Killer Diamonds

by Rebecca Chance

  He sensed her gaze on him and looked across; pushing off the doorjamb, he strode towards her, beaming. There was clearly no playing hard to get with Tor.

  ‘Oh, you changed!’ Christine said cheekily. ‘I’m a bit disappointed.’

  ‘Damn, you don’t want me, do you? You want Yuri!’ he exclaimed. ‘Shall I go home and come back in my wetsuit?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ she said saucily. ‘And it was Sergei, not Yuri.’

  ‘Sergei! Of course!’ His blue eyes twinkled. ‘I can be Sergei for you. But he’s a pretty boring guy.’

  Christine pouted.

  ‘He didn’t seem that boring to me,’ she said. ‘I was hoping for some Russian poetry, like he promised. About women who are kind to sailors lost from their ships.’

  ‘Beautiful women,’ Tor corrected, looking down at her with great appreciation. ‘I may not remember what Sergei was called, but I know I mentioned beautiful women.’

  ‘We’ll have to see if we can find some for you,’ Christine said, in such a blatant fish for a compliment that she felt mortified even as the words came out of her mouth.

  ‘Oh, I am very happy with the one I have here,’ Tor said, extending his arm, elbow out, in an invitation to link hers through it. She did, heat flooding her body at the physical contact, at the sheer size of his forearm, the warmth of him and the scent of his aftershave – rich and warm, like brandied oranges. He escorted her into the bar, where a table for two was placed beside the fireplace.

  ‘I reserved this,’ he said, pulling out the leather armchair for her to sit down. ‘I thought you would like to be warm after your cold walk on the beach today.’

  ‘You were colder than me,’ she said as he took the chair opposite. ‘It must have been freezing in the sea!’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have to swim all the way from a submarine,’ he said. ‘But in any case, I’m used to the cold. I like it.’ His white, even teeth flashed bright. ‘I love it, in fact,’ he added. ‘It makes me feel alive.’

  ‘I suppose that’s living here,’ Christine said. ‘It must be very cold in winter.’

  God, how boring you sound! she thought. Why are you talking about the weather!

  Tor shrugged as the waiter arrived to take their order, a bottle of red wine; he, like the receptionists, seemed to know Tor, exchanging some friendly banter in Swedish that clearly went beyond the usual waiter/client courtesies. Tor raised his glass, and Christine matched the gesture. The crinkles around his blue eyes showed his tan, a striation of white lines fanning out on either side, the skin around them a weathered golden-brown. He was just as she’d remembered from the afternoon, easy, friendly, gorgeous, almost too good to be true, and she wasn’t up to her best game, not armoured with the dress and heels and bright red lipstick that would make her most confident; she’d only brought the most basic of make-up, certainly nothing sexy.

  ‘Do you come here all the time?’ she asked, gesturing around the sleek bar with its shiny black walls and tables, its red lacquered surfaces, its lavishly cushioned seats. It was hung with gold records in glass cases and posters for iconic bands; there was no doubting that the hotel was owned by a musician.

  Tor looked surprised.

  ‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘I travel a lot, so when I’m at home, I like to be at home. I make a fire, listen to music, drink some beer. Watch the sea.’

  ‘But everyone seems to know you here,’ Christine observed. ‘Is it because you’re a local?’

  ‘Ah, okay! I see why you’re asking!’

  Tor sat back in his seat, cradling the wine glass in his hands. Christine noticed how big they were, and how scratched and gnarled; if he hadn’t mentioned travelling a lot just now, she would have assumed he was a carpenter, a roofer, someone used to manual labour.

  ‘So, you know I’m not a Russian sailor called Sergei,’ he said. ‘But you may think when I answer that I’m teasing you again. I promise you that I’m not, okay?’

  ‘Oh my God, what are you going to say?’

  Christine was laughing; she felt it couldn’t be too bad, as he wore no wedding ring and had no marks of having just removed one. Maybe he was an actor, famous in Sweden, a TV personality; but she’d met plenty of actors and TV presenters through her work, and they were much more groomed, more slick than this guy. Certainly their hands wouldn’t be so ragged and gnarled. She drank some wine and watched him consider his words, with considerable curiosity about what he might be about to reveal.

