‘We’re going to have to ask you to stay with us, sir,’ one of the constables said.
‘Not just yet, lads.’
42
HE RAN TO THE CHEROKEE and tore into central London, stopping a block away from the hotel. Fans and paparazzi crowded the streets either side of the Dorchester’s main entrance, corralled behind barriers. At the entrance itself were police, doormen and private security in fluorescent tabards. No parking allowed: chauffeured cars circled the place like vultures.
No way in.
But you couldn’t defend it all. The hotel building spread over a square kilometre; some of its bars and restaurants had their own entrances. Belsey started around the perimeter. Twenty metres down Park Lane, he found China Tang. A couple of extra security guards stood coldly by the doors. They eyed Belsey as he approached, looking for cameras or any other pap kit, but didn’t move to block him. A maitre d’ appeared fast, against a backdrop of dark wood and art-deco glass.
‘Booking in the name of Belsey.’ The man bent over the reservations book. Belsey moved past, weaving between restaurant tables to the double doors that led into the hotel.
The maitre d’ called out as they slammed shut behind him. Belsey found himself in a long, opulent, salmon-coloured room, with people taking high tea amongst pillars and flowers. A man in coat-tails played a grand piano. Belsey turned left, past the piano, past staff in red waistcoats all nodding and smiling at him. At the far end was another set of double doors, where the private security started again. He knew where he’d find the wedding.
‘Sir!’ a man behind him shouted, unmistakably in his direction. Belsey checked his options. He saw a girl in a pink costume walking fast, a promo girl, with a bag full of bottles of Bride. She disappeared through a small, unmarked door.
‘Excuse me, sir—’
Belsey followed her through the doorway. On the other side was a long unlit corridor with palm trees in pots. He dragged a pot in front of the door. The door slammed against it. The promo girl turned.
‘Where’s the wedding?’ Belsey asked. She pointed ahead, glanced at the obstructed door. ‘Let’s go quickly,’ he said. He accompanied her swiftly around the next corner into a cramped little room filled with bags and coats. A second young woman in pink was checking her phone. She wore a tray with a neck-strap, like a cigarette-girl, but loaded with perfume. At the sight of Belsey she put her phone away guiltily. There was a second door with a full-length mirror on its back. Belsey opened it and walked into the wedding.
Five hundred expensively dressed guests filled the ballroom, beneath chandeliers and purple drapes, amongst ice sculptures of the bride and groom, and pyramids of champagne flutes. Belsey was beside the stage. A band played a jazz version of one of Amber’s hits. A few guests danced; most clustered around the alcohol, the trays of miniature hamburgers, the famous.
Belsey entered the crowd, took a glass of champagne, scanned the faces around him. He saw security appearing behind him, through the door he’d used, moved deeper in. A few metres away, beside one of the ice sculptures, he saw Karen with a man in white; Amber’s new husband, looking tanned and pleased. Then they moved apart and Belsey saw Amber. She shone out, her face and arms caught in an explosion of satin and crystal. She looked unreal, bejewelled and dazed.
She looked drugged.
Her entourage stayed close by, monitoring her face for any re-emergence of Stella Polaris. A couple of feet behind them, loitering beside a table of desserts, stood Mark Doughty.
He stared at Belsey. Belsey raised his glass. No response. Belsey took a step forward. Mark reached inside his jacket and brought out a carving knife.
Belsey carried on towards him. Karen turned. She clocked Belsey, stared in disbelief.
‘Oh my god,’ she said, searching for security. ‘It’s him!’ She pointed at Belsey. Two more security guards approached fast. Belsey continued towards Mark, who stepped forward and grabbed Amber. He got a hand around the top of her right arm, gripped the knife in his left. The tip of the blade brushed her cheek. It took guests a second to respond, then someone screamed.
The crowd rippled backwards, away from the couple. Plates fell. The music lurched to a halt. Then you could hear the crackle of the guards’ radios. Mark tried to move Amber towards the door.
Amber stumbled. A man launched himself at the pair and got caught in an awkward tangle of limbs. There were more screams. Someone else rushed to help, then rushed back fast. By the time Belsey could see what was going on there was blood. The man who’d tried to intervene was on his knees, holding his arm. Amber had bright blood splashed across her dress and face. Mark pressed his lips to her ear.
Pockets of the crowd stampeded towards the exits. Mark started again, trying to manoeuvre Amber onwards. A wall of twenty thugs in fluorescent yellow stood between him and the door.
‘Mark,’ Belsey said, feeling more likely than the hired muscle to steer this to a peaceful conclusion. Security looked at him, contemplating this dubious negotiator. ‘Put the knife down, Mark, and they’ll let you both go.’
The guards considered this. Mark considered this. Then they all turned, as an unintelligible roar came from the main doors. Armed police crashed in, black caps, bulky Kevlar, waving baton guns and G36 assault rifles and roaring ‘Get down!’ and ‘Put the knife down!’ They saw the blood and the lead officer fired his Taser. Mark fell, twitching, to the ground.
They moved for Amber. She backed away. This caused some confusion. Wedding guests approached her. Amber picked up the knife, climbed onto the stage, then, when people approached the stage, she clambered up onto a speaker cabinet. Blood ran down her neck to her dress. All eyes were on her now.
