by Wendy Holden
‘We’ve had our eye on her for a while. And once she was spotted in Great Hording, it was the proof that knitted everything else together.’
Laura stared at Harry in horror. ‘I told Lulu to go to the police. But she said she’d get to the buttocks of it herself.’
He looked startled. ‘What?’
Laura felt sick with guilt. She should have insisted that Lulu went to the authorities. By going maverick, her friend had walked straight into some dreadful net. ‘She must have told someone else. Someone who didn’t want Karlie’s – I mean Karla’s – identity revealed. So they grabbed Lulu.’ She clutched Harry’s hand. ‘She’s in danger.’
Somewhere in the back of her mind the realisation dawned that Harry had never been interested in Karlie, except professionally. It should have been a triumphant moment. But all Laura could think about now was Lulu. She shook Harry’s hand. ‘We’ve got to find her!’
‘Steady on! We will!’
As the car swerved over the lanes of the motorway and Harry fought to straighten it up, amid admonishing honks from surrounding vehicles, another thought struck Laura.
‘Why was Karlie there? At Society?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he returned, somewhat crushingly. ‘Society’s got a lot of upper-crust contacts. Very useful, given the Russians were attacking the Establishment. And, of course, you were there. She thought you might have information on your phone.’
Laura gasped. ‘That’s why she had it tapped! I knew there was something weird about it!’
‘And why she burgled your flat.’
‘But what was she looking for? Society’s deepest secrets? The Top Single Totty List for 2018? The only world domination plans she knew were those of West London’s most superior children’s stores. What would Russian intelligence, however aspirational, want with that?
Harry cast her another glance from the steering wheel. Longer, this time, and more intense. ‘Can’t you guess? Information about me, of course.’
‘You?’ Her heart was hammering so hard she could hardly hear herself speak. ‘But there isn’t anything about you in my flat. Or on my phone. You’ve never left anything and you haven’t been in touch for ages.’
He looked at her for a long time. His expression was unreadable. ‘I couldn’t,’ he said simply. ‘If I had, you would have been in danger. They would have taken you to get at me.’
Laura supposed these words should strike terror into her heart. But their effect was to send her thoughts flying back to where the conversation had begun. ‘Has Karlie got Lulu then?’
‘We believe her associates have,’ Harry replied. ‘We’re not sure who they all are, but we know one of them’s posing as a bookseller.’
‘Peter Delabole!’ gasped Laura.
‘That’s one of his names. He started out as Andrew Redgrave. Cambridge, MI5, Moscow bureau. Double agent, the full Kim Philby.’
Laura was still shaking her head. She remembered the afternoon in his shop, his refusal to sell her Indigenous Fats and Waxes of Norway. When she told Harry she’d tried to buy it for him, he snorted.
‘Would have been quite a present. Would have saved me a lot of time as well. They were probably leaving messages for each other in it.’
‘Isn’t that a bit... basic?’ But Laura had no doubt he was right. Why else would Delabole have acted as he did?
‘Given that everyone’s hacking everyone else, it’s one of the safest methods out there. An oldie but a goodie.’
He flashed her a wide smile and she suddenly felt ridiculously happy. Which of course she shouldn’t, given that Lulu had disappeared. This was such a strange journey, full of dramatic revelation, some good, many bad.
‘I wonder how they even came across Great Hording in the first place,’ she mused. ‘There’s an internet blackout, after all.’ She blushed, realising how silly this must sound. Hackers of the level evidently operating could no doubt find anything, anyone and anywhere.
In the intermittent glow from the overhead lights of the motorway, one straight eyebrow was quizzically raised. ‘It’s a good question, with an unexpected answer.’
‘So?’ Laura felt a flood of gratification. A good question. ‘What is that answer?’
‘Your friend Edgar.’
Laura’s mouth dropped open. ‘You’re not seriously saying he’s a fifth columnist?’ Camp, chaotic, clubbing, string-vest-wearing Edgar? A more unexpected spy was hard to imagine.
‘He might as well have been,’ Harry said. ‘As it was, the Russians knew he goes clubbing a lot, and that his father is Sir Philip Peaseblossom. All it took was a group of gender-fluid Baltic dancers to go with him back to his flat and slip something in his tea.’
