‘Two such awful parents,’ said Laura quietly, ‘have made such a sweet child.’
‘Oh, God, I don’t believe I heard you say that. Sweet child!’
‘He’s a nice boy, with beautiful manners. He’s also well educated. At least you can have an intelligent conversation with him.’
‘Really?’ Justin teased. ‘Well, perhaps you should make sure you have these intelligent conversations within range of the microphones because so far he’s the only one you keep skirting around.’
‘I do not.’
‘Yes, you do, and I’m sick of it. The rules are clear. You get every single one of them, Laura. That’s what you’re being paid for. Now, I’ve got to call William and give him a progress report. What do you want me to tell him? That you think that little prick is a sweet boy?’
‘I want to speak to him when he calls,’ she said.
‘Now you’re really annoying me,’ snapped Justin. ‘So go. Go on, get out.’
Laura wandered to the door then turned back to him. ‘Don’t get nasty with me, Justin, you know how it upsets me.’
He forced a smile and told her he loved her, but she had gone before he could kiss her and make up. He knew he had been brusque with her, and part of him excused it because he was getting closer to their payback. Only one of the guests mattered to Justin, the main man, and he couldn’t care less about the others. He didn’t want anything to go wrong so he was being over-cautious with Matlock. But although he tried to remain calm, tension was building in him. And he could not admit that he was jealous of that kid Max. It infuriated him.
The wine cellar, unlike the rest of the house, had not been renovated, but remained almost as it had been when Justin and Laura were children. Marta lit some candles.
‘They must not be hurt,’ said Marta. ‘They are still children, especially Laura. She is the most fragile. She cannot be without Justin, she is dependent on him. Without him she would be locked up again.’
‘Laura?’ asked William, perched on a dusty barrel in the dark. The damp cellar chilled him. ‘Has she been locked up in the past, then?’
Marta was rooting about behind a rack of red burgundies. ‘Most of her life,’ she whispered, and pulled out a dusty cardboard box. Inside was a black leather photograph album filled with newspaper cuttings. She passed it to William and sat silently beside him, letting him read.
The headlines were beyond belief: ‘Killer Angels’, ‘Deadly Babes’, ‘Devil Children Let Loose’. On and on went the hideous clippings, describing what William now knew to be two tragic children.
‘They killed both their parents?’ he asked. Marta nodded. ‘And the police were called by the nanny?’
‘That’s right,’ said Marta, pointing to a photo of her. ‘They stabbed her and pushed her into the pool, but by some superhuman effort she dragged herself out and crawled down to the village where she raised the alarm.’
William wondered why the police hadn’t picked up on Justin’s background when Maynard died. He had been the main beneficiary of Maynard’s will, after all. Then he remembered that children’s criminal records are only kept for a few years. As they grew up, the pair must have been given a clean slate and allowed to go free. Furthermore, the children had adopted a new name, Chalmers. Provided they were never caught again, the police would be none the wiser.
‘What happened to the nanny in the end?’ asked William.
‘She died in a car accident, I think. I recall Justin reading something to me a few years back now – well, actually to Laura. I don’t remember all the details, just that he was cutting out the article. I think I asked him who she was and …’ Marta frowned. ‘Is this important?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Well, that’s it, really. He was reading the newspaper and cutting it out. He said she had been their nanny. That’s all.’ Marta turned a few pages, then paused. She pointed to a clipping. ‘This is about her funeral in London.’
‘Camilla Maynard.’ William’s stomach churned. ‘Did she have a brother, cousin, any relative called Andrew?’
He had a vision of the dead man floating in the overflowing bathtub, the water pink. He felt the sweat trickle down his back as he recalled Maynard talking about a much older sister who had died in a car accident. It had to be a coincidence, he thought, but he shuddered as he now saw the story’s chilling logic.
‘Answer me. It’s very important, Marta. Have you ever heard Justin mention Andrew Maynard? In connection with this nanny, perhaps?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘But you must have met him, surely. He stayed here at the villa – a tall, dark-haired man. A young English politician.’
Marta hesitated, and nodded slowly.
‘Ah yes, I did meet him, I mean, I served him his meals once or twice. But really, I hardly spoke to him.’
‘But he came here frequently. You must know more.’
‘Well, Justin explained that he wanted to be alone with him as much as possible, so I sometimes went on vacation when he came. Sometimes I went to see Laura. She was booked into clinics, you know, when she relapsed. She’s very fragile … physically as well as mentally.’
William asked her to continue her story of their childhood.
‘French law decreed that they couldn’t be locked up or tried there. They were too young. They were sent instead to a specialist psychiatric unit for disturbed children in England and my friend, Frances, took them into her home, as I told you. All was fine, until a budding young journalist wanted a scoop to kick off his career. He pressed on and on, determined to get his story. It became clear that they could not attend school, could not live in an ordinary home without people throwing bricks through the window. The stress of being hounded made them both become difficult. I don’t know exactly what went on. All I do know for sure is that they were taken away, separated.’ She showed William a garish paperback book. ‘Their case was then taken up by the British courts.’
‘Lord Chief Justice Bellingham,’ muttered William under his breath. The pieces of the jigsaw were slowly fitting together.