Belsey slipped out.
He walked through the hotel, past the police back-up and security, the waiters and guests, onto Park Lane. The armed-response vans had blocked traffic. He stretched his arms and breathed. Someone barrelled into him.
Belsey hit the floor hard. His head smacked the side of a car. He was turned face down, nose pressed into the pavement, arms wrenched behind him, wrists cuffed tight.
They lifted him to his feet and threw him into the back of a police van.
43
BELSEY SPENT TEN MINUTES GETTING his wind back. His head throbbed and he’d taken a knock to his right knee. He was dazed. Eventually he had breath, then he slowed his breathing and relaxed. Through his half-open eyes he watched the light flicker through the van’s window. He could feel every bump in the road. This is what a corpse feels like, Belsey thought, transported in its coffin. Like a child in a pram. No decisions to make. After twenty minutes he wondered where they were going. He couldn’t hear any voices or police radios. No one in the back with him.
He smelled whisky.
Belsey hauled himself upright. McGovern sat alone up front. No grille separating them. It was an officer transportation van. They were on a motorway.
‘Geoff.’
‘Nick.’
‘What’s going on?’
No answer. McGovern kept his eyes on the road, jaw tense. There was a half-bottle of Bell’s beside the handbrake.
‘Is Mark alive?’ McGovern asked, after a moment.
‘He was the last time I saw him.’
‘Amber?’
‘I hope so.’ Then Belsey clocked a road sign.
‘Heathrow?’
McGovern reached into his jacket, placed Belsey’s passport on the passenger seat.
‘You’ve got two hours to be out of the country.’
‘There’s a warrant on me. I’ll be on the list.’
‘You might find you’re not.’
‘You took me off?’
‘People slip through the cracks. While the cracks last.’ McGovern checked the dashboard clock. ‘Which I reckon will be eight or nine hours. By which time you’re going to be very far away, aren’t you.’
‘You fucking beauty.’
McGovern remained expressionless. Belsey climbed awkwardly through to the pas
senger seat. ‘Take the cuffs off.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’ McGovern negotiated the junction with the M25 and continued south towards the airport.
‘Are you flying as well?’ Belsey asked. No response. ‘How much did you make?’
‘Not enough for the shit I’ve had to deal with.’
He was on a mission now, Belsey saw. Up against it. Bullseye with a last-ditch plan.
‘You told him about Melanie Crews,’ Belsey said.
‘That’s right.’
‘So he could mind-fuck me.’
‘Thought it might shut you up.’
‘What else did you tell him?’
‘Nothing much. He was a psycho bastard.’
‘He was all right until you showed up.’
‘Sure, raking in thirty or forty quid a week. I should have left him to it. What a fucking shower.’ McGovern shook his head, unsettled.
‘Awful for you.’
‘This is the second time today I’ve tried to give you an airport transfer rather than a knife in the face. You might want to show a bit of gratitude.’
‘Those amateurs were taking me to the airport?’
‘I don’t know why I bother sometimes.’
‘Give me a swig.’
McGovern took one hand from the wheel, poured some whisky into Belsey’s mouth. Someone in an adjacent car stared. McGovern stuck two fingers up, floored the accelerator. Belsey laughed.
‘Last time we were at Heathrow together we were picking up Kevin Sanders,’ Belsey said.
‘The Colonel himself.’ McGovern took another swig, didn’t offer it.
‘He couldn’t get off the plane. Do you remember? Twenty-five stone of him. Totally obliterated.’
‘Not the man I’d send on a recce to Barbados,’ McGovern said.
‘Red as a postbox. With his suitcase full of those painted coconuts.’
‘The Chief made him strip to see the tan lines.’
Belsey laughed. ‘And there’s no tan lines. He’s burnt all over.’ He remembered it now, the Chief’s nasal disdain. Did I say you were to go fucking native, Kevin? ‘Where did Kevin Sanders end up?’ Belsey asked.
‘Fuck knows.’ McGovern slowed as they approached the junction for Terminals 2 and 3. Long-haul. Chain hotels dotted the landscape. ‘Where do you think you’ll go?’ McGovern asked.
‘Mexico.’
‘Good.’
‘They’ve got a saying there. “Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo.” “The devil knows more from being old than from being the devil.”’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘I don’t know. I’m going to ask them.’
Belsey eased the pressure off his wrists and settled back in his seat. The air-traffic control tower appeared ahead, then the airport’s multi-storey car park. He breathed, enjoying the sight of a plane soaring away from the horizon. It struck him as gleeful, a fuck-you to the surface of the Earth; to England, the M25, the Premier Inn. Its vapour trail caught the afternoon sunlight so that, for a moment, it looked as if the sky had been ripped open to reveal another sky behind, the real one, which was golden.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OLIVER HARRIS has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, in addition to degrees in English and Shakespeare studies, and recently received his PhD. His first novel, The Hollow Man, launched the Detective Nick Belsey series. He also reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in London.
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ALSO BY OLIVER HARRIS
The Hollow Man
Deep Shelter
FURTHER READING
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE HOUSE OF FAME. Copyright © 2016 by Oliver Harris. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Jonathan Cape.
EPub Edition January 2017 ISBN 9780062405166
ISBN 978-0-06-240515-9 (pbk.)
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