Both of Laura’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘I met them! Sink the Pink!’ Only now did the name seem significant. ‘As in sink the left-wing?’
Harry nodded. ‘They’re coming from the Conservative side of the Russian political establishment. That’s why Sergei Goblemov was targeted. He fell out with the regime, which was why he came to England in the first place.’
Laura sat back in the passenger seat, her brain whirling. It all seemed too much to take in, and one matter alone was paramount. Lulu was missing. Her dear, potty, warm-hearted, theatrical billionheiress best friend. Would she ever see her again?
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘Lady Mandy was at her wits’ end. Never, ever again would she volunteer to direct the Great Hording summer pantomime. The production couldn’t have been more cursed if the cast had shouted ‘Macbeth’ twenty times each before starting rehearsal.
Scandal had dogged her crew from the start. A series of exposés had seen cast member after cast member drop out. Then the scenery had fallen on Baron Hardup. Now the glass slipper had failed to show for the first – and probably last – performance.
Really, thought the great director. What was the point? No one believed more than her that the show must go on. As ASM at the RSC, she’d helped many a beleaguered production limp to Act Five. Quite literally with Titus Andronicus, where the staging had been so bloody the Kensington Gore had arrived by petrol tanker.
But the show could only go on if there actually was a show. And now that Lulu too seemed to have bailed out, that left only the pantomime horse. The contents of that had changed so often Mandy couldn’t even remember who was in it now. They hadn’t turned up either, not so far anyway.
Nor had the audience. Word had evidently got around – as all words concerning Great Hording did these days, and at the speed of fibre-optic light.
In the empty village hall, Lady Mandy prepared herself for the final, ritual act. She went into the loo, unhooked the cloth from the back of the door – none of those nasty roaring Dyson things here – and hurled it on to the stage.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Wyatt Threadneedle, who, since packing it in at the delicatessen, had been assisting Lady Mandy when there were things to assist with. Increasingly, there weren’t.
The look now turned on her was grim and weary. ‘Throwing in the towel, dear. It’s an old theatrical tradition when a production’s got absolutely no chance of succeeding.’ Lady Mandy sighed heavily. ‘Never have I been so let down.’
‘You can’t blame Lulu for that,’ Wyatt said loyally. ‘She loved being the glass slipper. She’s sure to have a good reason for not coming.’
Lady Mandy doubted it. The heiress, with her eternal sunglasses, piles of blonde hair, tiny skirts and tottery shoes, looked like a reason-free zone to her.
Wyatt was not fond of Lady Mandy. But so bleak did the older woman’s face suddenly look, she felt sorry for her. Love – and sudden constant, easy access (not that her parents had any idea) to the object of that love – had transformed Wyatt’s outlook from gloomy and got-at to joyful and generous. Nor was it just the outlook that was transformed. The blue hair was gradually giving way to a natural light brown, the black lipstick was now clear gloss and Wyatt’s waistline was emerging from beneath the tummy rolls.
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‘Let’s go to the pub,’ she suggested, impulsively.
Lady Mandy, heavy brows drawn, looked about to refuse. Then her face suddenly cleared. ‘Oh, what the hell. Why not? We always did in Stratford. The times we had at the Dirty Duck!’
Outside, in the warm darkness of the midsummer evening, Wyatt walked alongside the great director as she reminisced. ‘Trevor – Nunn, of course – was so naughty! He liked to blow up crisp bags and bang them really loud! How Larry – Olivier – used to jump!’
‘Stop a minute,’ said Wyatt, holding up her hand. She had heard something.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Lady Mandy resented being interrupted. Her moustache bristled indignantly.
‘There it is again! Sounds like a gunshot.’
‘Can’t be,’ Lady Mandy said sensibly. ‘The Glorious Twelfth’s months away.’
The phone in Wyatt’s pocket buzzed. It had been restored to her by her parents now that Kearn had supposedly gone. Lady Mandy, watching her, saw her face change in the light from the screen.
‘Oh God. What now? There’s nothing left to leak any more.’
Wyatt shook her head. ‘It’s from Kearn. It’s all happening in Fore Street, apparently.’
