Killer Diamonds

by Rebecca Chance

  Christine waited a few more minutes before leaving St Elfrida’s. If she let the camera crews and mourners disperse a little, she calculated, she would make it through the crowd faster; and as she eventually emerged, she saw she had been right. The TV vans were being packed up and the onlookers who had come to gawk at Vivienne Winter, Prince Toby and Missy Jackson were turning to walk away, their heads ducked as they posted their photos to social media.

  Angel was also on his phone, talking urgently in a low voice, but he waved at Christine as she hurried by, miming that he would call her later. She nodded, but kept walking quickly; the sheer volume of work she had to get through was overwhelming, and she would be at the office late again that evening. So she missed hearing Angel snap impatiently:

  ‘Fuck it, Nicole! What do you mean, you’re not around?’

  ‘I’m getting on the Eurostar in a couple of hours,’ Nicole drawled. ‘I have a rendezvous with Silantra in Paris, believe it or not. She’s there for costume fittings for her next tour and she wants me to keep her company this evening. Aren’t I lucky?’

  ‘Room for one more?’ Angel said, turning away from the depleted crowd to make sure he wasn’t overheard arranging a threesome at a memorial service. ‘God, I really need some major kink. I’ve been having to do the whole perfect-boyfriend-in-mourning thing with Christine, and it’s driving me mad. I need to go crazy tonight.’

  ‘Why don’t you ring up that service and get that girl in again?’ Nicole suggested. ‘She was lots of fun.’

  ‘I can’t mark her, though, not without a huge extra charge,’ Angel said in frustration. ‘Which I can’t bloody afford right now. I can’t even afford their normal fee, frankly. I’m in such shit, Nicole. Even what we’re going to make for the finder’s fees isn’t enough to bail me out of this hole. Okay, it’s short-term, but until I get married I have to be really careful with money. Viv won’t come across with any more till then. I’m totally buggered.’

  ‘Or not!’ Nicole said flippantly. ‘Poor Angel, you can’t even pay for someone to bugger you! But I’m afraid Silantra won’t be okay with you coming along. She has to be super-careful at the mo. Biscuit’s skating a bit close to the wind, apparently – he’s had to pay off a tabloid that got a story on him and his boyfriend, so major discretion needed all round. It’s fine if I visit her – she’s booked me a separate room in the hotel just to be careful – but she can’t have a chap sneaking into her suite overnight. Much too risky. Oh, and she’s seriously considering taking even more pieces! That means extra fees on those, so—’

  ‘It’s not enough!’ Angel said, much more sharply than he had meant to. The words echoed loudly against the stone walls of the cul-de-sac where the church was located, and some stragglers from the funeral service turned their heads in surprise to see the man who had just given such a moving eulogy shouting angrily into his phone. The location was ideal for weddings, baptisms or memorial services for well-known people, as access to the church could be cordoned off by the police. But the cul-de-sac meant that there was nowhere to have a private conversation, no side streets for Angel to turn down.

  ‘Look, I can’t talk here. I’ll meet you at the St Pancras champagne bar for a drink before you go,’ he said, lowering his voice again. ‘When’s your train?’

  ‘Seven,’ Nicole said. ‘I can make it there by five thirty. Drinks on me,’ she added teasingly, ‘since it sounds like you can’t even manage those . . .’

  Angel arrived at St Pancras early, repeatedly checking his watch. By the time Nicole appeared – strolling down the length of the long promenade and turning every head in her belted purple trench coat and knee-high black suede high-heeled boots, a large and square-bottomed black leather tote bag slung over her shoulder, her hair pulled back into the smoothest and glossiest of ponytails – he was clasping his fists so tightly that his impeccably manicured nails were digging into his palms.

  Nicole was pulling a sleek silver carry-on bag stuffed with sex toys and skimpy lingerie, in anticipation of the evening she was planning with Silantra. As she reached Angel’s booth, she pulled a face at the glass of champagne he had ordered for her.

