The St Tropez Lonely Hearts Club

by Joan Collins

  Nick had brought a bottle of vintage Cristal and an enormous tin of beluga caviar, which he knew Carlotta loved. She answered the door wearing a long, cream-coloured satin caftan embroidered with tiny seed pearls. Behind her ear she’d placed a gardenia and her dark hair fell in a profusion of tumbled curls. She smelled utterly delicious and looked even better.

  As soon as she saw him she was on him. She threw herself into his arms, covering his face with kisses and breathed, ‘I want to wake up next to you tomorrow morning and every morning, Nick, my darling.’

  ‘Whoa, whoa! You won’t get any arguments from me on that score,’ he laughed, then embraced her in a long and passionate kiss, which they held until they almost ran out of breath. He pulled back for a second and looked quizzically into her eyes, ‘Why this change of heart?’

  ‘There’s been no change, no change at all. My heart just got bigger and let you in. I’ve realised I’ve been a fool for not seeing that you’re the most wonderful, terrific, greatest man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘C’mon now, Carlotta,’ he said with pretend modesty. ‘How about handsome, witty and clever?’

  ‘Oh, that too – that too!’ She kissed him harder and more passionately, then whispered in his ear, ‘Come with me; follow me.’

  ‘I’m following you to the ends of the earth.’

  Carlotta held Nick’s hand and led him down the hallway into her bedroom. Golden candles flickered and gleamed on every surface, the air was thick with some exotic aromatic scent and pink rose petals had been scattered on the floor leading up to the bed, which was covered in pure white Porthault sheets.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Nick. ‘I do believe you are seducing me, Contessa.’

  ‘You bet I am.’ Carlotta pulled him towards her by his shirt and started undoing it, button by button. Then she pulled it off gently and started kissing his tanned chest all over until he couldn’t stand it any more. He took her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes.

  ‘I want you, Carlotta. You’re the woman of my dreams – my soul mate. Will you marry me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, oh yes!’ she whispered as she moved them closer to the bed. ‘But first . . .’

  She took off her cream silk caftan and Nick drew in his breath as he saw her exquisite caramel-skinned body for the first time.

  ‘First . . . this.’

  For Carlotta it was as if she had never made love before. Except for a few times at the beginning of their relationship, all she had known when married to Nicanor were sexual assaults with no foreplay or loving tenderness beforehand. Nick was a gentle and inspired lover and Carlotta’s gorgeous body and sweet disposition made him extra considerate. He kissed her everywhere until she moaned with desire for him to enter her, but he made her wait. With his tongue he brought her to peaks of pleasure. She had forgotten such rapture existed. Twice, three times he made her come until she begged for him to be inside her. She was avid for him, longing to feel him, and when he finally sensed it was the right moment, she melted into his body as they joined each other in erotic, joyful gratification.

  ‘I never . . . ever . . . I . . .’ she gasped later when for a moment they were satiated.

  ‘Shhh, my darling!’ he put a finger over her moist lips. ‘I know, my darling – oh, how I know! This is how it will always be for us from now on, my sweet.’

  Carlotta closed her eyes in bliss. She had finally found it: true love at last. Better than anything she had ever heard about or ever believed existed.

  ‘The only thing that matters – to love and be loved,’ she whispered. ‘I belong to you now, Nick. I’ve kept my heart to myself for so many years, but now I’m giving it to you and I’m never going to leave you.’ They went downstairs together to celebrate with the Cristal.

  ‘Madonna mia, I don’t believe it,’ Fabrizio muttered.

  Lying splayed out on the couch, swigging from a bottle of beer lay François Lardon, grinning widely at Roberto LoBianco, who was raising a glass of cognac in a toast. Although Fabrizio was no lip reader, he understood that Roberto was congratulating François. The men were smoking cigars and laughing and it was obvious they were in cahoots over something. Fabrizio stared at the heavy-set LoBianco. He was typical of some of the nomadic super-wealthy species who flooded the Riviera in the summer. With his private Gulfstream, gin palace boat, multiple mansions and high-flying party style, he loved entertaining packs of high-end hookers and wannabe starlets at his lavish parties, plying them with exotic drink and drugs and making them do what he wanted.

