The intention had not been to work up an appetite on her long hike. She had just meant to let off some steam, because hanging around the public areas of the Hotel Tylösand, hoping to catch a glimpse of Vivienne Winter, was driving Christine mad with frustration. Vivienne was staying, of course, in one of the fifth-floor penthouse suites, with her own private terrace for total privacy and optimal sea views. Christine craned her head back to see if she could spot a small figure on the large wraparound, glass-walled balcony at one corner of the hotel building, doubtless wrapped in Vivienne’s signature furs. No; the floor-to-ceiling glass windows were all closed. She didn’t expect Vivienne to eat meals in the restaurants, of course, but the actress would have to descend to the spa for her daily visits, and that was when Christine was hoping to snatch a word with her, when she was relaxed from a spa treatment and likely to be amenable.
It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was all she had. She had visited Vivienne’s Mayfair apartment building, but her housekeeper had told her through the intercom that Ms Winter was at her villa in Montreux, and to write to her at that address. Christine had pleaded that she had written numerous letters to both the London and Montreux addresses, contacted Vivienne’s various agents and business managers, and heard nothing back; the shrug the housekeeper gave in response to this was almost audible. But then, finding out from an online gossip magazine that Vivienne was in Tylösand for her annual spa trip, Christine had realized that it would be much easier to gain access to Vivienne here.
But no one could sit still indefinitely – especially not a twenty-six-year-old woman on a mission. Not even in such a beautiful spa area, all Scandi simplicity, pale wood, clear glass, and a deep central hot pool with a seating area in which Christine had spent hours so far pretending to read her Kindle while keeping a perpetual eye out for the actress. After days of this, feeling as if she were going to burst out of her skin, Christine had been unable to stay put any longer.
Now, her restlessness burnt off, she looked ruefully down at her trainers, which were as damp and clotted with sand as the treads of the wooden staircase. A thin, fit blonde in full trekking gear jogged past her with enviable ease straight up the path, casting a glance at Christine’s comparatively feeble workout clothes – jeans, a too-thin hoodie, and the trainers that had repeatedly slipped on the rocky path. The blonde doubtless meant the look sympathetically, but Christine couldn’t help taking it as judgement, and she grimaced in embarrassment at her comparative lack of fitness and suitable attire.
I’m a failure, she thought in total gloom. I’m spending a fortune for nothing, I’m in the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life but I can’t even enjoy it. And I really ought to go to the gym more often! Look how that woman’s running up the hill – she’s barely breaking a sweat, her face was hardly even pink – God, I wish I was in that sort of shape!
She knew she should get back, have a shower, take up her vigil again in the spa area. But the fresh air was so bracing, and as soon as the negative thoughts flooded in – fear of never managing to meet Vivienne, guilt about not exercising regularly – the salt breeze seemed to sweep them away again, making her optimistic despite everything. And the damp sand, stretching out in front of her, was so tempting . . .
Christine had avoided walking too close to the water on her outward trek, but at this point her trainers were already wet: in for a penny, in for a pound. So she greeted the impulse to climb down to the beach and start making footprints with absolute delight. Childish, silly fun for a little while was exactly what she needed to help distract her from her gloomy thoughts, and as she ran across the beach she looked back gleefully to see the line her feet had made in the sand.
It was low season, with a grey sky and heavy clouds overhead, a few drops of rain falling now and then: weather unattractive enough to dissuade most people from venturing outside, apart from a fitness freak running up the rock path, or a visiting Englishwoman who was going stir-crazy. There was just one other figure visible far down at the other end of the beach, walking a couple of dogs, distant enough not to see Christine capering around like a crazy woman. She’d never been taken to the beach when she was little, never played as a child on wet sand, trying to get the patterns she was making absolutely perfect, and for a few moments she was genuinely delighted at the fun she was having. It felt like catching up for lost time, an impulsive reward for all the years spent studying rather than playing . . .
