Killer Diamonds

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘So,’ purred the unmistakable husky voice, ‘this is the young lady who’s been stalking me?’

  Christine felt the blood rush from her head. She had stopped abruptly, and Tor’s hand in hers was pulling her off balance. She staggered, and was grateful for the first time that she wasn’t wearing her high heels, but the sensible court shoes.

  ‘Goodness me,’ Vivienne drawled. ‘I know I’m no spring chicken, but I didn’t realize I looked so terrifying that young women would go into a nervous catalepsy at the sight of me!’

  She looked, frankly, stunning. There is a French saying that at a certain age, a woman needs to choose between her derrière and her face; if she keeps her bottom and hips youthfully slim, she won’t have enough plumpness to her face to keep it also looking young, and vice versa. Vivienne had definitely chosen her face, allowing her figure to ripen out. Her eyebrows were heavily pencilled in to frame her amethyst eyes, and her skin was darker than it had been in her heyday, when it had been famously pale: now she sunbathed regularly, careless about brown spots at her age. The colour not only gave her a healthy glow against the white of her turban and the equally white ruched Miracle Cut shapewear swimsuit, but threw the purple eyes into even more striking relief.

  There were candles flickering around the water’s edge, clearly placed there at Vivienne’s request, as Christine had never seen them on the pool surround before. They struck multicoloured shards of light from the diamonds that glinted against Vivienne’s tanned skin: a stack of tennis bracelets and a pair of enormous four-carat, brilliant-cut stud earrings. And yet Christine realized that journalists interviewing Vivienne had, if anything, been making an understatement when they commented that she had been bedecked in superb, glittering jewellery, but added that the gems had paled in comparison to the effect of her extraordinary eyes.

  ‘I am terrified! But you look amazing,’ Christine blurted out, the words clearly so spontaneous that Vivienne burst out laughing, a delicious ripple of amusement that was so sincere that Christine felt herself relaxing in relief. Tor guided her to sit down on the end of one of the loungers facing Vivienne, and Christine was suddenly grateful for the comparatively long skirt of her dress. It might be dowdy standing up, but sitting down it meant she didn’t have to squirm around, dragging down the hem so that Vivienne Winter wasn’t looking directly at her knickers.

  Tor was ripping the foil off the neck of the bottle of Krug, removing the wire, popping the cork. He had placed the glasses on the pool surround, and he bent over to top up Vivienne’s before filling the others.

  ‘Um – I don’t understand what’s happening,’ Christine said, trying hard not to gawk at Vivienne as if she were a rare and exotic animal in a zoo.

  Vivienne’s smile was enchanting. Christine’s head was filled with the kind of clichés that might have popped straight out of commercials for expensive watches, cribbed from poetry anthologies: a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Timeless splendour never ages. It really was true. When you were born with this kind of beauty, it never left you. At seventy-three, Vivienne radiated as much allure and charm as she had done at thirty.

  ‘You complained to my godson that you hadn’t seen me in the spa so that you could pounce on me and try to convince me to let your company run my jewellery auction,’ Vivienne said, taking her newly filled glass from Tor with a wink of thanks. ‘And he knew that was because I was in here right now. I’m a night owl, darling. Always have been. I avoid the spa during the day, but they very kindly keep it open for me after hours so I can indulge myself with an evening soak in here. Then I pop out to the terrace and freeze my tushie off in the night air for as long as I can bear – so good for the circulation! – before I climb into the outdoor pool and watch the stars. I have my whole delightful nightly routine.’

  Tor walked over to give Christine her champagne, a grin on his face as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s.

  ‘I’m a magic man,’ he said boastfully. ‘I hope you’re impressed with me.’

  ‘I am,’ she said, still half disbelieving her own eyes.

  ‘Skål,’ Vivienne said, raising her glass high, and Tor and Christine echoed her toast as he sat down on the pool surround.

  ‘You see, Tor’s grandfather was an old flame of mine,’ Vivienne explained. ‘I used to visit him here in Tylösand – such a pretty little village – and rather fell in love with the place. When he eventually married Tor’s mother, I was married to Randon – the first time around – and they sweetly asked me to be Tor’s godmother. And since the hotel was revamped, I’ve become a regular visitor. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I’m rather obsessed with the crispbread.’

