The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Blackley’s picture agency paid seven figures for exclusive rights to the wedding photos, and hired an army of security to make sure nobody else got a look-in.

  But that didn’t mean Angel couldn’t try.

  Getting into the grounds hadn’t been hard. Guile and flattery, for the most part, learned during the time Angel had spent taking her clothes off for a living. Even now, something of that former life exuded through her pores like raw sex.

  The dogs hadn’t caused her undue problems, either. She’d found the kennels the first night and bribed the motley collection of hounds. When they picked up her scent on their rounds they reacted as to a canine friend rather than an intruder. The handlers tugged the animals away, whining, from any proximity to her hiding place.

  But Angel was bored. And boredom brought a restless recklessness that made those who knew her check nervously for the nearest emergency exit. She’d been here three nights without a sniff. Now, the sun had risen on the big day and she’d failed to snap a single frame. She was, she recognized, probably on the verge of doing something stupid.

  And then somebody else did it for her.

  She heard laughter. A girlie giggle, coquettish, pretending shock but hiding an edge of triumph. Angel recognized the giggle of a woman who’s leading a man by the balls and both of them know it, and neither of them care.

  She felt the slight tremble of footsteps through the earth beneath her. A pair of shapely female legs, clad in pale stockings, came within a metre of Angel’s nose, picking carefully through the dewed grass, careful of telltale stains on the dainty satin shoes. The man’s legs were in official pinstripe morning dress.

  They passed close enough for her to smell their excitement.

  The bride’s mother was known as an uptight aristocrat who would never countenance the happy couple sharing a suite in anticipation. Maybe that was why they’d evaded their own babysitters for this last, unfettered quickie.

  Angel kept her head down until the legs had gone by, squirmed round in time to see the couple weaving away across the billiard-table lawn. There was no mistaking the trademark wild black hair of Johnny Franz.

  As soon as they were too far to hear the whirr, Angel brought the camera up to her eye and kept the shutter pressed.

  The Canon digital she was using was capable of ten frames a second and buffered just as fast. She took a long sequence of the couple’s back view, their hands all over each other.

  The gardens had been laid out in the mid-1800s, a vast testament to formal good taste, manicured within an inch of its life. At the end of the impossibly vibrant lawn, invisible from the main residence, was a wooden summer-house, built on a distant whim and rarely used. Angel knew entire families in Brixton who could have moved in and luxuriated in the extra space.

  The couple headed for the summer-house with clear intent, oblivious, almost grappling in their urgency. Johnny Franz had his hands up his intended’s skirts and Angel wondered if they would even wait until they got inside.

  George is going to want to have my children for this.

  And then, just as he grabbed for the door, Johnny swung the girl around so that Angel’s telephoto lens got a clear shot of her face for the first time, and she realized that wasn’t all her boss was going to have. A heart attack, most likely.

  Because the still-giggling girl Johnny pushed into the summerhouse was not who she was supposed to be. The long blonde hair was a similar shade and length, but the face was not the one that stared down from billboards and buses all over London. Angel checked the playback just to be sure, but there was no doubt.

  So, Johnny Franz was cheating on his beautiful, famous bride on the morning of their wedding with, unless Angel was very much mistaken, one of the bridesmaids.

  Even as the door closed behind them, Angel levered up, grabbing the padded backpack that held a second camera body, attached to a mid-length zoom lens. For this, she intended getting as close as she dared.

  She sprinted across the grass. If the way Johnny had been tugging at the bridesmaid’s dress was anything to go by, he wasn’t planning a slow seduction.

  The summer-house had two windows and Angel edged closer to one where the light would fall without the need for flash, not if she bumped up the ISO speed just a touch. For what she was about to give him, George could put up with a little noise in the pictures. Too perfect and they looked fake.

  There was nothing fake going on inside the summer-house. By the time Angel silently set down her bag, raising the viewfinder to her eye, Johnny had the bridesmaid thrust face down over a stack of lounger cushions, her skirts thrown over her back.