  As Fabrizio started to crawl away, he felt a large meaty hand on his shoulder and a harsh voice said, ‘What the fuck are you doing here? You don’t belong here, asshole!’ When the meaty hand connected with the back of his neck, Fabrizio passed out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Fabrizio came to groggily in what appeared to be a fully equipped wine cellar. He was trussed up in a chair, his feet and hands manacled together with plastic strips, and gaffer tape gagging his mouth. His head felt like cotton wool and there was an agonising pain at the back of his neck. The burly six foot five, three hundred and fifty-pound heavyweight who had punched him stood in front of him, arms crossed and a pleased gleam in his piggy eyes. Beside him stood Roberto LoBianco and the waiter François.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here, Bricconni?’ spat LoBianco.

  The bruiser Guido leaned over and tore the tape from Fabrizio’s face, causing him to scream in pain. Guido then put his hand over his mouth and shouted, ‘Shut the fuck up, motherfucker, and answer him!’

  ‘Nothing, nothing, I wasn’t doing anything.’ Fabrizio wasn’t ashamed to admit he was shit-scared.

  ‘Whaddya mean nothing, asshole? You were spying on us, weren’t you?’

  ‘No, no, no – I was visiting the Contessa Di Ponti. I thought this was her house . . . I got lost when, when . . . I was looking for my bike!’

  ‘Oh, that silly cunt,’ sneered François. ‘She’s been banging that journalist guy – stupid bitch.’

  ‘Who knows you’re here?’ snapped LoBianco.

  Fabrizio was stumped. If he told the truth, that no one knew where he was, who knew what these three obvious villains would do to him? His mind was racing and then, as Guido grabbed his balls and squeezed, he screamed out, ‘My girlfriend, Lara Meyer. She . . . she knows where I am. I told her I was seeing the Contessa.’

  ‘Oh yeah, sure.’ François tossed Fabrizio’s cell phone up in the air and caught it. He pressed the play button on the voicemail screen. Lara’s plaintive voice screamed, ‘Fabrizio, my darling, where are you? I need you. I’m so frightened, Fabrizio. I didn’t mean what I said. I want you – I miss you. Please, please, come home. I love you . . .’

  LoBianco grabbed the phone and hit the delete button. ‘I guess you fucked up, buddy.’

  He pressed play again and they listened to the next message. Lara was even more hysterical now. ‘Fabrizio, where are you? Please, please, come home. The most horrible thing has happened to me,’ she started sobbing. ‘A rat . . . a dead rat outside my door and a terrible note – Oh! Please, Fabrizio, sweetheart, come home. I need you – I really do, my darling.’

  ‘Yeah, I sent that.’ François looked pleased with himself. ‘Took a bit of planning to catch the rat, but I learned all that in jail, ’cause sometimes we had to eat them.’

  François – real name Alain Millet – had spent five years in one of the most notorious and squalid jails in France, Baumettes in Marseille, for aggravated assault and the attempted murder of his then-employer. François Lardon was a fictional being he had meticulously created with the help of a powerful patron – Roberto LoBianco – and it was how he had avoided detection during the investigations.

  Fabrizio felt sick. ‘Did . . . did you kill those girls?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure I did,’ grinned François. ‘When you spend five years in Baumettes Prison you learn how to do all sorts of things.’ He started to laugh and Fabrizio stared at him in horror.


  ‘Don’t tell me anything more; I don’t want to hear anything,’ Fabrizio pleaded, his eyes full of tears.

  ‘Why not? I’m proud of my work – all of it – and you aren’t gonna be around to tell anyone, bitch.’

  ‘All of them? You mean . . . Spencer . . . Mina too?’ Fabrizio’s voice was a dull whisper.

  ‘Yeah, all of them! And don’t forget the fucking faggot I burned to death on the funicular. “Crispy”, I call him!’

  All the men laughed. François seemed to grow in stature as he boasted of his achievements. ‘I’m quite an expert in the art of orchestrating an amusing death. They taught me good in jail. Taught me a lot of things, like how to cook.’ His face clouded. ‘I know a lot of crazy, interesting things to fuck people up.’ He grinned at LoBianco who gave him a thumbs-up.