  ‘Me too!’ Christine said with a little unguarded laugh of surprise.

  Vivienne sipped some Krug and watched Christine with attention, clearly assessing everything about her: appearance, manners, bearing, speech. Christine was used to this kind of evaluation, having conducted many meetings with potential sellers of fine jewellery. And she had been preparing for this for days, under much worse circumstances: buttonholing an oblivious Vivienne and begging for a few minutes to do a pitch would be infinitely worse than this situation, in which Tor had already briefed Vivienne on what Christine was hoping for.

  At the moment, though, Christine’s instincts were telling her to sit quietly and sip champagne, letting Vivienne lead the conversation. She glanced sideways at Tor, and he gave her a discreet nod, confirmation that she was right not to launch into her prepared speech yet.

  ‘Well, you know how to be patient, which is crucial,’ Vivienne eventually said with approval. ‘So, now I’ve had a look at you, why don’t you trot out the spiel you must have had on the tip of your tongue for days?’

  Christine wasn’t sure if this was some sort of test.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked carefully. ‘I mean, you were relaxing, having your nightly spa routine with your champagne – would you prefer me to make an appointment for tomorrow?’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Vivienne said briskly. ‘No time like the present!’ She raised her glass to Christine with a gleam of pure mischief in her eyes. ‘Let’s have it!’

  But just as Christine sat up straighter, drew in a deep breath and prepared to work her way as efficiently as possible through her list of bullet points, the door to the staircase opened once again.

  ‘Grandma!’ exclaimed a light tenor voice, and the most beautiful man Christine had ever seen stepped into the room, closely followed by the receptionist from the spa desk.

  ‘Ah!’ the beautiful man said, taking in the scene before him. ‘How delightful, it’s a party! Hello, Tor! Hello, very attractive young lady! Room for one more?’

  ‘Mrs Winter, he said it was an emergency,’ the receptionist said nervously. ‘I recognized your grandson, of course –’

  Angel flashed his wonderful smile at her, acknowledging his status as a staple of the magazine gossip columns.

  ‘– but I thought I should come to check with you as well, just in case,’ she finished.

  Vivienne’s expression was quite unreadable: her training as an actress was suddenly very much in evidence. Christine caught her breath, looking between the two faces, so hauntingly alike. With her hair concealed under a turban, Vivienne’s features were clearly visible. In a series of discreet and expensive operations over the years her skin had been deftly lifted and tucked, like crepe fabric pinned round a dressmaker’s model, over the strong framework of her jaw and high cheekbones. The full lips, the straight noses, and of course the extraordinary violet eyes were identical.

  On close examination, however – and Christine was blatantly staring – the young man’s jaw was stronger, his forehead squarer, the face not quite as heart-shaped as Vivienne’s. She couldn’t take her eyes from him. A memory of a recent Berkeley fine art auction came to mind, its centrepiece a fourteenth-century painting of the Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel telling Mary that she had been chosen to bear Jesus. Tall, milky-skinned, with a cascade of golden hair pushed back fr
om his face, the Byzantine-influenced almond-shaped eyes, straight nose and pouting lips: Vivienne’s grandson could have been the model for Gabriel.

  Christine had researched Vivienne’s jewellery collection in great detail. She knew, for instance, that Vivienne’s famous pear-shaped pearl, which hung from a choker of pearls and diamonds, had once been part of the Crown Jewels of France. Named the Medici Pearl, after Catherine de Medici, its first owner, it had been worn by both her and Mary Stuart in her time at the French court before it was smuggled out of the country by Napoleon III when he was sent into exile. After being sold off to pay the expenses of his court, it had passed through the hands of a complicated trail of owners before it had been bought for Vivienne by the man she had married twice, the actor Randon Cliffe. Charmingly, and very much in keeping with his generous character, Randon had commissioned a miniature version of the piece for his adoptive daughter, Pearl, so that she could wear it on the day he first married her mother.

