It took a stupid amount of courage to open her eyes again. Part of her brain was screaming that since nothing was happening to her, she should just stay exactly where she was, exactly how she was, with her eyes closed, because clearly some sort of magic was keeping her safe. Wrenching them open was a huge muscular effort; but when she did, miraculously, the door was still in front of her. Dunc hadn’t opened it. The crashing and banging and shouting were coming from the living room. And then the sound of glass smashing in the bedroom made her jump out of her skin.
It wasn’t just a vase breaking, or a mirror shattering. The entire bedroom window must have been broken with gigantic force: she could hear shards of glass landing on the floor like icicles crashing down. Curiosity won out over safety. Gingerly, Christine craned around the door, and her jaw dropped as she saw a black-clad figure flying across the room, feet first, having presumably kicked in the window. Its hands were wrapped around a rope that it dropped as it landed on its feet in one fluid movement, pulling up the balaclava that had protected its face from broken glass.
Christine would have stayed in the safety of her refuge behind the door, if it weren’t for one important fact. The man who had just abseiled down from the roof and into the bedroom was Tor.
Pushing the door away from her, she ran across the bedroom, almost unable to believe her eyes.
‘Tor!’ she screamed, behaving exactly like the kind of hysterical female love interest she also despised in films. ‘Tor!’
‘Christine!’
Tor swivelled, his jaw dropping, as Christine seemed to appear from nowhere and hurtle into his arms, hugging him frantically, her arms barely meeting around his square torso – the sheer bulk of him, she realized, was padded out by some sort of Kevlar jacket. She stared up at him in complete incredulity.
‘You’re dead!’ she heard herself screech. ‘You’re dead!’
Tor’s hands closed briefly around her face, cradling her cheeks, his blue eyes meeting hers in a moment of sheer happiness. And then so many things happened in such swift succession that it took her ages, looking back, to sort them out. Someone hurtled into the bedroom, a man in a bright blue jacket with a face that was a pulpy mass of red. Angel, tearing across the room and around the bed. Behind him came a man chasing him – not George or Dunc or the other thug – a black-clad figure who lunged at Angel, grabbing the back of his workout jacket.
There was a struggle. Angel writhed for a moment, his hands coming up to the front of his body. The zip of the jacket ripped and the pursuer fell back, clutching the bright blue jacket in his hands. There was a blur of movement as Angel dived down the corridor that led to his bathroom. He slammed the door and clicked shut the lock; the jacket flew through the air as the man who had been chasing Angel tossed it aside and shot down the corridor, followed by Tor. They started kicking the door, repeated smashes of booted heels against the lock until the wood around it splintered and the door fell open, the two men racing inside.
Christine stood in the middle of the bedroom, both hands pressed to her mouth, once more looking and feeling as useless as a slow-witted supporting character in an action film. Her eyes were as wide as saucers, her chest heaving with panting breath. Through the now-open door to the living room, she could see bodies swarming. Black-clad people with POLICE written in white on the backs and fronts of their jackets had wrestled George and Dunc and the other man to the ground and were putting handcuffs on them. The space seemed entirely full of bodies in movement, disorienting in their speed and swiftness.
The shock of seeing Tor was so absolute that Christine’s brain was spinning, trying to work out how he could possibly be alive. True, they hadn’t found his body – but they had searched for him for days! He couldn’t have survived that long outside in the below-zero temperatures – everyone had agreed on that! It had never been said explicitly, but it had been clear that the search had gone on longer than the authorities truly thought necessary.
How could the Bolivian air force helicopters not have spotted him? Had it all been a setup for some reason? But no, his poor parents – Tor would never have put them through that, surely! Christine remembered their terrible grief at the memorial service.
‘He’s not here!’ Tor yelled from the bathroom. ‘He’s not here!’
It barely took a moment before Christine realized what must have happened, why Angel had made for the bathroom.