  ‘Do you want to guess what I actually do?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, fisherman?’ she tried: there was the tanned, weathered skin, the beaten-up hands, the travelling. Maybe he had one of those boats that went out for weeks on end? She’d seen a TV series about that; it looked terrifying, but Tor didn’t seem like he scared easily.

  ‘Oh, nice guess! But actually, I’m an explorer,’ he said, and Christine coughed wine painfully out through her nose, the smooth, oaky Cabernet unpleasantly acid when it hit the nostrils. Tor leaned forward, picked up one of the black cocktail napkins and handed it to her, quite unfazed by the sight of red wine dribbling down onto her upper lip.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to freak you out,’ he said. ‘Do you have something against explorers?’

  ‘No, but it’s just such a funny word!’ she said, wiping the wine off her face. ‘I’m imagining you going to the South Pole with dog sleds!’

  Tor reached over and took the glass of wine from her hand as a precaution.

  ‘I actually led an expedition to the South Pole with dog sleds last year,’ he said, and waited for her jaw to drop and her eyes to widen before he slid the glass back to her again.

  ‘You’re joking,’ Christine said, but without much conviction. She recognized the ring of truth when she heard it. She stared at him, a memory rolling back to her of press coverage last year of an expedition for charity: it had garnered vast amounts of publicity because among the group had been not only a sprinkling of famous actors, but the redheaded playboy Prince Toby of Britain.

  ‘Yes, that one,’ he said cheerfully, seeing her recognition. ‘We got some frostbite, but nothing too serious.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything to say,’ Christine admitted. ‘Apart from okay, I believe that you really like the cold.’

  ‘But I also like to sit in a nice warm bar by a fire with a beautiful woman,’ Tor said deftly. ‘I’m very flexible.’

  Christine was still fairly dumbstruck.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I honestly can’t think of anything to say that isn’t really obvious or stupid.’

  ‘Great,’ Tor said, to her surprise. ‘Anything’s better than you asking me what Prince Toby’s like, or saying “Hey, you must be really brave”, or “How do you go to the toilet in the snow?”’

  ‘I’ll wait a few minutes and then be sure to ask you all those questions,’ Christine said, picking up her wine glass.

  ‘From you, I wouldn’t even mind,’ Tor said with such fondness that she ducked her head towards the glass, suddenly fascinated by the colour of the wine.

  ‘So, enough about me!’ he continued cheerfully. ‘What do you think about me?’

  This made her laugh out loud; she found herself kicking off the dowdy shoes and curling up in the armchair. The fire was crackling beside her, bright as Tor’s hair, and his crow’s feet were crinkling adorably.

  ‘Seriously, though, what are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘We don’t get many foreigners, especially in the off season. Are you here for the spa?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Christine said, ‘but no. Although I’m spending most of my time in it.’

  ‘When you’re not dancing on the seashore,’ Tor observed.

  ‘That was my time off,’ she said.

  ‘You’re working? This is a great place to be quiet and concentrate. Are you a writer?’

  ‘No, though this would be the most amazing writer’s retreat! I’m just –’ Christine hesitated. ‘It’s going to sound a bit weird when I say it
out loud.’

  Tor picked up his glass.

  ‘I’m going to drink some wine,’ he suggested, ‘and then when you tell me I can snort it out of my nose to keep you company.’

  ‘Okay, I’m just going to spit it out,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty much here to stalk Vivienne Winter – she’s staying here at the hotel.’

  Tor swallowed his wine, rather than spitting it out as promised, but his forehead furrowed, and the crow’s feet relaxed so that his eyes were no longer smiling.

  ‘Are you a journalist?’ he asked, and for the first time there was a slight cooling of his tone.

  ‘No, no, nothing like that!’ she said swiftly. ‘It’s about her jewel collection. And don’t worry, I’m not a cat burglar either. I work at an auction house as an appraisal expert – I’m a gemmologist. I’ve heard she wants to sell off the major part of her collection for charity, and I really want us to be the auction house she chooses. It would be an amazing opportunity for the company, but honestly I’m mostly thinking of myself and my career. If I brought something this huge to Berkeley, I’d have a serious chance of getting a major promotion.’

