off isn’t going to sit well with any jury, never mind the judge.’

  ‘He’s got money. He’ll have the best lawyers,’ Stacey said. She smiled at Rachel. ‘Are you getting the drift?’ she said sweetly. ‘Do you understand what she’s telling you? Chris started out as an informer, a sneak, working for the Government, but he switched sides when the money got big enough, and started feeding them false information.’

  Rachel’s face was white as she looked at Katherine.

  In the stairwell, Laurie was listening hard, watching Stacey’s distorted image through the small porthole in the door.

  ‘So is that enough to make you back off?’ Stacey enquired silkily. ‘Do you feel quite so keen now? Or do I still need this?’ She poked the gun forward, and slid a finger into the trigger guard.

  ‘Stacey, please understand,’ Rachel began, ‘there’s nothing going on.’

  Seeing Stacey’s finger start to tighten, Laurie’s heart contracted, then hurling the door open, she smashed it hard into Stacey.

  Stacey shrieked.

  The gun went off.

  The explosion blasted through the room as though to blow out the walls.

  There was a moment’s awful silence as time seemed to stand on the edge of a precipice – then Rachel slumped to the floor.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Laurie cried, running to her, as plaster showered down from the ceiling.

  ‘It ricocheted. It must have been a ricochet,’ Katherine panicked as she threw herself to the floor beside Rachel.

  Behind them Stacey was backing away in horror. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ she was mumbling. ‘I was only trying to frighten her. Oh God, no!’

  Laurie and Katherine weren’t listening. Katherine was going for the phone as Laurie tried to find the bullet.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ Stacey cried. ‘I didn’t mean to do it!’

  Chris had just leapt out of the car, leaving Nick to park it when the sound of a gunshot reverberated around the cove. Immediately he started to run, harder than he ever had in his life, oblivious to the wind and rain as he raced past Tom Drummond’s cottage, around Rachel’s and Beanie’s parked cars, and on up the footpath towards the last house. He was almost there when a woman came running out.

  It was Stacey.

  ‘No! No!’ she screamed, struggling to get away as he grabbed her. ‘I didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? What’s happened?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she sobbed, and wrenching herself free she ran on down the footpath.

  Willing Nick to catch her in the village, he dashed through the gate and through the open back door.

  Katherine looked up, and her eyes dilated. ‘Oh my God, no,’ she murmured, seeing his gun. ‘Please, no,’ she begged.

  Laurie turned round, and she too gaped at him in horror. ‘Chris, no, you can’t,’ she said, moving to shield Rachel.

  He stared back at them, his eyes as hard as granite as they moved from one to the other then blazed into Katherine. ‘What happened?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing. The gun went off, bu
t she’s … she’s dead.’

  Realizing she was lying, he shouted, ‘What the fuck happened? What did you tell her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Katherine shouted back.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said angrily.

  Laurie’s fingers were inching towards the gun Stacey had dropped.

  Noticing, Chris moved his aim to her. ‘Don’t do that,’ he barked. Then to Katherine, ‘I don’t know how close anyone is behind me, so whatever you told her, just for God’s sake stay with her – and if you need to use that,’ he said to Laurie, ‘do it.’ Spinning round he began running back down to the village, trying to catch up with his wife.

  He’d just reached the pub when he saw Nick coming off the beach where he’d left the car. ‘Did you see her?’ he shouted. ‘Did you see Stacey?’

  ‘Was that her? Yeah. She ran up that way, towards the top cottages.’

  Chris sprinted in the direction Nick had pointed, speeding past the gig house and crab shop, around a tractor and up the small incline towards the cottages at the near end of the todden. Then he saw her, about fifty yards in front, starting up towards the other headland. He called out, but the wind whipped away his voice. Knowing she could get home that way didn’t stop him; instead he urged himself to a killing pace, leaping over the boulders at the bottom of the footpath, skidding in the mud, then righting himself, before charging on in the direction of the five-barred gate. He could see her again now, climbing over it.

  Moments later he was vaulting over it himself. He dropped the gun, left it and ran on, pumping his arms and pushing his legs to propel him on through the rain. She was almost at the stile now, but he was closing in.

  ‘Stacey! Wait! Just wait!’ he yelled.

  Her hair and dress were flying in the wind. She was slithering and stumbling in the mud, but she kept on going. She was over the stile, jumping down and taking off across the meadow, heaving herself into the wind, and ignoring the rain.

  He was less than ten feet behind her now. ‘Stacey!’ he shouted again, his lungs burning, his heart pounding. ‘Stacey!’

  She was getting too close to the edge. She had to turn, now!

  ‘Stacey!’

  Then quite suddenly she stopped.

  Instinctively he stopped too as she spun round to face him.

  For several moments there was only the sound of the storm, and their eyes trying to connect through the rain.

  ‘It was an accident,’ she shouted.

  ‘I know,’ he shouted back.

  The wind was whipping at her hair, and tearing at her dress. It was too dark to see her expression, too treacherous to try and grab her.

  He took a step forward. ‘You’re too close to the edge,’ he told her, still having to shout.

  ‘You love her, don’t you?’ she cried shrilly.

  ‘It’s not about that …’

  ‘You’re a liar.’ She was still watching him, her hair blowing wildly around her head. She lifted a hand to clear her face.

  Quickly closing the distance between them, he grabbed her shoulders and tried to pull her to him.

  ‘You had a choice,’ she hissed, knocking him away. ‘Just now, when I came out of her house. You could have come after me, but you chose her.’

  ‘I thought she’d been shot!’

  ‘And that mattered more. No don’t!’ she snarled, as he tried to get hold of her again.

