‘Actually, you should in any case,’ she added, the business side of her brain kicking in. ‘Those are a valuable part of your estate, and obviously you won’t want them to fall into the wrong hands after you’re . . . after you’re . . .’ Since she was neither a solicitor specializing in estate planning and will writing, nor a financial adviser needing to discuss a client’s asset disposal after their eventual death, Christine didn’t quite know the right words to use about this delicate subject.
‘At the least, you should definitely make sure you know where they are, and that they’re safe,’ she continued, after a pause. ‘And consider whether you’re okay with us using any for the sale. Honestly, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t encourage you to give us some for the auction . . . think of the money that could bring in, and of course it’s all for charity! Where did you say the boxes of photographs were? And the negatives?’
‘Goodness! I’m not sure,’ Vivienne said blankly. ‘It’s been so long . . .’
Her voice tailed off. Christine waited to see if she would finish the sentence, but no more words were forthcoming. Vivienne was gazing out of the windows that looked over Hyde Park, but it was clear that in her mind’s eye there was quite another vision, some memory she was replaying for herself. Her eyes were half closed, her eyelashes fluttering, and a little smile was playing around her lips.
Sitting quietly there in silence, watching Vivienne reminisce, images flooded into Christine’s mind too. Vivienne at fourteen in her breakout role, cast as Juliet in a film of Romeo and Juliet; the producers had cast a young drama student as Romeo, focusing more on his looks and chemistry with Vivienne than on his acting ability, and she had acted him off the screen. He had barely been heard of again.
A young Vivienne playing Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, vivid and sexual and passionately attracted to her husband, the brutal Stanley Kowalski. Vivienne as Anne Boleyn to Richard Burton’s Henry VIII in Beloved Queen, portrayed as madly in love with a young Warren Beatty as Henry Percy, the love of her life. Beatty had been totally miscast, but the sexual charge between him and Vivienne had been off the charts. Even so, it hadn’t prevented the film from flopping, with critics pointing out the multiple historical inaccuracies.
But it was still watched avidly for the love scenes. Vivienne, who had been having an affair with Beatty at the time, was positively luminous, glowing and vibrant with desire. The crucial scene where – dressed in cloth of gold, her dark hair looped and pinned into a golden net heavily decorated with pearls, more pearls dangling from her earlobes – she danced with Henry Percy at a court masque while both Henry VIII and Henry Percy’s wife looked on, realizing slowly why their spouses were incapable of returning their affections, was one of Vivienne’s most famous moments as an actress. Yearning and guilt, love and sorrow: the changing expressions that flitted across her face in the course of the dance had been exquisite.
And then, of course, Vivienne as Nefertiti in her diaphanous white floating dress and high blue war crown, a gold collar round her neck so elaborate and studded with gems that very few women in the world could have carried it off. Vivienne with Randon Cliffe, perpetually bare-chested, one of the few co-stars who possessed enough manly charisma to balance out Vivienne’s sexual allure. Vivienne and Randon on screen together in the first heady rush of their love affair had felt almost too raw, too naked – as if they were together in private, and someone had filmed them without their knowledge.
Christine had made it her business to watch as many of Vivienne’s films as she could before going to Sweden on her mission to court her for the auction. The images of Vivienne as Juliet, as Stella, as Anne Boleyn, as Nefertiti, were still vivid in her mind as she looked at Vivienne now: seventy-three years old, her eyes closed, but on her lips a smile identical to the blissful expression of her fourteen-year-old Juliet, looking down from the balcony at her long-forgotten Romeo. Of Anne Boleyn, young and in love, still believing that she could marry Henry Percy and become Countess of Northumberland, betrothing herself to him in a secret ceremony that she would later be forced by Cardinal Wolsey to deny. And above all, of Nefertiti, finally coming to life as a woman after long, barren, passionless years with her husband, when Randon Cliffe’s Horemheb forced himself on her in a way that would certainly be labelled sexual assault nowadays, but at the time had been regarded as one of the most romantic film scenes ever committed to celluloid.