  Tor nodded slowly.

  ‘But this is not a professional way to do it,’ he commented. ‘To come to a hotel where she is staying and try to talk to her when she doesn’t expect it.’

  ‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ve tried every other avenue I could to get in touch with her, and nothing worked. We’re a very reputable auction house, but we’re not Christie’s or Sotheby’s, and her adviser won’t take my calls. It’s so frustrating! I know I – we – could do the most fantastic job for her. We’ve been established for over two hundred years, we have international offices, we’re a hundred per cent reputable, and we’d offer her a much more favourable commission rate than the Big Two. I just want a chance to put my case. Berkeley’s case.’

  Christine had to stop to catch her breath; she was getting carried away. Tor’s expression was still unreadable.

  ‘So I did some research,’ she continued. ‘I found out she was staying here, and I took unpaid leave from work to come here too. I thought we might bump into each other in the spa – I know it’s a bit much to launch into a sales pitch in the sauna, but if we happened to be in the Jacuzzi at the same time and got talking . . . The thing is, I genuinely do think I could do a great job for her. I’ve got so many ideas – obviously with Vivienne’s approval, but I’d want to use social media, work with the press, build up even more excitement for this sale than there was for Elizabeth Taylor’s. I’ve analysed that in such detail – they had a brilliant PR, and it was incredibly well run. I want to build on that and do even better. That sale was in 2011, and things have changed so much since then – I’d start a whole Instagram account for the pieces, and use it to whip up massive excitement for the smaller ones, because those are more likely to go way over the estimated value. I’d . . .’

  But at this point, Christine literally did run out of breath. In an effort to convince Tor of her good intentions, she had ended up giving him the pitch that she had been honing for the last week. It had been on the tip of her tongue for days, ready to burst out if she did manage to secure Vivienne Winter’s attention for a moment or two, and it had proved unstoppable.

  ‘Sorry!’ she said, when she had got a second wind. ‘I just wanted to make you see I’m not some kind of nutcase. I’ll change the subject. You must be bored out of your mind.’

  Tor was pulling his phone from his trouser pocket, tapping on the touchscreen.

  ‘This is your auction house?’ he asked, holding it up so she could see the home page of Berkeley’s website, austerely old-fashioned, with a stark white background decorated with elaborate blue curlicues and an ugly Gothic font that one did not so much read as decipher. If websites had been designed in the Victorian era, this was pretty much what they would have looked like.

  Christine nodded ruefully.

  ‘If you click there –’ she indicated the link – ‘you’ll see me. I’m the appraiser for the jewellery department. My boss is going mental about me being away,’ she added ruefully. ‘I’ve got so much work piling up, I don’t know how I’ll ever get through it.’

  Tor chuckled at the thumbnail photo of Christine that came up.

  ‘So serious!’ he said, looking at her with her hair scraped back, pearl studs in her earlobes, wearing a black jacket and a white blouse buttoned up to the neck. ‘I would not have dared to ask this woman if I could hide in her hotel room!’

  ‘Yes, that’s partly why I wanted to meet Vivienne in person,’ she explained. ‘The partners have this really stuffy image – look at the web design! How would you ever look at that and think: “Oh, this woman’s bound to have great ideas for building awareness of the sale through social media!”’

  ‘I see,’ Tor said thoughtfully.

  ‘I know it’s a real cheek, my trying to snatch a word with her like this,’ she admitted. ‘And it hasn’t worked out anyway. I’m going to have to go home soon, or I’ll end up with the sack as well as a gigantic credit card bill.’

  She sighed, and finished off her glass of wine.

  ‘Oh well, it was worth a try!’ she said bravely. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just moaning now and it must be really boring. Let’s talk about something else. What’s Prince Toby like? I’m dying to know!’

  Tor acknowledged this joke with a fleeting smile, but he didn’t engage with her invitation to change the subject. Instead he reached out for the wine bottle, refilled her glass and said, ‘Excuse me for a few minutes. I promise, I will be back.’