‘Justin was sent to borstal, Laura to a psychiatric hospital. The author probably didn’t even know what he had done. He wrote about their separation as if he had made some successful coup, but he ruined their lives.’
William glanced down at the cover, emblazoned with a picture of two pretty children wielding an axe that dripped blood. Angels or Devils? It was by Humphrey Matlock.
The book smelt of the dank, musty cellar. It contained further pictures: Laura’s frightened face as a small child being carried by a police officer, Laura’s face at a barred window, Laura in a garden aged twelve. There were more snatched photographs that had obviously been taken from some distance by the spying journalist, each one slightly blurred.
One photograph in particular made William want to weep: Laura in a car with raindrops trickling down the window, waving, a sweet smile on her angelic face. Then came pictures of Justin, who, unlike his sister, showed no sign of terror on his boyish face. He glared out from one photograph after another. There was one of him in a blaze of anger, hurling something towards the camera. There were a few photographs of the children together, hand in hand in sombre school uniforms. In the last section, there were pictures of their parents. William tried hard to imagine exactly what these two inhuman creatures could have been like. Their father’s eyes seemed pale and washed-out. His close-cropped hair and tidy beard made him look like D. H. Lawrence. Hard as he tried, William could not detect cruelty in their appearance. The last picture showed their mother holding Laura on her knee, her husband standing behind her chair with his hand resting on his small son’s shoulders. They looked like a normal happy family.
William read the book from cover to cover. It was, he hated to admit, well written and engrossing. He was intrigued when he read a quote from a nanny, who had obviously refused to give her name, which described the way the children had made sexual advances towards her and attempted to kill he
r. She was quoted as saying: ‘I knew from the first day I began caring for them that these were not normal children. They were too well behaved. Their manner was formal, and they seemed to be constantly entwined, at times speaking as one. The boy was over-protective of his sister. They even slept together. I saw them feed each other like birds. Yet, on the surface they looked like angels. I soon discovered a terrible, dark side to them. They frightened me. They were truly evil. Maybe they became that way because of whatever they had been subjected to by their parents. But I will never forget the nightmare I became embroiled in, and all I want now is to forget I ever met them. But it is hard to forget the sight of Laura and Justin, with their father’s blood dripping from their hands. It has haunted me.’
With that comment hanging in his mind, William closed his eyes. He felt leaden. He, too, had become embroiled in their lives, but he believed them to be far more dangerous as adults. It gradually dawned on him that he had been used. He now knew that the charade into which he had been drawn had been set up for one reason alone. William chastised himself for his blindness. How could he have allowed this to go on? His weakness and vanity gave him the answer. He had so wanted to get back at people and he had believed the lies he had been told because he wanted to. If he had applied just a modicum of his intellect, he would surely have been suspicious. He bowed his head, ashamed. He knew deep down in his heart that he had uncovered the truth. All along he had been suspicious about Maynard’s death and particularly the suicide note. Had Justin murdered him and written the note?
He recalled how Justin had gone through his hit-list, leaving only four main targets. No matter which way he looked at the overall picture, it was so sick it beggared belief. He recalled asking Justin whether or not he should invite his victims’ children, and he had replied that William’s own son and daughter had suffered at the hands of the press, so why not? He felt the ground opening up beneath him; dear God, had Oliver Bellingham been a part of it too? He was Lord Chief Justice Bellingham’s grandson after all. Had Justin’s revenge been planned to hurt even the younger, innocent generation? His blood ran cold. On the island there were three kids: James Matlock, Clarissa Hangerford and Max von Garten. Was Justin directing his madness against them? Hadn’t he said that they deserved to be punished?
William paced up and down erratically, as his mind jumped backwards and forwards. He had agreed, he had encouraged Justin! The sins of the fathers … Dear God! What monster had he released in his name? The fear that Justin would hurt the women and their children escalated in him. But surely even Justin wouldn’t do that, would he? But Oliver Bellingham was dead …
Chapter Seventeen
Max had been waiting almost an hour at Suicide Point and was about to give up when he saw her running, her skirt held high in her hands and her wonderful hair flying loose like a silver wave. His heart leaped with joy as he held out his arms. She threw herself into them and hugged him tightly. ‘Oh, I have missed you so much, but I just couldn’t get away to see you. We have to be so careful.’ They embraced and then she eased him forward.
‘Laura, take care, we’re very close to the edge,’ Max said.
She laughed at him. ‘Don’t be afraid. Are you scared to look down?’
‘Terrified,’ he said, holding her hand tightly.
They linked arms and, from a safe distance, looked over the edge to the swirling water thrashing the rocks below.
‘Would you jump if I asked you to?’ she asked.
‘No, because it would mean I had to leave you.’
‘Would you jump if I was dead?’
He drew her close. ‘Don’t say things like that, even as a joke.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Justin saw them embracing like lovers and his face tightened with jealousy but he couldn’t look away. He called her name. Laura drew away from Max and listened.
‘It’s Justin,’ Max said, pointing, and they looked along the narrow pathway to where he stood.
‘We’re going to Tortola tonight. Are you coming?’