Christine found it tremendously moving to see Vivienne, her skin now so soft, so delicately lined, her features blurred by age, still experiencing emotions as rich and vivid as they had been in her heyday. Was it Randon she was remembering, or one of her multitude of other lovers? It might even be Dieter – a man who could not have been more unlike Randon.
Dieter, with whom Vivienne had stayed until his death several years before, had been a multimillionaire Swiss businessman who abhorred the spotlight and was happy to play second fiddle to his hugely famous wife. He had preferred to stay in the Montreux mansion while Vivienne travelled the world with her gay entourage: appearing as a judge at film festivals, making guest appearances on TV shows, and promoting her ever-increasing range of perfumes, jewellery and skincare. Dieter ran her companies from behind the scenes, and he never minded how much she needed to travel to publicize them. Much as he loved Vivienne, having her in Montreux on a twenty-four-hour basis would have been extremely exhausting for him.
The naked photos of her and Randon won’t be in Switzerland, Christine deduced. Surely she wouldn’t have taken them to the house she shared with Dieter, where he lived full-time while she travelled the world. He could easily have come across them, and she wouldn’t have wanted that.
It’s by far the most likely scenario that they stayed here in London . . . and I could make a start on looking for them right now.
Chapter Twelve
London – a short time later
Vivienne was definitely sleeping; reveries of her glory days had led to a comfortable afternoon snooze. Her bosom, draped in a green silk blouse with a flatteringly high pussycat bow at the neck, was rising and falling slowly, steadily, her exhales audible, almost stertorous, the heavily mascaraed lashes fluttering with the rhythm of her breath.
I could just have a quick look around . . .
It wasn’t being sneaky; it wasn’t spying. Christine had full access to Vivienne’s jewellery collection, and possessed the security code to both safes so that she could continue with the job of cataloguing the huge collection even if Vivienne were not at home. The catalogue was to be chronological – Christine’s concept for it had been approved by both Vivienne and the chairman of Berkeley. It was to be called Vivienne Winter: A Life in Jewels, just as Christine had suggested, and it would be as detailed as she could possibly make it. Her career was now entirely linked to this auction, and she was working on it during every waking moment.
Every moment, of course, that she wasn’t spending with Angel.
Normally, this would have been the worst time of all to meet a new boyfriend. Christine would have embargoed any attempt by any other man, no matter how eligible, until the auction was successfully concluded. Even Tor? she found herself wondering, and dismissed the thought of him with great firmness. It was beyond annoying that memories of his smile, his sense of humour, his body in that tight black wetsuit, insisted on popping back from time to time. She had absolutely prohibited her brain from thinking nostalgically about a married man who had acted like a single one, and she was extremely irritated when it refused to obey her.
Although she had to admit, she never thought about Tor when she was with Angel. When Angel was present, it would be impossible to think about another man . . .
But Christine wouldn’t allow herself to think about Angel, either. Not at work. He was much too distracting. Her thighs clenched together and she swallowed hard; if she started remembering the most recent night she had spent at his apartment, she wouldn’t get anything done. Angel was like a drug. In a way, it was lucky tha
t she had such a crucially important job to do at the moment. Under normal circumstances, she would struggle to concentrate at work at all.
He had dropped so suddenly and shockingly into her life that she still had a hard time believing that he was real. He might almost have been the angel he resembled from the painting of the Annunciation, flying down on gilded wings to transform her existence; but while Gabriel had brought Mary news that she had been chosen to bear Christ, what Vivienne’s grandson brought was considerably more devilish. Although angels and demons had always been closely linked in mythology, of course; wasn’t Lucifer himself a fallen angel?
In any case, Christine was still wrestling with the fact that Angel had chosen to land next to her. Men like him simply didn’t get serious about women like her. They dated supermodels, socialites, actresses.
However, Nathan, a gay colleague of Christine’s who was managing the social media aspects of the auction, had told her that very handsome men were often like peacocks. Because they wanted to be the acknowledged beauty of the couple, they preferred to settle down with women who were not as attractive as they were.