  ‘But tell me why,’ whispered Fabrizio, ‘why did you do all those terrible things to innocent people?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, well, why not? You’re never gonna be able to talk to anyone again. I don’t wanna brag but I think we did a fabulous job and it’s worked.’ He smiled at LoBianco. ‘You see, we had to scare the shit out of everyone in Saint-Tropez so that they would clear out. I mean, fucking Saint-Tropez, what a fucking cesspool . . . and the people in it! Scum – you included – Moby fucking Dickheads!’ He laughed at his own humour. ‘You tried to fuck everyone, didn’t you? Even that ancient witch, Sophie Silvestri.’

  ‘Never,’ Fabrizio replied, offended. ‘I’d never sleep with anyone that old!’

  ‘Bullshit, you’d fuck a snake, you would!’ François was on a roll now, bragging about his brilliance. ‘But I gave you a bit of a break, didn’t I? Pouring hot wax on Lara?’ He laughed maniacally. ‘She was always dissing me, so I zipped down the skylight and evened the score. You should be thanking me!’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ LoBianco bent low to whisper in Fabrizio’s ear, ‘whether you fucked the old hag or not, we don’t give a shit, but you made a big mistake coming here, my friend. I’m afraid your days of rutting and strutting are over, pal. Finito – basta – end of story for our little gigolo, right, François?’

  ‘Right, boss,’ François grinned. He loved showing off his perfect teeth. ‘End of the line for this old stud.’

  ‘How long have you been planning this? And please don’t call me old.’ Fabrizio needed to stall for time as much as possible. He remembered his second cell phone secured to the small of his back. When you lived a double love life, you always needed two phones, and thank God they hadn’t discovered it. His hands were still tied behind his back but, as François talked and grinned (and oh, how he liked to grin), Fabrizio kept straining his fingers to action a button, any button, on his cell.

  ‘Yeah, how long ago was it when we met, boss?’ François asked.

  ‘Six or seven years,’ said LoBianco. ‘I met François in Baumettes Prison – the filthiest, most overcrowded shithole jail in France. You ever heard of it?’

  Fabrizio shook his head, playing for time. ‘No, was it horrible?’

  ‘Well, not only was it so crammed with cons that we had to sleep five to a cell, but the fucking rats were everywhere.’ LoBianco shuddered at the memory. ‘They were in our beds, in the showers, in the kitchens. It was overcrowded, violent, and most of the inmates were murderers and rapists. All I did was a little bit of embezzlement,’ he laughed bitterly. ‘But they put me in a freezing cold cell, fucking exposed electric wires hanging over our bunks, with two wife killers, one child rapist and this young man here. You saved my life, buddy.’

  ‘We saved each other’s, Robbo.’ François grinned at the older man, and for a moment they seemed to be lost in reminiscence of prison life.

  ‘Yeah, the Gallic Alcatraz. Everyone said it was impossible to escape from the most notorious motherfucking jail in France.’

  ‘Did you escape?’ asked Fabrizio, still working on his bindings.

  ‘Nah, too tough. We saw what happened to a lot of the cons who tried it. You know who they sent there?’

  ‘Who?’ Fabrizio asked. Having suddenly become the confidant of ex-felons, it suited him fine if it bought him enough time to call anyone who could help him. He had to get to the keypad of his phone.

  During LoBianco’s discourse on prison life, Fabrizio had managed to separate his silk Valentino shirt from his waistband and locate the phone. He felt around for the home button and clicked it once with his thumb, which should have brought the phone to life. Then he visualised the distance from the home button to the phone icon, always on the far right. Tap it once and tap it again to get favourites and pray that it worked. He reached as far as he could to where he thought the first number should be, and was about to tap it when he thought, God, no – what if it started playing ‘Happy’ at the top of his playlist? That would give it away. Wait a second, he thought . . . using his voice to instruct Siri, the phone system’s virtual assistant, should work – all he had to do was hold the home button down. If he could only find the right moment to yell out an instruction . . . it had to be something that made sense. He had to keep them talking.