  Pushing back his chair, he stood up. Christine tried not to look at the flex of his thighs and the flatness of his stomach, both very much in evidence, before, with a nod, he strode away across the bar. She assumed that he was heading for the toilet. Only after she’d waited for some time did it occur to her that if that were really the case, only some terrible gastric disturbance could explain how long he was taking.

  She couldn’t quite believe he would simply have disappeared, even if he’d been totally turned off by the information that she was here to stalk an elderly woman. On the positive side, there was Tor’s character, as revealed to her so far: he had been nothing but polite and gentlemanly. It was near-impossible to imagine him simply abandoning her halfway through a date without a word of explanation, even in her own hotel bar.

  On the other hand, there were the gruesome experiences she and her girlfriends had accumulated in years of going out with guys. Every one of them could trot out at least one terrible dating anecdote. Christine’s friend Lauren had once had a man pick her up at her flat and ask through the intercom if he could come in and smoke a joint before they went to dinner. When she said ‘No’ he had sulked, walked her to the restaurant he had booked in near silence and left her at the table half an hour later, saying he was going outside for a cigarette. He had never returned, and since they’d ordered food and drink, Lauren was stuck with the bill. Another friend, Jen, on a business trip to LA, had met a guy in a bar and taken him back to her hotel – only to have him look at her in her bra and knickers, stammer: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I thought you would be more toned,’ and leave.

  Her present situation was minor compared to those horror stories. Christine was just on the hook for a bottle of wine; she didn’t need to even pay for a cab home. She could take the rest of the Cabernet up to her room and finish it that evening as consolation for the date having gone so horrendously awry.

  But he seemed so nice, and he said he would be back! she thought miserably, checking her phone yet again only to see that twenty minutes had elapsed. How long should I wait? Half an hour in total. That’s it. Any more and I’ll look even more of an idiot than I do now, the girl who every single person in this bar knows got stood up by Tor the Famous Explorer – no, worse than stood up, there isn’t even a word for what happens when someone decides halfway through the date that your moral character’s so appalling that he can’t bear to spend any
more time with you—

  ‘Hello! Here I am again!’

  She had been so absorbed in misery that she hadn’t even seen him return. He was standing beside the table, holding out one hand to her.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and Christine was so relieved that he had come back that she took his hand and let him help her to her feet without even asking where they were going.

  ‘But the bill?’ she said. ‘Don’t we need to pay for the wine? I’m-’

  ‘It’s all arranged,’ he said easily, and she noticed that there was a bottle of Krug in his free hand, plus two glasses. ‘Trust me. We’re going back to my submarine to drink champagne.’

  ‘Ooh!’ she said, managing to retrieve her wit. ‘Champagne plus lots of handsome Russian sailors to recite poems to me! You’re really spoiling me tonight!’

  Tor squeezed her hand in appreciation of this quick response as he led her through the bar and across the lobby. Even though she didn’t know what to expect, Christine was taken aback to see they were heading towards the entrance to the spa, which should be closed by this time of night. However, the elegant young woman seated at the desk smiled on seeing Tor and, with a little nod, pressed the button that caused the low glass door to swing open.

  Christine sensed that there was no point asking Tor what was going on: he had the air of a man about to spring a surprise. Clearly he had pulled major strings to get them admitted to the spa after hours, especially since he wasn’t even a hotel guest.

  But I haven’t got my bathing suit with me, she thought. And if he thinks he’s going to talk me into stripping off and jumping into a hot tub with him naked to drink champagne, he’s got another thing coming. No way is that going to happen, no matter how cute he is or how much he tries to tell me it’s normal in Sweden to skinny-dip on the first date . . .

  Tor was leading her up the staircase to the first-floor spa area. As he pushed open the big glass door, his wide body blocked any view of the interior, so that when Christine followed him in she gasped audibly at the sight before her. Because, lounging on the contoured bench in the hot pool, water flowing gently over her ample bosom, her hair wrapped in a white turban, her eyes heavily outlined with black pencil and a champagne glass in her hand, was none other than Christine’s elusive target: Vivienne Winter herself.