‘Just think of yourself as a peahen, and enjoy looking at Mr Handsome,’ he had advised, not entirely helpfully. ‘Look at all the gorgeous actors whose wives are just nice-looking, or a bit dumpy! Rock stars go for supermodels, but there are plenty of actors out there who score a ten and whose wives are just a five. Seriously, check out the gossip mags and you’ll see. Not that I’m saying you’re a five – you’re definitely at least a seven.’
‘Wow, thank you, Nathan,’ Christine had said, reeling slightly. ‘I think.’
Since then, she had flicked through some online gossip sites and seen the truth of Nathan’s theory. Plenty of peacock actors with comparatively peahen wives, who tended to have been make-up artists or waitresses, for some reason, before their marriage. It wasn’t exactly flattering, but since she had no idea where her relationship with Angel might be heading, and didn’t have a spare moment to wonder about it, there was no point dwelling on it. She was just too busy with the arduous task of organizing Vivienne Winter: A Life in Jewels. Christine had promised Vivienne that she would top the total achieved by the Elizabeth Taylor jewel auction. If they didn’t make more than seventy-five million pounds, she would take it as a personal failure.
There was no question, however, that she and Angel were in a relationship. She had slept over at his penthouse for more than half of the previous week and had, at his suggestion, brought over an increasing selection of clothes and toiletries. Vivienne was already referring to Christine as Angel’s girlfriend. And the fact that she was, unbelievably, dating Vivienne Winter’s grandson made Christine feel as dizzy as if the room was spinning around her.
Stop! she told herself; this always happened when she thought about Angel. Think about the photographs! Where are the photographs? That’s the only thing you should be concentrating on right now!
Tiptoeing out of the sitting room to avoid waking Vivienne, Christine walked through the flat to the dressing room – almost as large as the bedroom itself. Its door stood open, as did the door of both safes: Christine was in and out of them all day with jewellery boxes. As a precaution, Vivienne’s insurance company had insisted on stationing a security guard in the entrance lobby of her apartment, who did nothing all day but play games on his phone and check the bags and pockets of anyone leaving the flat.
Christine had become accustomed much faster than she would have expected to having access to the glittering, Ali Baba-like treasure chest that was Vivienne’s entire jewel collection. It had been flown in from her houses in New York, Montreux and Los Angeles to be assembled, for the first time ever, all in one place. Intimately familiar with the contents of the safes by now, Christine knew that the large boxes on the lower shelves, big enough to contain a store of photographs and negatives, held the tiara collection. And valuable as those photographs were, she didn’t think that Vivienne would have chosen to store them under lock and key in a safe so full of jewellery boxes that space was precious.
Still, Christine was reasonably sure that they must be in London. Vivienne had told her that Randon’s photographic lab had been at her house in Knightsbridge; Vivienne would no doubt have cleared it out carefully after his death, ensuring that all of the saucy photographs and negatives were in her possession. And it would be logical for them to have accompanied her on her move to Park Lane. Vivienne would surely not have put items as compromising as naked images of herself and Randon into storage. They were far more likely to be tucked away somewhere in this flat . . .
She searched the dressing room to no avail. There were no boxes of photographs and negatives among the vast array of Vivienne’s extraordinary collection of clothing and accessories. Clicking her tongue in frustration, Christine turned to leave the room, her brain racing with speculation as to where the photos might be.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed in surprise as Angel, stepping into the dressing room, caught her around the waist and pulled her to him firmly. His mouth came down hard on hers, his tongue sliding past her lips, his hands descending to cup her buttocks, pulling her against him even tighter so that she could feel his penis stirring at the contact.
‘Well, hello, little kitten,’ he said eventually. ‘Fancy bumping into you here!’
‘I know,’ Christine managed. ‘So unexpected to find me at my job!’
‘I didn’t actually come by to see you,’ Angel said cheerfully, releasing her. ‘You’re just a bonus. I have some news for Granny Viv.’
‘She’s fallen asleep,’ Christine said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just popped into the living room and saw her passed out and lightly snoring. Is that happening often, may I enquire?’