‘Well, what’s he doing there?’ Lady Mandy demanded. ‘He’s supposed to have left the area. Which was the least he could do, after the damage he’s caused.’ Her voice, in the dark, tightened with fury. Kearn, architect of every disaster that had assailed her.
Wyatt felt all sympathy for the beleaguered thespian drain away. Pompous old bat. ‘He had nothing to do with any of the leaks,’ she said sharply, wondering whether to reveal who had.
But from what she could gather from Kearn’s message, everyone would know soon anyway.
‘Come on!’ Wyatt grabbed Lady Mandy’s wrist.
In Great Hording’s main street, slung across the cobbles outside the bookshop, were several vehicles. One was an Ocado van. Typical, Lady Mandy thought. The same lost East European driver seemed to spend his life circuiting the village. One might almost think he was keeping an eye on it.
Another was a huge gold Rolls Royce and the other the massive black limousine that looked, Lady Mandy thought, like the one Lulu habitually went around in, driven by that peculiar, silent butler of hers.
‘How infuriating,’ the grande dame of Great Hording sniffily observed to Wyatt. ‘It seems that our dear Glass Slipper, not someone one imagines reads much, was suddenly seized by the urge for literature and came to the bookshop instead of the pantomime.’
‘I’m not sure it was that which seized her,’ Wyatt replied, just as two figures suddenly raised themselves from behind the Rolls Royce and the limousine. One, Lady Mandy saw, was Lulu’s peculiar butler, impeccable as ever in bow tie and cutaway coat. The other, even by Great Hording standards, was an extraordinary sight. He was huge, black and wore a gold leather biker jacket entirely covered with crystals. These blazed under the streetlights, flashing off the lenses of some enormous gold-rimmed sunglasses. As, now, he opened his mouth to roar, light shot from a ruby in one of his huge white front teeth. ‘Get the motherfuckin’ fuck outta there!’
‘My God,’ said Wyatt, starstruck despite the circumstances. ‘It’s South’n Fried!’
‘I don’t know how it’s cooked, but it’s certainly foul-mouthed!’ Lady Mandy exclaimed. ‘Such language! And he’s carrying two guns!’
Actually, they were a ball-bearing gun and a plastic AK47, grabbed from the Great Hording toyshop. But, as befitted an establishment selling to the oligarchs of tomorrow, they had a highly convincing appearance.
South’n Fried gestured with his BB gun. ‘Come on out, you bums! Or I shoot!’
The gestures were, Lady Mandy now saw, aimed at the empty first-floor windows of the bookshop. ‘Poor Peter!’ she gasped. ‘Is he in there, do you think?’
‘He’s not actually Peter,’ Wyatt said. ‘His name’s Andrew Redgrave and I wouldn’t be too sorry for him. He’s a master spy.’
‘Redgrave!’ Excitement made Lady Mandy ignore the last sentence altogether. ‘Is he a relative of dear Vanessa? Oh my goodness, what’s happening now?’
The form of Peter Delabole had appeared in the first-floor window. Lady Mandy screwed up her eyes. He was holding someone. Bless him, he was actually holding her missing Slipper. Lulu had been found. The show could go on, after all.
‘Peter!’ Lady Mandy waved. ‘You’re just too marvellous! Is it true,’ she went on as Wyatt goggled at her, dumbfounded, ‘that you’re a relative of—’ The sentence was never finished. Wyatt rugby-tackled the grande dame of am-dram. ‘Get down! He might have a gun!’
Cheek pressed against the cobbles, Lady Mandy stared at Wyatt in amazement. ‘Was that really Kiki in the other window? With Pavel? I must say I’m surprised. Never a good idea to sleep with the staff, in my view.’
Wyatt, crouching behind the limo, could see nothing of the action now. She could only guess at what was happening. Hopefully Special Forces were in the building, about to make arrests. But where was Kearn? She hadn’t seen him for what seemed hours, when he had left Riffs, as he said, to meet someone.
Who was that someone? Had it been a trick? Sickening fear now rose in Wyatt’s throat. There had been so much dealing and double dealing. Kearn had unpicked so much of it, but had he been trapped himself at last?
There was a lot of shouting, and the sound of sirens. The police, it seemed, had arrived. As ever, slightly late. More cars, the slamming of more doors.