She had thought it was a last desperate attempt at refuge, a rat chased back into its hole; she hadn’t realized that the rat had an exit tunnel. She ran down the corridor and into the bathroom, pushed Tor aside, pressed with the heel of her hand on the corner of the knee-height panel to the laundry chute. It was discreetly concealed, with no handle, just a magnetic closure that snapped open when you bumped it. Christine pulled it open, staring down the square black hole. If it hadn’t been obvious that Angel had managed to fit down there, she wouldn’t have believed it possible.
‘He’s gone down the laundry chute!’ Tor exclaimed as the police officer with him raised one hand to his shoulder, speaking urgently into the radio clipped there, informing the rest of the team what had happened.
‘It goes straight down to the basement,’ Christine said, imagining Angel shooting down that terrifying chute. It was almost a direct drop, landing in the big laundry basket six floors down. Surely he wouldn’t have gone head first? That could kill him on landing if he didn’t manage to slow himself down in time . . .
Tor was craning forward, bracing his hands on either side of the tiled wall, his head as far down the chute as he could manage.
‘I think he landed,’ he said, his voice booming back at them. ‘I don’t see him in here.’
‘I’ve sent the guys on the ground to the basement,’ the policeman said, but another thought had hit Christine. Urgently, she grabbed Tor’s arm, pulling him back to the living room, where George, Dunc and the other man were being frogmarched out of the apartment.
‘Ask them what the code to the safe is!’ she panted to Tor. ‘Him! He knows, Angel told him!’
Her arm was stretched out, pointing at George, who was unmistakable: a dapper, svelte man in a pale grey fitted suit, the jacket fastened with one button over a black T-shirt.
‘Where the fuck did you come from?’ George said, staring at Christine with genuine shock.
‘She was behind the bedroom door, wasn’t she?’ Dunc said, jerking his head to the bedroom. ‘I was just about to find her when the coppers broke the door down.’
‘Fucking Angel. What a bloody liar,’ George said with resignation. ‘Telling me there was no one else in here. Don’t know why I’m surprised. He wouldn’t know the truth if he had it tattooed on his arse.’
‘Angel’s gone down the laundry chute, and we need the code to the safe,’ Tor said to the man beside George. ‘Because—’
‘Angel has stolen goods in the safe,’ Christine said; there was no point trying to cover this up. ‘They belong to his grandmother. I’m organizing the auction of her jewellery. He stole some of the pieces from the auction house.’
Clearly, everyone here knew who Angel’s grandmother was. Equally clearly, no one was at all surprised that Angel was a thief; raised eyebrows, brief nods were the only reaction to this.
‘Come on, let’s have it,’ the policeman said to George, leading him into the bedroom. ‘Spit it out.’
‘We’ve got a full search warrant,’ Tor said to Christine as they followed. ‘We weren’t looking for stolen jewellery, though.’
‘I don’t understand anything,’ Christine said feebly. ‘I don’t understand anything at all. . .’
Tor took her hand and squeezed it firmly. ‘I will explain everything after this,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
Another police officer was climbing onto the bed, kneeling up on it, running her hands along the headboard; a wenge wood panel clicked loose and opened, exposing a black safe neatly installed in the recess. George rattled off five numbers, and the police officer tapped th
em into the electronic key pad. The door swung wide, and a second officer, standing by the side of the bed, photographed the contents in situ before his colleague began to pull them out and lay them on the bed. A big baggie of white powder; a small stack of five-hundred-euro notes banded together with a wrapper; and then, to Christine’s huge relief, the enormous purple diamond ring, followed by the orange one and then the pendant. Angel had wrapped each of them in bubble packaging, but the colour of the first two stones shone through clearly.
Her sigh was audible. Tor smiled down at her.
‘We can’t hand these over to you, miss, obviously,’ the officer in charge said. ‘Being as they’re not your property. They’ll have to be returned to Ms Winter directly if it does transpire that they belong to her.’
‘That’s fine,’ Christine said. ‘That’s totally fine. As long as we have them.’
She heard her voice tremble; she was on the verge of bursting into tears now that everything was all right, more than all right: the jewellery was found, Tor was alive – Tor was alive! Her knees started to buckle, and his arm went round her waist. He pulled her to him and hugged her and she buried her head in his jacket and cried and cried at the fact that he was living and breathing and his arms were around her; that somehow, miraculously, he had come back from the dead.