  ‘You have that,’ she said, pushing it over the table to him and sliding in, propping the case against the side of the seat. ‘I’m going to be practically naked pretty much as soon as I get to Paris, and I don’t want stomach bloat from the bubbles.’

  Very unusually at the understaffed bar, a waiter arrived at the table almost immediately, staring reverently at Nicole.

  ‘Grey Goose and lime,’ she ordered, choosing a bubble-free, zero-calorie drink option. ‘Double shot of the vodka in a tall glass, then squeeze a whole lime into it. Lots of ice.’

  As he shot away to fulfil her request, she raised her eyebrows at Angel.

  ‘That one wants to be spanked,’ she observed. ‘I can always tell when—’

  ‘Nicole, I don’t have time for banter,’ Angel hissed at her. ‘We need to work something out. Something else – something more . . .’

  The champagne bar at St Pancras station was the perfect location for a clandestine conversation. The high vaulted glass ceiling, the trains rumbling below, the glass walls of the walkway down which the bar ran, the constant stream of passengers pulling cases swiftly along, the low-level clink of glasses and babble of conversation, the spacing of the booths, all meant that it would be impossible to eavesdrop, as long as the people in question kept their voices low. Even a directional mike would have failed to pick up what Angel and Nicole were saying; there was simply too much background noise.

  ‘We? What’s this “we” shit, white boy?’ Nicole drawled.

  ‘What?’ Angel looked both baffled and angry.

  ‘It’s an old joke,’ Nicole explained. ‘The Lone Ranger and Tonto are riding along and suddenly they come to the top of a ridge and below are all these Native Americans, with bows and arrows, and when they turn around there are more behind them. It’s an ambush. So the Lone Ranger says: “Hey, what are we going to do, Tonto?” and Tonto says: “What’s this ‘we’ shit, white boy?” and rides down the hill to join the other guys.’

  ‘That’d be funny if I felt like fucking laughing,’ Angel said, finishing his champagne and reaching for Nicole’s just as her drink arrived.

  ‘I do have an idea, actually,’ Nicole said, flashing such a smile at the waiter that he tripped over his own feet, but waiting to continue until he had left again. ‘It could score us an absolutely enormous amount of money, but it’s on the wrong side of the line. So far, we’ve been completely legal. Yeah, your grandma wouldn’t like it if she knew we were charging introduction fees, but it wouldn’t get us arrested. But this . . .’

  ‘I don’t give a damn,’ Angel said intensely. ‘Granny Viv’s never going to make trouble for me. I’m all she has.’

  ‘Well, it could dump your girlfriend in deep shit,’ Nicole said. ‘Get her sacked, maybe even send her to prison.’

  ‘Meh; if we make enough from it, I won’t need her any more,’ Angel said, drinking half the second glass of champagne and signalling the blushing waiter for a third. ‘And then I don’t give a flying fuck what happens to her, do I? Actually, it would be a huge relief not to have to go through with this whole marriage-and-kids nonsense that Granny Viv’s trying to dump on my head. So what exactly are we going to do? Steal some of the jewellery, and frame her for it if anyone finds out?’

  Nicole smiled a cat-like, V-shaped smile.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘And here’s how we do it.’

  She pushed her drink aside so she could lean further across the table as she unspooled the plan she had in mind. Angel mirrored her posture, elbows on the table, violet eyes wide with anticipation as he listened eagerly to every word, not the slightest scruple popping into his head.

  After all, he had killed one person already, and had planned to marry a second, impregnate her a couple of times and then kill her too. Absconding with items of Vivienne’s jewellery, and possibly get
ting Christine arrested in consequence, was a mere bagatelle by comparison.

  Chapter Eighteen

  London – the same evening

  ‘Darling! What a dull girl you’re being, all work and no play!’

  Angel appeared in the door of Christine’s office, sparking with energy like a live wire. His blond curls were slightly sweaty, his cheeks flushed and his lips as red as if he had just bitten them to bring extra colour, as women used to do before the advent of lipstick. He was brandishing a bottle of champagne, his eyes even brighter than the glittering foil that crowned it.