She was so absorbed that she was quite oblivious both to how sodden her feet were getting and to the large, black-sheathed figure emerging from the cold waters of the Baltic Sea, just a few metres down from where she was messing around on the beach like a kid. The figure, seeing Christine, stopped to watch her antics, tilting back its face mask and snorkel for a better view. It was a man, built square and solid, his frame blocky, the shiny, sleek wetsuit making him look almost like a mythical hybrid of man and seal rising from the depths of the ocean.
He stood there for a while, seeming unaffected by the cold water lapping around his thighs, the heavy push and pull of the waves. Eventually he spoke, timing it for the moment when Christine had finished a particularly ambitious zigzagging outline. She jumped in total shock, looking around the beach frantically for the source of the voice; only when he repeated his greeting did she swivel round, trainers churning up the sand, to see him standing there in the sea.
‘Shit!’ she said involuntarily. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack! Where did you come from?’
The man opened his mouth, paused for a second, and then said:
‘English, yes?’ in a strong accent.
‘Yes! You really scared me! Isn’t it a bit cold to be swimming?’
He said something that sounded like: ‘Zdra-stvooy-tye,’ bowing in a comically formal way as he did so. ‘I am sorry for scaring! Hello! English good,’ he continued. ‘English people very good and kind.’
‘Um, thank you,’ Christine said, baffled now not just about where he had come from, but where this was going. He was wading out of the sea now, and she watched the strong, steady thrust of his heavily muscled thighs and calves through the water with considerable appreciation. The wetsuit clung to him, a second skin that displayed not just his solid torso, his flat stomach and imposing pectorals to great effect, but also his considerable biceps.
I do need to get back inside on Vivienne watch, she told herself, but this is certainly perking up my day. No harm having a friendly chat with Hot Wetsuit Man, is there?
‘Please, tell me that you are kind English woman,’ Hot Wetsuit Man said. As he emerged from the Baltic she saw that he was wearing flippers. The fact that he was managing to walk across the sand in them without looking like a clumsy, waddling idiot was almost as impressive as his musculature.
‘I usually am,’ Christine said warily as he reached her and, to her great surprise, took her hand, sandwiching it between both of his. He stood looking down at her, his mask pushed high on his forehead like a pair of sunglasses, his eyes a light, bright blue, the hair plastered to his scalp a dark rusty gold. He wasn’t handsome, but he was hugely attractive, reminding Christine of the film star Rutger Hauer in his prime, with his strong jaw, big, uneven nose and unflinching blue gaze; her foster mother had had the biggest crush on him. Hauer had been blonder, but this man could have been a younger version of him, apart from the copper-tinged hair.
‘I am Sergei,’ he said, letting her hand go to pound on his chest. ‘Sergei from Rosseeeya. You say Russia.’
‘Um, hello, Sergei,’ Christine said, confused but game. ‘I’m Christine. It’s very nice to meet you.’
‘I am from Russian – what you call submarine,’ he said. ‘You have heard of this?’
Christine wasn’t a news junkie, but it would have been impossible to have been in Sweden for a few days and not know what he was talking about. It was on the cover of every newspaper lined up on tables in the hotel breakfast area and in reception, it was the headline of the Daily Mail online, which C
hristine checked in the mornings, and every time she switched on the TV in her room the story was leading the news bulletins. The Swedes were accusing the Russian navy of having sneaked one of their submarines into the territorial waters of the Swedish archipelago; the Russian defence ministry staunchly denied it. There was no photographic evidence, but multiple sightings had been reported. Not only was the Swedish navy out searching for it, but several newspapers had hired helicopters to try to spot the errant sub, as it would be a huge diplomatic incident if its presence could be verified.
So when the diver identified himself as being from the Russian submarine, Christine’s jaw actually dropped in shock at the revelation. She tasted salty air in her mouth for a moment before she closed it again.
‘You’re what?’ she blurted out.
‘I see you know about this!’ Sergei said earnestly. ‘You stay in hotel there, da?’