  So Christine was familiar with Vivienne’s daughter’s name because of the association with the pendant; but she did not read gossip magazines, and she had no idea what Vivienne’s grandson was called. When Vivienne said in a deliberately flat tone, Angel. Goodness me. What a very unexpected visit,’ Christine’s jaw dropped in amazement that this gloriously handsome man, who had just reminded her of an archangel, was so perfectly named.

  Angel, she repeated to herself, unable to take her eyes off him. Wow. I didn’t even think it was possible for a man to be so beautiful.

  Chapter Eight

  Tylösand – the same evening

  ‘So! What’s this news that’s so important you’ve barged in on my lovely spa evening, Angel? I was having a very pleasant chat with Tor and that nice girl he brought up to see me!’

  Vivienne stared at her grandson with icy composure, her heavily pencilled eyebrows elegantly raised. There had been no continuing Christine’s sales pitch in the spa pool after Angel’s intrusion. It was impossible to talk business when her grandson was simultaneously apologizing for the interruption and telling his grandmother that he had urgent news. So Vivienne had emerged from the pool with the graciousness of a Roman aristocrat rising from a mosaic bath in her private villa – unsurprising for anyone who had seen her acclaimed portrayal of the scheming Livia, wife of Emperor Augustus, in the film of I, Claudius.

  Tor and Christine were dismissed with promises to meet up the following day, and Vivienne proceeded back to her suite, regal in turban, robe and her own sheepskin and lambswool slippers. Always careful of her image, she wanted to avoid being seen shuffling through the hotel in the spa’s backless slide-ons, like an old lady in a retirement home. Waiting for her was her devoted personal assistant Gregory, part of whose job it was to provide companionship and foot massages as Vivienne wound down for the night.

  The assistant was much too discreet to show visible surprise at the sight of the grandson from whom his employer had been estranged for years. Bowing himself out of the living room, he retired to his room in the suite until Vivienne called for him. Gregory, who had worked for Vivienne for many years, was making exactly the same assumption as she was: that Angel, in the throes of yet another financial crisis, had tracked down his grandmother for an emergency loan.

  Vivienne smoothed her robe down and took a seat in the centre of the sofa, gesturing at Angel to sit in one of the armchairs. Coldly, she said, ‘I suppose you’ve come to ask for money? That always seems to be what motivates you to make contact with me.’

  ‘No, Grandma,’ Angel replied with perfect composure, laced with just a touch of sorrow. ‘Take a deep breath. I’m afraid the news I have for you is bad, but it’s nothing to do with needing money.’

  ‘Oh, really? Forgive me, Angel, but I’ve heard tall stories from you before,’ Vivienne said. ‘And the drama of this arrival feels rather forced to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry for bursting in on you,’ Angel said gravely. ‘I only got the diagnosis a few hours ago, and I wanted to come and tell you immediately, in person. I didn’t think it should be done over the phone.’

  ‘Diagnosis? What are you saying?’

  The blood drained from Vivienne’s cheeks. Angel nodded, his expression growing even more serious.

  ‘I’m so sorry to have to say this, Grandma,’ he said. ‘But I’ve come to tell you that I have cancer.’

  Angel had wasted no time. As soon as the perfect cover story had popped into his head, in a flash of pure inspiration, he had been determined to deliver it as soon as possible. He had rung Vivienne’s manager to find out her current location, telling him he had bad news about his health and wanted to give his grandmother the news in person. On hearing that she was in Sweden, Angel had jumped in a cab to Farnborough airport, booking a private flight to Halmstad airport en route, which the manager had told him was the closest one to Tylösand; its airport was too small to take international scheduled flights.

  This impulsive, spendthrift behaviour was typical of Angel. No matter how strongly Nicole had pointed out, her fingers flying swiftly over the touchscreen of her phone, that he could save thousands by taking a flight to Copenhagen or Gothenburg and hiring a driver to Tylösand, Angel had dismissed her concern as ridiculous. He stood to make vast amounts from this auction, he declared confidently, because he was going to insinuate himself back into Vivienne’s good graces so successfully that she would allow him to be involved in all the major decisions. Clearly there were vast opportunities for him to rake in finders’ fees or commissions, ensuring that prospective buyers secured the pieces they wanted in private sales. Besides, his coke deal was about to come through! He would soon be rolling in money, able to pay off his sky-high American Express Black Card balance in full.