‘Oh, she nods off sometimes, but it’s not a big deal,’ Christine said, wanting to reassure Vivienne’s loving grandson that his grandmother seemed in excellent health. ‘She was having a trip down memory lane, and it turned into an afternoon nap, that’s all.’
‘How do you find her?’ Angel asked. ‘Mentally, I mean?’
‘Sharp as a tack,’ Christine said. ‘She does wander off sometimes when she’s telling me stories, but she always catches herself and comes back. I don’t have to prompt her. I mean, for her age, she’s amazing.’
‘She’ll go on forever, won’t she?’ Angel observed, and his mouth twisted into what Christine would, under any other circumstances, have considered a cynical smile. ‘Like her own diamonds. She’s just as tough as they are, and just as hard. She’ll probably outlast us all.’
‘You sound almost . . .’ Christine began, frowning, but Angel cut her off, reaching a finger out and caressing her under her chin as he would a cat.
‘Pretty Christine,’ he said. ‘My little kitten. It’s nothing. Sometimes I remember my mother, you see. She was so young when she died. It always seems brutal to me that while Granny Viv’s the ultimate survivor, my poor mother wasn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Christine said, her frown dissolving. Of course he hadn’t meant to speak harshly of Vivienne; she could see how close they were, how much Vivienne adored him. His mother’s death had been a tragedy, and naturally it would be poignant for him to see Vivienne growing old so gracefully when Pearl hadn’t even made it to her thirtieth birthday.
She wanted to say more, but it was so hard to speak with Angel stroking her on the highly sensitive, soft skin of her jaw. He had a way of finding parts of her body that no other lover had ever caressed, bringing them to such vivid life that she would be acutely aware of them forever afterwards.
‘Don’t worry, little kitten,’ he said, his finger sliding down, expertly unhooking the top button on her blouse to slip down the cleft of her cleavage. ‘I’m fine. More than fine. You have a way of making all my cares disappear.’
He undid the second button.
‘I’m going to make you purr,’ he whispered. ‘And then maybe caterwaul.’
‘Angel, no!’ she protested. ‘I’m
at work – Gregory’s around—’
‘So? Everyone knows I’m your boyfriend. God, I loathe that word,’ he added in parentheses. ‘And it’s a union blessed from on high by Her Holiness Vivienne Winter. I can’t tell you how much she approves of you, kitten. Says you’re doing the most fantastically thorough job.’
‘Really?’
Christine’s blue eyes glowed. While she knew how hard she was working, it was wonderful to hear Vivienne’s appreciation confirmed. Christine did not come from the kind of privileged background that took praise for granted. She regularly noticed how the aristocratic employees of Berkeley’s accepted compliments on their work as their due; she couldn’t imagine herself ever receiving praise without basking in it.
‘My God,’ Angel said, manoeuvring her back her round the corner of the wall and into the dressing room, ‘I think you look more excited by Granny Viv’s saying how intelligent and hard-working you are than me telling you I’m going to sit you on her dressing table and make you come like a train.’
‘Angel, seriously – this is totally unprofessional—’
‘Oh please, kitten. Granny Viv’s even keener on you as my girlfriend – ugh, equally ghastly word – than she is on you in your professional capacity, if that’s possible. I’m sure she’d be nothing but delighted to know that I’m servicing you and keeping you happy. God knows, it’s not like she hasn’t had plenty of fun in her time!’
Shutting the door, he picked Christine up by the waist, sat her on the central island of the dressing room, and pushed her legs apart with the confidence of a man to whom no woman has ever said no. From the first, Angel had acted as if her body was his toy to play with, and he was so sure of himself that Christine, to her surprise, had found herself going along with whatever he wanted.
It was as if she had been struck by lightning twice on one day. First there had been her meeting with Vivienne in Tylösand; and then, by the time their private plane had landed in London, she had effectively gained not only the job opportunity of her dreams but the boyfriend too. Angel had been hugely appreciative of her pitch for the auction, lavishing her with compliments, both personal and professional, while Vivienne had clearly endorsed his attraction to Christine by telling the two of them to go to celebrate once they had dropped her in Park Lane.
Killer Diamonds Page 20