  With his trousers halfway down his skinny thighs, Angel could just make out yet another tattoo added to Johnny’s collection since Vanity Fair shot him coyly naked for their best-selling summer issue. The name “Caro” in gothic script across his left hip. Angel shot a decent close-up, just in case there were any later accusations of Photoshop.

  Johnny reached forwards and wrapped his hand in the girl’s hair like taking up the reins of a horse. He dragged her head back, his teeth bared in what might have been a snarl.

  This isn’t about the sex, Angel thought. This has never been about the sex.

  She lowered the camera and stumbled back, knowing she’d got more than enough, seen more than enough. Knowing, too, that she wouldn’t clear the foul taste from her mouth, even if she gargled with Stolichnaya for a fortnight.

  She scooped up her pack and ran for the trees. By the time the couple re-emerged, less urgent but more furtive, adjusting their clothing, Angel had the memory card bluetoothed to her Blackberry and uploading to her secure home server. Even if they caught her now, trashed her gear – as they had before – it would be too late.

  She shifted back to the telephoto and took a series of them walking away. From this she surmised the bridesmaid had not altogether enjoyed the experience. Not enough to overcome an instant blossom of guilt. She hurried, flushed, awkward, not waiting when Johnny paused infuriatingly to dip his head and light a cigarette as if he’d all the time in the world.

  Through the pin-sharp magnification of the lens, crosshaired by the focusing array, Angel watched him track the bridesmaid’s hasty retreat as he blew out the first wreath of smoke. He didn’t raise his head, but something about the predatory watchfulness of those legendary ice-blue eyes made her skin shimmy. Then he flicked the spent match into a nearby ornamental fountain, and he smiled.

  That was what did it.

  * * *

  In her spacious bedroom suite at the top of the east wing, Caro Urquart fussed with her hair. When she and Johnny first met, the length and the colour and the weight of it had captivated him.

  She’d been preparing for another wretched period drama – Africa this time. Growing her own hair was less cumbersome, less hot, than using one of her selection of wigs.

  Normally, the first thing she would have done after the final wrap party would have been to visit her stylist in New York for a total makeover. Her screen agent warned her keeping static wasn’t good for her career. “You mustn’t risk typecasting, darling,” he’d fretted at Cannes. “You have to keep reinventing yourself.”

  But when Johnny played her the hastily mixed demo for the new album, featuring “The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair” as title track and debut single, how could she have it cut or dyed? The song had debuted at number one, the album following suit, and Johnny had given her the platinum disc as a keepsake.

  Besides, once they were married she’d be cherry-picking roles anyway. On Jay Leno, Johnny declared he liked the idea of a working wife, but she knew that was just image talking. That secretly he’d be delighted to have her on the road with him, touring with the band – for part of the year, at least. Besides, she’d heard the rumours about those groupies …

  Caro teased her fringe into artfully casual disarray. Nobody realized how much effort it took, looking this damned natural all the time. She twisted her head sideways. And maybe it was time
for the little nip-and-tuck her beauty therapist suggested. She was nearly twenty-seven, after all.

  A small stone flipped against the window pane behind her, making her start. Her rooms were right at the top of the house, five storeys up. Who …?

  Then a smile lit her face. Johnny!

  The window led out on to a small balcony, level with the many-turreted rooftop. The suite had once been servants’ quarters, but Caro loved the view and had long since claimed it as her own.

  She flung open the window and stepped out.

  In the far corner of the balcony lounged a tall figure, just in the process of lighting a cigarette. She had the high slanted cheekbones of a model, black and white spiked hair, and she wore urban-cam cargoes and a skinny sleeveless T-shirt that revealed a strange interwoven Celtic symbol tattooed on her shoulder.

  Definitely not Johnny.

  For a moment Caro froze. Then her eyes flicked to the bag at the girl’s feet. To the very pro-looking camera balanced on the top of it.

  “Get out!” she thundered, voice quivering with anger. “How dare you!”