  ‘And anyway,’ he had finished, his eyes sparkling, ‘if I get a scheduled flight and then have to drive for a few hours, I’ll get there too late to see Granny Viv tonight. And I simply can’t wait to break the grim news to my beloved grandmamma! Oh, how I’m going to enjoy this! Just imagine if she has a heart attack and drops dead – that would be perfect, wouldn’t it? I’d inherit the lot before she had a chance to sell it off!’

  ‘You’re a sick puppy,’ Nicole had said, lounging on the bed and watching him throw some clothes into a custom-made leather Globe-Trotter suitcase. ‘Can I stay here when you’re away? I can afford a hotel, of course, but this is much more civilized.’

  ‘Oh, definitely, stay here!’ Angel had been delighted at the idea. ‘We can celebrate as soon as I get back. Start thinking up some creative ways to do that, darling! Why don’t you work out some elaborately pervy scenario for us two and that saucy minx we played with earlier?’

  ‘Ooh,’ Nicole had agreed, ‘that sounds divine! I’ll start putting together some ideas . . .’

  Even now, as he stood in front of Vivienne, Angel was picturing various possibilities for himself, Nicole and ‘Miss Lavington’. But nothing could be read in his facial expression; as far as anyone could have told, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. His stricken grandmother was looking as closely at his face as if she could somehow read the symptoms there.

  ‘Cancer?’ Vivienne repeated, her lips trembling. ‘Oh my God, Angel! Surely it can’t be true! You’re so young still!’

  Angel was secretly delighted at her reaction, which was even more profound than he had imagined it would be. Her cheeks had hollowed out, her eye sockets were sunken and dark. The carefully tended, immaculately moisturized skin looked grey under her light tan, and her jaw, which she held high to minimize sagging, had dropped, showing a hint of double chin.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘I’ve been through rounds of tests. I didn’t want to worry you until it was confirmed. I was hoping the growth was benign. But . . .’

  He let this tail off, shaking his head sadly.

  Vivienne let out a long, poignant, heartbreaking sob, a theatrical effect she had perfected over the years and which was now so natural to her that it emerged in entirely genuine situations
. It was almost unbearably moving. Even Angel, who had no heart to break, was extremely impressed, making a mental note to remember how it sounded for future use.

  ‘And it’s serious, Angel?’ she asked, her eyes beginning to well up with tears. ‘I mean, of course it’s serious, it’s cancer –’

  A brave woman, Vivienne had no difficulty facing facts: she despised people who could not talk frankly about disease and death.

  ‘– but what’s the prognosis? What did the doctor say?’

  Tears were beginning to well up in her eyes. From his trouser pocket, Angel produced a handkerchief made of linen so fine that, as the ancient Egyptian princes used to boast of their clothing, it could have been pulled effortlessly through a finger ring.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly, handing it to her. ‘I’m so sorry, Grandma.’

  Angel had spent his private plane ride happily Googling both ‘terminal cancer’ and ‘cancer miracle recovery’. At first he had considered giving himself a skin lymphoma, because this had both of the crucial factors that he needed: he required a cancer that had a high fatality rate, but was also capable of being sent into remission by a surgical operation combined with radiotherapy. He had no intention of embarking on an elaborate attempt to fake having chemotherapy by shaving his head, losing weight, performing exhaustion and poisoning symptoms. A lymphoma, therefore, seemed ideal, as according to the medical websites it was most commonly treated with surgery and/or radiation therapy.

  Almost as soon as he had settled on this idea, however, he rethought the strategy. A swelling in the lymph nodes was visible, presumably, as he would have noticed it himself. What if Vivienne wanted to see it? Or if she expected, post-operation, to be shown gauze and surgical dressings? As an experienced and accomplished liar, Angel knew that the simpler you kept your lies, the easier it was to make them believable. Since he didn’t want to have to explain away the lack of bandages or scarring on his body to a concerned grandmother, where could he locate his cancer that she would never see the operation site?