  There was an urgency about him, a fizz that held as much promise as the champagne. If Nathan had been present, he would have sighed with equal admiration of Angel and envy of his lucky girlfriend.

  Christine’s first reaction, however, was irritation. She was working late, as she would have to do most evenings in the run-up to the auction; she had planned to stay in the office for at least another hour. But the instant she saw Angel, she knew she wouldn’t get any more work done that night. When he wanted something, he pushed until he got it; he was incapable of taking no for an answer.

  To be honest, though, it wasn’t as if she could say no to him once he put his hands on her. As soon as he touched her, any objection would melt away; not only that, but her consent would turn swiftly into begging for more, because she was so desperate for him to finish what he had so tantalizingly started. The way he would withdraw his hands and mouth and cock just as she was frantic for them had become an intrinsic part of the pleasure for her, as she suspected it had been for many, many women before her. And since she knew that she would not only let him position her however he wanted, fuck whichever part of her he wanted, but plead for him to do so, she might as well go along with it straight away and save time – maybe afterwards she could get some more work done at home . . .

  How practical of me! she thought with a half-smile. Pushing away the inventory on which she had been working, she started to stand up.

  ‘What, no resistance?’ Angel said, tilting his head to one side. ‘No implorations for me to come back later so you can take some more time on your terribly important paperwork? No complaints about me having talked my way past the night watchman by bribing him with insider gossip about Granny Viv’s wild times back in the day?’

  ‘I think you could talk your way past anyone,’ Christine said, her smile deepening as she reached for her suit jacket, which was hanging over the back of her chair.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Angel said, striding round the desk, pulling the jacket from her grasp and throwing it across the room. ‘You need fewer clothes on, not more.’

  ‘Angel, not here! It’s my office! Really, I don’t want to do it here!’

  She wasn’t concerned about being caught. By this time, nine thirty in the evening, the building was empty apart from the night watchman, and he only patrolled between the front desk and the back door access areas to the security-controlled basement, with its safes and alarmed doors protecting the auction house’s extremely valuable lots. That wasn’t the reason for her objection. This was her workplace, and if she let Angel have sex with her here, she would always have that image in her mind. It would make it much harder to separate the two areas of her life, clear her mind and focus one hundred per cent on what she had to do to earn a living.

  She opened her mouth to explain, ask him to change his mind. And then it occurred to her that her pleas might make his behaviour even more outrageous. That had happened in the past, when she’d asked him not to finger her in his building’s lift; he’d responded by pulling her skirt right up to her waist, panicking and humiliating her even as she cried out in release, pounding against his hand as he brought her off. What if he pulled her out into the main office and started fucking her there, where the guard could see it on CCTV? He was more than capable of bending her over a colleague’s desk and screwing her where it might be caught on tape. At least in here there were no security cameras to film them having sex.

  This is your boyfriend, a little voice said. This is the man you’re committed to, and you can’t even trust him to respect your workplace . . .

  Already Angel was pulling at the buttons of her blouse, tugging at them with such impatience that the fabric was ripping.

  ‘Don’t,’ she heard herself gasp. ‘Angel, don’t . . . I need to wear that when we leave . . . can we wait, can we do this at yours – even in the limo . . . please . . .’

  ‘I’ve waited all day,’ he said, dragging the blouse down over her shoulders. ‘I’ve waited all bloody day, sat through that bloody service, and I need to fuck you right here, right now. You’ll love it. You always do. Take your knickers off and spread your legs.’

  He kissed her, his hands hard on her breasts, squeezing them, pinching the nipples, his tongue so deep in her mouth she couldn’t talk any more. It was instinctive now, her reaction to him; she was wet instantly, had been pretty much the moment he put his hands on her. No, even before. She had got wet the moment he had told her he was going to fuck her. Her knickers were damp, her abdomen hot as molten metal.

  Already as he pulled back and said: ‘Do it. Take them off,’ against her mouth, flicking her nipples to hard points, her hands were obediently lowering, pulling up her skirt, catching the lace edge of her knickers with her thumbs, taking the waistband of her tights with them, working them down over her buttocks.