  The girl exhaled, giving Caro a narrow-eyed stare through a lungful of smoke. “I’m here to give, not take,” she said mildly. “Call it an early wedding present, if you like. And it took some dare to climb that ivy, I can tell you.” For the first time Caro noticed that the girl’s hands were shaking, her skin unnaturally pale and sheened with sweat.

  “Are you so desperate to snatch some grubby shot of me in my wedding gown, you’d risk your neck for it?” Caro demanded, incredulous.

  “I’ve got all the shots I want, and not of you,” the girl said. “I was never here for that – not really.”

  Cold fear trickled down the back of Caro’s spine. She shivered in her elaborate dress, despite the balmy air.

  “I know you,” she said, uncertain. “You were that model. That one who—”

  “Became a paparazza, yes,” the girl said flatly. “I take pictures people don’t want taken, of them doing things they don’t want publicized.” She took a last long drag on her cigarette and looked up suddenly into Caro’s face. The girl’s eyes were a remarkable shade of amber, golden like a cat. Coloured contacts? “And I’ve got something you really need to see.”

  Caro recoiled instinctively. “I don’t want—”

  “Didn’t say you’d want to, babe,” the girl said, almost gently. “But I’ve already cut a deal on these pictures. By tomorrow, you’re not going to be able to avoid them. And then it’ll be too late. Then you’ll have married the slimeball.”

  Caro swallowed. Common sense urged her to yell for help and have this insolent stranger thrown out. To watch as she was marched down the drive with Caro’s largest minder twisting her arm up her back, and kicking the bag of expensive cameras alongside him as he went. But the image of those groupies still clung.

  She stepped sideways, to the edge of the parapet, and glanced downwards. The creeper-clad stone walls stretched away towards the gravel below.

  “You really climbed all the way up here,” she murmured, “just to show me some pictures?”

  “Yes,” the girl agreed gravely. “And I don’t fancy going back the same way. So, if you’re going to have me chucked out, at least do it through the tradesman’s entrance, would you?”

  She picked up the camera. Caro stiffened, but the girl merely held it out to her. Cautiously, Caro took it from her. The action brought her near to the parapet again and her gaze returned to the seemingly impossible climb.

  It was more years than she could count since someone offered a favour and expected nothing in return, and Caro had grown cynical. She held the camera out over the long drop. It was surprisingly heavy.

  “What’s to stop me simply letting go?”

  The girl grinned. It transformed her face into that of a street urchin. “Absolutely nothing,” she said cheerfully. “But those Canons have a magnesium shell and are tough as old boots, so the lens would be knackered, but the memory card would survive. And that’s the bit you should worry about.”

  Caro considered for a moment, then slowly brought the camera back inside the parapet. “You’ve already made copies, haven’t you?” she realized bitterly.

  “Hell, yes,” the girl agreed, fervent. “Made copies and sold the rights, worldwide.”

  “So, what do you want from me?” Caro asked with brittle dignity. “Money?”

  The girl laughed outright. “Didn’t I already say I wasn’t selling? Johnny Franz deserves what’s coming to him.” She put her head on one side. “The only question is … do you?”

  “He loves me.” But even an actress of Caro’s skill heard the underlying uncertainty.

  “Hm. I’m sure that’s what all those starstruck teenagers thought, before he damn-near raped them,” the girl said deliberately. “You know how many he’s paid off?” When Caro didn’t respond, she shrugged. “Well, can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  She took the camera out of Caro’s momentarily nerveless fingers, squatted to repack it into its padded bag, adding in conversational tones, “Personally, I don’t see what all the fuss is about with that boy. From what I saw, I’d rate him maybe a four out of ten – for energy if not for style. And that’s only because sometimes I can go a little rough.” She rose easily, flashed Caro a doubtful smile from beneath that Cruella de Vil-style hair. “Good luck, babe – you’re going to need it.”