Max looked at Laura, who hesitated. ‘I can’t,’ she said, then smiled at Max. ‘You go. It’ll be fun.’
‘I want to be with you,’ Max said.
‘I can’t, I have to … see someone. It’s arranged.’
‘Is it Justin?’ asked Max. ‘You don’t want to come because of him?’
Justin was jumping the rocky surface, getting closer. ‘Yes, yes. We must keep our love secret. Trust me. I don’t want William to hear any rumours about us, not until I’ve told him face to face.’
Justin was beside him. He hooked his arm around Max. ‘You coming?’
‘Er, yes, why not?’
‘Run along, then. Go get your glad rags on. You’ve got about twenty minutes to get that fluff off your chin.’
Max looked at Laura, but she averted her eyes and he had no option but to leave them. He hated the way Justin had spoken to him, as if he was a twelve-year-old.
As soon as Max was out of earshot, Laura punched her brother. ‘You needn’t have done that,’ she said.
‘I did! Sneaking off to places you know I can’t film or record. I’d say you were doing it to make me jealous.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not being silly. We don’t have much time and we have an agenda to keep. Next minute William’s gonna be back, before we’ve done the dirty deed. Or deeds.’
‘I’m on schedule. Haven’t you seen the videos from this afternoon?’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’ve done the deed with Angela Matlock so I’m getting the job done. Are you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Justin, pulling Laura towards him. ‘It’s just this Max thing. I don’t want you distracted, and you are.’
‘I’m fond of Max and I don’t see what’s wrong with that. And with him it’s fun. It’s always horrible with everyone else. I notice you seem to enjoy teasing the Matlocks’ son.’
‘So you’ve fallen for him?’
‘I have not. He’s young, he’s naïve, and sometimes it’s nice to get screwed without a hidden agenda,’ she lied.
Justin lifted her hair away from her face and kissed her neck.
‘No, Justin, not here.’ She had never rejected him before.
‘I want you.’
She felt like weeping: lie was beginning to follow lie. ‘I want you too, but please not here. Someone might see.’
Justin nuzzled and kissed her cheek. ‘You’re right. It’s me who’s dumb. It’s just that seeing you screwing everyone else keeps turning me on.’
‘Never bothered you before.’ She was calming down now, more in control. ‘You get into such bad tempers, don’t you?’
‘Maybe because I know we’re about to reach the big climax, and I don’t want anything to distract us. We’re so close, Laura, so close. I just want everyone gone, off the island so we can be together. But we can’t until it’s done.’
He turned away from her, his eyes brimming with tears, and she could barely hear what he was saying. ‘I get scared. I know I couldn’t do it on my own, not without you. I’ve always needed you.’
She linked her arm with his. She could never resist him when he was like this, vulnerable. ‘If anyone’s around I’m not going inside your room with you.’
‘There’s no one,’ he whispered, but he knew there was. He knew the lovesick boy was watching them.
As they were heading for Justin’s bungalow, James looked out of his window. Although he didn’t spot Laura and Justin, he saw Max approaching, pushed open the shutters and shouted to him, ‘Hey, Max, you coming with us?’
Max whipped around, startled. He wanted to follow Laura and Justin. ‘Bit tired. Listen, I’ve got to go.’
Max tried to walk on, but James was still talking to him. ‘You were waterskiing with Justin again today, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, I was. Listen, James, I really have to go.’
‘Where to?’
>
Max sighed with impatience. ‘For Christ’s sake, James, I’m gonna see my parents.’
James hesitated, then said, ‘Is he coming on to you?’
‘What?’ Max was confused.
‘You heard. Is Justin hitting on you?’ James’s face was flushed.
‘You’re talking like an idiot, James. Why? Has he been coming on to you?’
James shouted, ‘You calling me a poof?’
‘Jesus Christ, James, what’s the matter with you?’
James leaped from his veranda and swung a punch at Max, who staggered and fell. Before he could get to his feet, James kicked him in the groin. ‘Stay away from him, you hear me? Just stay away from Justin.’ He went back into his own room and straight for the cocaine. He didn’t bother to chop a line, but stuck his nose over the vial and snorted till his eyes smarted and ran with tears.
Justin’s attentiveness to James had gone unnoticed by the others, although he had made sure he constantly brushed against the younger boy as he helped him up into the ski-boat from the water, or to put on his sub-aqua gear. At times, he casually laid an arm across James’s shoulders. James was quicker on the uptake than Justin had expected, an easier fish to bait than his father would be. The truth, of course, was that Justin was not at all interested in James.
Justin was sure that James was bisexual and had had more than a few experiences beyond schoolboys’ hot kisses. It would have been fun breaking Matlock’s son in to some sex games, but he doubted the boy would need much encouragement, which took all the enjoyment out of it for himself. What Justin had not contemplated, though, was that James would become obsessed with him, as Oliver Bellingham had. Perhaps he would die like him too.
Max wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve and took his time getting back on his feet. His balls felt like they were on fire. He rubbed his crotch then headed to his own room, grabbed some ice, wrapped it in a napkin and held it over his face. James was obviously as high as a kite.
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