It was frustrating that his jacket was so padded, so big and thick that she couldn’t hug him properly; but when she caught her breath, finally, leaning back a little to look up at him, he promptly kissed her, and that made her forget about everything else.
Chapter Twenty-Two
London – a short time later
‘Madame?’
Vivienne was sitting in her boudoir, her cat in her lap, stroking it with slow, measured movements of one heavily ringed hand. This room was her inner sanctum, and like all of her boudoirs in her various properties across the world, it was decorated in a deliberately feminine style, designed to make any heterosexual man feel disinclined to step across its threshold. The floor was carpeted in pink, the walls mirrored and hung with pictures, many of them portraits of Vivienne herself. Frills and furbelows, valances and swagged curtains, occasional tables stacked with framed photographs, vases of flowers, trinkets and china boxes; Vivienne had never considered that less was more. One entire mirrored wall was dedicated to Vivienne’s own product line, shelves holding her perfumes, nail polish, make-up, body lotions, all trimmed with the strip of faux-fur white leopard bordered with diamanté that was her signature branding.
There was strategy behind this design. By the time Vivienne had been asked to give her name to a line of perfumes she had been over sixty, and adjusting to the fact that she could show less skin than she had once done. Using animal print, she had decided, was an effective way to flirt with sexiness without looking like mutton dressed as lamb. The chaise longue on which she sat was upholstered in white-leopard-printed velvet, as was the chair in front of her make-up mirror. The mirror itself was ringed with lights that enabled her to adjust her make-up for any effect necessary, from full daylight to an evening appearance.
The first thing Vivienne did every morning, even before summoning Gregory with her coffee and croissant, was apply light daytime make-up and don a wig or a turban; no one was allowed to see her bare face or thinning scalp. As she looked over at Gregory, who was hovering nervously in the doorway, her maquillage was as perfect as ever. The violet eyes were outlined in Vivienne Plum Velvet pencil, her lips were glossed with her soft pink lipstick, which, as she purred to the camera in her promotional videos, both moisturized and concealed fine lines. Her wig was a dark brown that was nearly black, but not quite: full black was too harsh against the skin for anyone over thirty years old. She wore a soft white cashmere sweater and grey silk lounging palazzo pants, and diamonds glittered in her ears.
‘Yes, Gregory?’ she said, her tone quite even.
‘It’s Mr Angel,’ said Gregory – and despite his years of working for Vivienne and dealing with all sorts of unexpected emergencies and dramatic crises, many of them involving Angel himself, his entire body seemed contorted with embarrassment. It was as if he was struggling not to utter the words he was dying to say.
Vivienne’s carefully made-up features barely moved; her eyelashes flickered, but the hand stroking the cat continued in its steady rhythm.
‘Ah,’ she said quietly.
‘Grandma! Grandma!’
Angel could be heard tearing across the apartment.
‘Madame, I asked him to wait in the salon –’ Gregory began, but Vivienne was already nodding at her assistant to absolve him of any blame. She shifted a little, arranging the cushions propped behind her at the back of the chaise longue. She had been sitting here for a while, stroking the sleeping cat, staring ahead of her to the grey London December sky, the rain softly falling on the green grass of Hyde Park, across the double rivers of traffic on Park Lane. Waiting for what she knew was coming.
Whom she knew was coming.
At least she was prepared.
‘Grandma!’
Angel pushed past Gregory and burst into the room. His appearance was extraordinary. The blood had clotted on his nose, drying dark and messy. He was still in the tracksuit trousers he had worn to his training session, a form-fitting T-shirt made of sweat-wicking fabric on top, piped with bright fluorescent lines at the armholes and neckline, intended to make the wearer stand out if working out at night. It looked incongruous and flimsy.
He had managed to slow the sheer drop down the laundry chute by jamming his feet against the sides, but that traction hadn’t been enough; he had had to use his bare elbows too, and they were bruised and raw. The landing had been clumsy, and he had turned an ankle on the steel bar at the base of the laundry basket. Still, the descent had been so speedy that once he had clawed his way out of the basket and made for the tradesmen’s exit of the building, the police officers stationed at the front and back doors and in the parking garage had not been fast enough to reach it.