He gestured to the low, wide central building of the Hotel Tylösand high behind them, a gleaming modern edifice of glass and stone and wood, a triumph of elegant Scandinavian design.
‘Yes,’ she said automatically, still processing the fact that she had been precipitated into the middle of the biggest news story of the moment. Only yesterday, the media had been fanning themselves into a frenzy over a report that a mysterious ‘man in black’ had been spotted and reported to naval intelligence, who had diligently tracked him down and discovered him to be not a Russian seaman, but a pensioner fishing for sea trout. But what if the pensioner had been a false lead, and the man in black had been a Russian sailor all along – maybe stranded by some diving accident? What if he was the man standing in front of her right now?
‘You are by yourself in the hotel?’ he was asking, and Christine nodded, because he was a handsome man who seemed not remotely threatening, his gaze was giving her very pleasant thrills up and down her body, and she was not only by herself, but single. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting a long-term relationship with an escapee from a Russian submarine, but he was ridiculously attractive . . .
‘May I stay in your room? Pazhalsta?’ the Rutger Hauer lookalike asked anxiously. ‘Please yes? They must not find me! I can hide there till I swim back to my submarine!’
For a long moment, Christine could think of nothing but this large, luscious hunk of a man in her hotel room. Showering in her bathroom, wrapping around his waist one of the generously sized towels that would surely however reveal a considerable amount of his well-built frame, padding into her bedroom, barefoot, smelling of the lovely Bigelow toiletries the hotel provided, looking at her with those amazing light blue eyes, smiling maybe the way he was doing now, so appreciatively, as if he found her just as attractive as she did him . . . both of them, at that point, deciding on a very pleasurable activity that would pass the time waiting for his submarine to come and fetch him . . .
Right. And when you get caught sheltering him, which you will, her brain said, they’ll arrest you for being a Russian spy. And by the time they realize – if they do! – that you’re just some idiot who got swept away by a gorgeous man in a wetsuit, Vivienne Winter will have checked out of the hotel and you’ll have no chance at all of getting that precious word with her that you’ve staked so much on . . . you know that has to be your priority . . .
‘I can’t,’ she said, sounding, as she was perfectly aware, wistful. ‘I’m really sorry, but I just can’t.’
‘You could bring me coat,’ Sergei said. ‘White coat, like they have.’
He pointed up to the terrace with the sunken, heated outdoor soaking pool; a couple of guests were leaning on the balcony, taking in the sea view, dressed in the hotel’s white towelling spa robes.
‘I take this off,’ he said, gesturing to the wetsuit and flippers. ‘I put on coat and walk in with you. No one knows who I am! Then I come to your room to hide.’
Christine swallowed hard at the image, once more very vivid, of Sergei peeling off his wetsuit, sheltered by a rocky outcrop, standing there completely naked in his muscular splendour, then accompanying her into the hotel, just the towelling robe to cover his nudity . . .
‘I can’t!’ Her voice rose to a pathetic squeak. ‘I just can’t take the risk. I’m so sorry.’
Sergei hung his large head, utterly disconsolate.
‘I have been swim for long time,’ he said sadly. ‘I am hunger.’
‘I can go inside and get you something to eat,’ Christine offered; his expression was so disappointed, and he wasn’t being pushy or insistent, which of course made her want to help him even more.
‘And drink!’ Sergei brightened up. ‘Vodka! You bring vodka and we drink together on beach – we find quiet place I can hide, we sit and drink and I recite to you Russian poems about beautiful women who are kind and gentle to sailors lost from their ship . . .’
Christine’s eyes narrowed. Finally, her brain, rather than other parts of her anatomy, was kicking in.
‘Hang on,’ she said suspiciously, her tone no longer apologetic. ‘You’re not trying to tell me that you swam off a submarine in a snorkel? You’d have an oxygen tank and a proper mask, surely?’
‘I was just doing a, what do you call, reconnaissance,’ Sergei said smoothly. ‘A quick check to see if the Swedes have found where we are hiding.’