  * * *

  When Caro Urquart began her walk down the aisle, gasps from the assembled congregation greeted her appearance. The dress with its mile-long silk train carried by a single bridesmaid, that distinctive golden hair under the diaphanous veil, the perfect bunch of white orchids in her hands.

  It took them a moment to wonder why she wasn’t on the arm of her father, and another to realize she seemed in something of a hurry to meet the handsome rock star in his trademark swaggered pose alongside the waiting priest.

  Caro reached the altar faster than rehearsals had predicted, paused while the organist tried to catch up and eventually floundered into silence. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, lips slightly parted, the bridesmaid fussing with her train.

  Johnny Franz failed to notice any of this lapse in timing. He stepped forwards with that famous killer smile and gently lifted the veil away from his fiancée’s face.

  “You are the love of my life,” he murmured, just loud enough to carry to the guy ghost-writing his autobiography, seated two rows back.

  “Really?” Caro said blandly, her own voice the one she’d perfected on the West End stage to be clearly audible in the Gods. “So, who was the little bitch-in-heat you were shagging in the summerhouse this morning, then?”

  Johnny’s guilty eyes flew to the bridesmaid, only then realizing that she was taller than he remembered. She hadn’t been wearing a blonde wig then, either, and he was pretty sure there’d been no tattoos.

  And she definitely hadn’t had a camera hidden somewhere that she was now using to fire off frame after frame of unflattering close-ups.

  Bewildered by his own rush of guilt, his gaze jerked back to Caro.

  “‘The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair’?” she thundered, temper finally breaking loose. “How about ‘The Girl with Her Fist in Your Face’, you cheating bastard!”

  Johnny never saw the first punch coming.

  * * *

  The tabloid banner headlines quoted her verbatim the following day, above one of Angel’s exclusive photographs from the church. It showed Caro’s delicate clenched fist frozen at the very moment of contact, square on the side of Johnny Franz’s jaw. A perfect shot, with his chin tucked back and his eyes shut and his cheeks bloated in shocked surprise, just a fleck of spittle spraying outwards to show the force of the blow.

  Caro’s own face had blazed with righteous fury, proving that she was one of the few women who truly was more beautiful when she was angry.

  Immediately afterwards, Caro’s agent started fielding calls from the major studios, offering her leading
roles in big-budget action adventures. She chose that of an ice-cool assassin in a sci-fi epic, playing it with golden contacts, spiked black and white hair, and a number of curious tattoos.

  She refused to be drawn by David Letterman on her source of inspiration. The movie became the blockbuster hit of the summer.

  After Angel’s pictures from the summer-house hit the Internet, three girls came forward to lodge formal complaints about Johnny’s often vicious sexual style in the back of the tour bus after gigs. One of them was only fifteen.

  The resultant police investigation meant the second single from The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair barely made it into the Top Twenty on release, and dropped rapidly down the charts. His next album tanked.

  Blackley’s agency attempted to recover their outlay, but since the pictures Angel took were, strictly speaking, not of the wedding, Johnny’s lawyers were stalling. He had other things to worry about.

  Caro sent Angel an open-ended offer to be her bridesmaid for real – as and when the actress made another trip down the aisle. Angel’s texted refusal was more regretful than it sounded. She had no desire to become her own prey.

  George, who perhaps knew her best of anyone, sent her a case of Stolichnaya.

  With her commission, Angel went to Oklahoma for the start of the tornado season, capturing shots of an F4 touching down just outside Tulsa, which she sold to National Geographic.

  “Stunning,” George said, thoughtful, when she brought him a copy of the magazine. He peered at the invented by-line. “Bloody shame you couldn’t use your real name on this, kiddo.”

  Angel was lounging by the cracked-open office window, blowing experimental smoke-rings out over Canary Wharf. Today, her hair was pink and her eyes were a vivid aquamarine. She shrugged. She hadn’t forgotten the guy in the doorway opposite the embassy.

  Always get the money.

  “As long as they get my name right on the cheque,” she said, with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “what do I care?”