  He was pressing her back against the desk, her hips leaning into it for balance, making it hard for her to get enough space to pull her pants down. It was quite deliberate: he kept kissing her, his hands covering her breasts, his erection shoved into her crotch, making her wild for it, so that she was sobbing with need and excitement even before the knickers finally came free, sliding down her legs, taking the tights with them too. Her lower body was wriggling frantically. She was trapped from the hips up, couldn’t use her hands any more, had to writhe and reach one foot to hook around the fabric, balancing on the other leg, fighting against him to do what he wanted, playing yet another of Angel’s games.

  ‘Have you done it?’ he said, and she sobbed a yes, widening her legs, her skirt hiked up now to her crotch, everything bared to him, waiting for him, desperate for his fingers or his cock, so damp and ready he could just enter her now and she would cry in relief at being filled. That was how his games worked so powerfully; they were often a complete substitute for foreplay.

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, standing back between her spread legs and reaching over for the bottle of Pol Roger. Deftly, he pulled off the foil, unwrapped the wire twist, popped the cork without his usual care not to spill the foam. Instead, as soon as it began to spurt, he lowered the bottle, reached between Christine’s legs and slid the fingers of one hand into her. Just as she started to moan and pound herself against him, his fingers widened her, splaying her out, and the next second she felt the cold shock of the bottle neck pushing inside her. Icy, acidic bubbles surged out, tickling her, making her giggle and gasp at once.

  Angel was pushing her down, one hand holding the bottle, the other flat on her stomach. Once he had her prone on the desk, her legs in the air, he began to tilt the bottle, more champagne flowing into her, filling her up. It felt extraordinary, shocking, the bubbles like live things inside her, bursting and fizzing. The bottle itself, filling her up too, was hugely satisfying. She realized she was riding it as if it were Angel’s cock, something that, before meeting Angel, she would never have done, would have thought utterly humiliating. It was even more humiliating that she wailed with disappointment as he pulled it out, unable to bear being empty even for a moment.

  Angel grabbed a book from her desk, a big reference work on historical jewel settings, and shoved it under her bottom, angling it high to keep as much cold liquid inside her as possible. Swiftly, he unzipped his trousers, pulled out his cock and shoved it into her, hard and fast, groaning at the contrast of his heated skin against the iced champagne.

  ‘Fuck, yes!’ he said. ‘Jesus, your
cunt is so fucking hot and cold at the same time – can you feel it, can you feel my cock getting you hot again –’

  He took the bottle, upended it to his mouth, drank and drank. Christine already knew it wasn’t the first drink he’d had that day by the wildness of his actions, the frenzied way he was fucking her, his cock positively bouncing inside her. Her buttocks were thudding against the book, its corners digging in, starting to become painful. She’d bruise if this went on any longer.

  She tried to sit up a little, shift herself so the book wasn’t hurting her, but Angel immediately pushed her back again.

  ‘Stay down!’ he commanded. ‘Here, have a drink!’

  He shoved the bottle against her mouth, the champagne flooding out, almost choking her; she coughed and sputtered, trying to swallow, but it was hard to manage lying flat on her back. The bubbles ran up her nose, made her sneeze, and all the time Angel was ramming her, forcing her bottom into the hard edges of the book with every stroke, which was really beginning to hurt now.

  Christine coughed again, finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. Scared of choking on the bubbles, she managed to curl her head and shoulders up as if she were doing a situp. This time Angel didn’t push her back down, much to her relief; instead, he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up to an awkward half-sitting position, the book still wedged under her. It was digging in even more now that her full weight was on it. She gripped his arms for balance, trying to lift herself a bit off the sharp leather corners of the book, but she couldn’t, and the more she squirmed, the more it hurt.

  ‘You’re going to love this,’ he said, and now that she was looking into his eyes she realized that he wasn’t home. He was more animal than human, the whites of his eyes showing all round his purple irises, his hair moist with sweat, champagne trickling from his mouth. His hands slid up her shoulders to her neck. The next thing she knew, they closed around it, his thumbs digging into her windpipe.