‘Right, and your English is getting better by the second,’ Christine said, pulling her hand away. ‘“Reconnaissance”! And a minute ago it was “English people very good and kind!” You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?’
His English was certainly good enough for him to understand that amount of vernacular. ‘Sergei’ threw back his head and burst out laughing.
‘May I?’ he said, reaching out for her hand once more.
Christine held back. ‘What’s your real name?’ she said, trying to sound reproachful, but unable to stop her voice coming out flirtatiously. She knew that her eyes were sparkling, her lips curving into a smile; this was all happening very fast, this handsome man attempting an epic tease as a way to break the ice with her, and the fact that she had spotted it fast and turned it back on him made her fizz with pride at her own swiftness. Of course she should have realized the truth before, but she could scarcely blame herself – when a muscly hunk in a skin-tight wetsuit accosted you on a beach and asked if he could stay in your hotel room, naturally you would be distracted for a while from the likelihood of his story by all kinds of inappropriate thoughts . . .
‘I’m called Tor,’ he said, in an accent completely different from the fake Russian one he had been putting on. Now he sounded Swedish, like everyone who worked at the Hotel Tylösand, but with a strong American tinge. ‘I’m sorry,’ he went on. ‘I just couldn’t resist. I was thinking as I came back in from my swim about that man in black who the navy was chasing, and how funny it would be if those people up on the terrace thought I was him. And then I saw you, and I wanted to talk to you because you’re so pretty and you looked like you were having a great time making shapes in the sand, and I thought it would be so much fun to play the game with you. So the idea to play another game – to pretend I was Sergei from Russia – just popped into my head all at once. Forgive me?’
Tor was still holding out his hand, and because he had been brave enough to stand there with it out for the whole time he explained himself, looking awkward and vulnerable, and also because he was so good-looking and his blue eyes were twinkling in evident appreciation of her quick wits, Christine placed hers once more in his grasp. He promptly raised it to his lips and kissed it.
‘I’m not saying that I forgive you,’ Christine said, sounding extra stern because her head was spinning a little at the sensation of his lips on her skin.
‘Of course not! What was I thinking!’ he said gravely. ‘I will have to redeem myself in your eyes after teasing you like that. Will you please have a drink with me this evening in your hotel so we can begin the redemption process?’
Christine hesitated, but it was just because she was calculating when the Vivienne Winter Watch
for that day would be over. Christine usually hung out in the spa until eight in the evening, just to be sure that she didn’t miss her target; but it did seem rather unlikely that a woman in her seventies would be getting a massage or treatment that would run so late.
In that assumption, as it happened, she was completely wrong. Vivienne had always been a night bird.
‘Please say yes!’ the man called Tor said hopefully. ‘Jag är ledsen! I’m sorry! That’s Swedish, by the way,’ he added. ‘Not Russian.’
‘Thank you, I can tell the difference,’ Christine said firmly.
She noticed he was looking quite anxious at her lack of response, and although he deserved some punishment for having tricked her, experience told her that if she left it any longer, the momentum would trickle away. He would think she was playing games – not the fun sort – and become less keen, more wary. That, she knew, was never a good way to start a date. It was Tor’s open enthusiasm about seeing her that was so charming, and she mustn’t allow that to dissipate by being too cool for school.
‘Okay,’ she said finally.
‘Okay you will come for a drink?’ he said with such visible hope for a positive answer that she heard herself giggle in sheer pleasure.
‘Okay I will come for a drink. Tor,’ she said, and was sure that she had gone a little pink saying his name.
‘You are too kind, Christine,’ he said, and she definitely felt the blood rising to her cheeks at the confirmation that this was a man who actually listened to a woman, at least to the point of remembering the name she had told him right at the start of their convoluted conversation. He, meanwhile, was positively beaming.
‘But not before eight,’ she clarified. ‘I have, um, things I have to do before then.’
Killer Diamonds Page 11