No one had expected Angel to come running out of that access route. They had been closing in on him as he left his apartment that morning and went down to the parking garage to pick up his Alfa Romeo, intending to drive to Chelsea Harbour. But the police had been forestalled by George and his two heavies, who, having bribed the doorman of the building for information on Angel’s schedule, had been waiting by Angel’s car. He had fled on seeing them; they had had to catch him, roughing him up in punishment before carting him back to his apartment.
Since Angel’s escape down the laundry chute had been so unexpected, the police officers had been too far away to see him dashing out and jumping into a cab. They were currently checking the building’s CCTV, but it would be a while before they spotted his grainy figure hailing the taxi, enlarged the licence plate and tracked down its destination.
Angel was in considerable pain from all his injuries. The smashed cartilage of his nose, his bruises, the stress of the day’s events, the race to get to Vivienne, felt like the weight of the world on his shoulders. He dropped to his knees in front of the chaise longue. With a tilt of her head, Vivienne conveyed to Gregory that he was to leave the room and close the door.
Visibly perturbed at the prospect of leaving Vivienne alone with Angel in this condition, he hesitated, the first time he had ever questioned an order of hers. But Vivienne’s beautiful eyes widened, her head jerked, sharp and imperative, and with great reluctance, Gregory backed away, shutting the door silently.
‘Grandma, you have to help me!’ Angel said, reaching out to take her hands.
The cat, not liking this intrusion into its cosy territory on Vivienne’s lap, stood up, hissed and strolled down the length of the chaise longue, settling by her feet instead.
‘You’ve disturbed Louison,’ Vivienne said, her tone neutral. ‘She’s fourteen years old and needs her rest.’
‘My nose is broken!’ Angel said, his voice sounding as if he had a heavy cold. ‘And you’re worrying about your cat? Loo
k at me! Aren’t you worried? Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?’
‘Oh, Angel, I know what happened,’ Vivienne said gently. ‘I know everything. Tor rang me a couple of hours ago, when he was heading off with the police to arrest you. He wanted to warn me in advance. And he and Christine have just called me from your apartment.’
Angel’s hands were still outstretched; when Louison left her lap, Vivienne had folded her hands there, making it clear that she would not take his, and now he pulled them back, realizing the full extent of the trouble he was in.
‘He’s always hated me,’ he said swiftly, sitting back on his heels. ‘Honestly, Grandma! He was really interested in Christine, and when I started seeing her he was so jealous. You should have seen him at the press launch before the expedition! He was all over her. It was pathetic. I’m not surprised that when he fell down a cliff – because he was showing off, probably – and crawled away, or whatever happened, he decided to blame me, because—’
‘Angel. They found my rings in the safe in your flat. The purple diamond Randon bought for me, the orange one Dieter gave me. And the heart-shaped pendant Randon gave me on our tenth anniversary.’
She glanced sideways at the closest occasional table, the framed photographs on which were entirely of her, Randon, or her and Randon together. Until Christine had asked her, Vivienne had forgotten all about the photographs Randon had taken of her, and she of him, all those years ago; it had given her great pleasure to go through the boxes once again, and now that Dieter was gone, she could pull out and frame her favourites without it being disrespectful to him.
She was aware that it had been hard enough for Dieter to live in Randon’s shadow – the man universally recognized as the great love of her life, their passion immortalized on screen – without having photographs of him scattered around their various houses, let alone ones that signified such a deep and intimate attachment. Now, however, she could indulge herself as much as she wanted, and one of the main photographs was of her lying on the grey volcanic sands of Lampedusa, an island off the coast of Italy, with the great heart-shaped pendant around her neck, laughing up at the camera. They had hired a yacht to cruise around Sicily and its satellite islands one summer: Pantelleria, with its wonderful dessert wine, Passito; striking little Linosa, with its extinct volcanoes and the pastel-painted houses of its village.
Killer Diamonds Page 38