  ‘Stacey, you’ve got to listen to me …’

  ‘To your lies? I don’t want to hear them.’ Her eyes were blazing into his.

  He glared back.

  All at once the ground began sinking beneath her. ‘Oh my God!’ she gasped. She made a grab for his hand. ‘Chris!’

  ‘It’s OK, I’ve got you.’

  ‘Oh God! Don’t let me go.’

  The rain was lashing at them, the sea foaming like a hungry beast over the rocks below. He could feel the ground going under him now.

  ‘Chris!’ she pleaded. She looked up at him, her face ravaged with fear.

  ‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you.’ But they both knew it wasn’t true.

  Nick was halfway up the trail when Chris came charging towards him like a madman.

  ‘Call the lifeboat! Call the lifeboat!’ he shouted. Then dashing on to the beach, he began dragging one of the boats towards the sea.

  Nick ran into the pub. ‘Lifeboat!’ he yelled, then sped down to the beach.

  ‘You’ll kill yourself,’ he shouted at Chris. ‘You can’t go out there in that.’

  But Chris wasn’t listening.

  ‘I’m not going to let you,’ Nick cried, wrestling him away from the boat.

  Knocking him aside, Chris grabbed the boat again. ‘The lifeboat’s got too far to come,’ he raged.

  ‘For God’s sake, look at it out there, man!’ Nick yelled. ‘You’ll never make it.’

  The boat was sliding into the waves now, but as Chris made to leap in Nick caught him about the waist and threw him to the ground. Seconds later they were fighting furiously, rolling over the pebbles, into the surf, banging up against boats, crashing over buoys and crab pots, until finally they were pulled apart by the locals who’d come running out of the pub.

  Breathless, soaked to the skin, and with blood running from his nose, Chris dropped to his knees and pushed his hands into his hair. His pain was almost palpable for those who stood quietly watching him. Then looking up at the foul, misty night, where the sea was churning with a sickening might, and the rain was slicing like blades through the darkness, he spoke to her silently from his heart, so that only she could hear.

  No one had noticed the red glow on the horizon yet, like the small fan of a rising sun coming up over the wrong headland, but later they would all say what a curse, and a blessing, that storm turned out to be, for it was mainly due to the easterly gale and torrential rain that his house was saved from the fire.

  Chapter 30

  IT HAD BEEN a dreadful week, for everyone. The police inquiries had been so intense that they’d become almost more unnerving than the death itself, which was giving rise to so much speculation that Laurie had lost track now of how many theories there were as to what had really happened on that clifftop. Then there was the mystery of how the fire had started, the shock of Katherine Sumner’s arrest, and the small handgun that one eagle-eyed police officer had spotted on the trail up to the Frying Pan. The gun’s ownership had still not been made official, but everyone locally knew that it belonged to Chris.

  With so much food for gossip, and so many reporters around, the press was having a field day. Most of the information must have been coming from surrounding villages, for Laurie knew very well that the locals had closed ranks round each other, and around Chris. They weren’t talking to anyone unless they had to, and then they only said the absolute minimum.

  Now Laurie was on the train back to London, still dazed by the sheer weirdness and trauma of it all. Letting her head loll to one side she gazed blankly out at the passing countryside. It all seemed so prosaically grounded and normal after the turbulence of the past week, yet it was calming too, which she welcomed, for she’d probably never felt so exhausted or drained in her life. The funeral, this morning, had probably been the worst, when Stacey had been laid to rest with Chris’s parents in the small graveyard at Roon Moor. As far as Laurie knew, no one but Chris had viewed the body, except the lifeboatmen who’d found her, of course, and those at the coroner’s office, so at least for most the memory of her beauty remained intact. For some reason that had seemed important, because several had mentioned it, especially those who’d come down from London, such as Petey, her assistant, Ernesto Gomez the famed artist, and the gossipy actress Gloria Sullivan, whom Laurie had given a very wide berth.

  When the service was over, Chris and Rachel, heedless of gossip, had got into his car and travelled back to his house together. As far as Laurie knew it was the only private time they’d shared since that awful night, though it had been j
ust a few minutes, because the others were right behind them, arriving for the wake that Beanie and Jenny had arranged. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to ask Rachel then what they’d talked about, though she guessed Rachel would tell her when they got together later in the week. There would be a lot to discuss then, not least of all the question of why Stacey had set fire to her studio. They would probably never know for certain, though it seemed to be the fire that had started the gossip that her death was a suicide, rather than an accident. In killing herself she’d wanted to destroy Chris’s life too and had thought she might achieve that by burning down his house. Laurie didn’t think anyone had said that to Chris, but since few had seen or spoken to him, after the lifeboatmen had brought in her body, it wasn’t possible to know. The way he’d cut himself off had cast an even greater pall of sadness over the village, though that was almost nothing compared to the outrage they were all feeling towards the police who wouldn’t leave him alone. According to the rumour mill they were trying to find out if he’d killed her, which was insane, because they all knew him, and there was absolutely no way he’d ever do anything like that. But the police weren’t letting up; they’d even been there at the funeral, in their grey suits and clubby ties, fooling no one, and the villagers had considered it a disgrace. On today of all days they could have shown some respect.

  Laurie wondered how they were all going to react when he was finally arrested, which was certainly on the cards, though not for murder, which was all they were discussing, but for other offences entirely. Before her own arrest Katherine had told Laurie and Rachel everything she knew about him, which had been a lot harder for Rachel to hear than it had for Laurie, though Rachel was still insisting they keep open minds until they’d had a chance to speak to him themselves. That could be a while in coming, for he’d informed Beanie earlier that he’d be accompanying the police back to London once the funeral was over. From there it was really anyone’s guess what would happen next.