A megaphone. ‘This is the police. We have you surrounded. Armed officers have entered your building from the back. Surrender now, and release the prisoners.’
‘Never!’ screamed Peter Delabole. Wyatt, her fingers crossed, raised her head just enough to see over the bonnet of the limo. At that exact moment Lulu, who had evidently been awaiting her chance, slipped out of the master-spy’s grip, bent him over and wrenched his arm back in a half nelson. ‘Ow!’ screamed Delabole, while Vlad, below, nodded approvingly.
Only now did Lulu spot who stood below in the Georgian street flashing with the revolving lights from police cars. ‘South’n Fried!’ She leant so far out of the window in her excitement she just avoided falling out. ‘You have bust ass?’
‘I came straight from the tour, baby! Wanted to give you a surprise!’
‘Is big surprise!’ Lulu screamed back, right by Peter’s ear. ‘Is good surprise!’
‘So will you take me back, baby?’
*
As everyone was following the intensity of the drama, Kiki seized her moment. Filled with wild rage at all the injustices Fate had dealt her, of which being bundled into an Ocado van and made to intercept Lulu at the village hall entrance was only the latest, she summoned all her strength and delivered that rage straight into Pavel’s unsuspecting teeth. ‘That’s for leaking the picture of Jolyon Jackson!’ she hissed.
The lanky waiter/assistant master spy toppled backwards into the room. There was a huge crash, followed by the slithering and bumping of what might have been hundreds of books.
Only now did Laura and Harry, having been caught in a five-way traffic light on Great Hording’s outskirts, come tearing into Fore Street. They were just in time to hear Lulu say, ‘Yes!’
Epilogue
‘I’m not sure it’s quite me,’ Harry said, adjusting the foraged buttonhole in the lapel of his loudly striped Gucci blazer. ‘It’s too small and tight.’
‘It’s supposed to be small and tight.’ Laura grinned. All the groomsmen were wearing couture menswear. Harry had particularly objected to handmade rose-gold brogues with no socks. ‘At least you’re not mismatched and distressed,’ Laura reminded him. The bridesmaids were all channelling the boho-vintage vibe in pre-loved floaty flower-print dresses.
Secretly, she thought Harry looked amazing. His chiselled face and tumbling hair looked completely new season Burberry, as South’n Fried had said. Harry had had no idea what he was talking about. But Laura’s heart swe
lled with pride whenever she looked at him. Having him back was so wonderful, even though she knew it would not be for long. It never was.
She and Harry were getting wedding-ready in one of the enormous suites at Riffs. While it still bore traces of Roger’s exuberant reign, Lulu had done her best to tone things down and boho them up. Their room had a baroque sleigh bed and its own wood-burning stove complete with piles of logs whose sawn-off ends were painted neon pink, orange and green. In the bathroom were a brass-bound sea chest, a telescope and a roll-top bath. ‘All we need is a parrot,’ Harry had drily observed.
This whimsical romantic style should have sat oddly with South’n Fried’s more contemporary aesthetic. He had installed mouthwash-blue leather banquettes all over the house and hanging lamps featuring red and blue DNA atoms in coloured glass double helixes. A display of single trainers in Perspex cases greeted visitors in the entrance hall. But strangely, this extreme mixture of styles seemed to work.
Laura looked anxiously at her dress in the mirror. As chief bridesmaid she was boho-exempt and condemned to a shimmering close-fitting sheath accessorised with vast, dangling diamond earrings whose cost she daren’t think about. At the very least they flouted Mimi’s maxim that if your personality sparkles, there’s no need for anything else to.
‘Not now,’ she murmured, as Harry took her in his arms again. ‘Lulu will be here in a minute.’
He smiled lazily at her as, once more, he pushed her gently back on the bed. ‘You know her. She’s always late.’
The bride was arriving under her own steam at Riffs’ Victorian Gothic chapel. Her entry was to be a surprise, although not to Laura. Kate Threadneedle, as her parting act, had been more than helpful about lending a horse pale enough to be coloured with vegetable dye and submissive enough not to mind having a cardboard cone on its forehead. Both had been applied by Dung Spaw, as her contribution to the wedding. In short, Lulu was entering married life on the back of a blue unicorn.