  ‘The fucking Count of Monte Cristo, that’s who!’ laughed François, baring his teeth again.

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ Fabrizio applied his minimal acting skills to feign intense interest as his mind churned – what would make sense, what could I say on the phone that won’t give me away?

  And what if Siri replied? He could almost imagine her high-pitched female voice coming out of his butt, to the amazement of the felons surrounding him, declaring, ‘Hmmmm, I didn’t get that?’

  I have to lower the volume, he thought, feeling around for the two buttons, pressing the lower one in relation to the home button and reaching up to make sure the mute button was engaged. It was simply caution because he kept it always on vibrate.

  ‘So you met in the Count of Monte Cristo’s jail – wow! Like . . . wow! That’s fascinating! How long were you there?’

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ François was enjoying this. He pulled up a stool beside Fabrizio. ‘I was sent to fucking jail when I was just eighteen.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A lot of things,’ he shrugged. ‘You know, break-ins, aggravated assault, possession, attempted murder. Judge had it in for me, even though I was barely past a juvenile. You know what happens to a guy like me in that hell-hole?’

  François’s face clouded over. Fabrizio attempted a sympathetic look, which seemed to work, as he launched into a litany of the perverted degradation and constant rapes he had had to endure.

  ‘Four years they did it to me – all of them, the scum of humanity. Guards too. I was so pretty – too fucking pretty,’ he said bitterly. ‘I tried to kill myself – twice. That’s when Robbo here came in. He was connected, so he managed to keep the pervs who were shoving their dicks and other stuff into my ass night and day away from me.’

  ‘How so?’ Fabrizio was thinking what he could yell at Siri . . . Call Lara? He didn’t know if he had Lara on this phone. Maybe he did, but what could she do? She was probably sozzled on vodka by this time. Vanessa? She’d never take a call from him, and if Jonathan saw it he would probably happily come to help Roberto. Betty? She was on the high seas anyway. ‘Call Police’. That’s it. I’ll keep yelling ‘Call Police’ – perfectly normal when you’re about to get killed, even if it was strangely phrased.

  ‘Because I’m a very powerful man,’ said LoBianco proudly, ‘and I have very powerful friends, both on the outside and on the inside. A few threats, a few promises, and François’s abuse stopped.’

  ‘Yeah, we became bosom buddies,’ laughed François. ‘Then we plotted this scam. Roberto wanted to create a big resort on this Saint-Sébastien place that he had bought. He needed the high rollers and big spenders from Saint-Tropez to buy villas and apartments, but he couldn’t figure out how to manage it, until he met me.’

  ‘Yes, François came up with the idea of frightening everyone off. I had tried for years to figure out how to get people awa
y from Saint-Tropez and over to my island, and François’s simple cunning mind came up with the solution in seconds. So we started with a “dress rehearsal” – poisoned oysters. All we wanted was to create panic, but we exceeded our expectations when Mina dropped dead.’

  ‘Yeah, and we had no idea the one who dropped would be one of the biggest singers in the world,’ François shrugged. ‘Who knew the combination of a tainted oyster, botulism and her own allergy would have such an instant result? Well, accidents happen, eh?’ He snickered.

  ‘The queer guy was easy,’ laughed François, continuing. ‘He fancied me so it was “Hey, you wanna hang out at my place and smell the roses?”’ He mimicked a bizarre limp-wristed sashay. ‘I was going to shiv him but when I got there and saw all those wasps I thought of a trick I learned at Baumettes when they want to end someone. They stick a razor in your food and you swallow it. There were plenty of wasps in that garden – and there was the can of soda he was gulping. It was no problem, trapping one of the critters that had perched on the can, then shoving it in while he wasn’t looking. Wasps! They’re so stupid they just sit inside the can swimming around, so when the faggot took a deep gulp . . . God, you should have seen his face. It was comical! I should have taken a picture.’ He laughed hysterically.

  ‘It was brilliant,’ LoBianco snorted, laughing along with him. ‘You’re a genius, François.’

  Fabrizio laughed hollowly along with them, but his thoughts were far away from the hilarity the three men shared. When do I do it? When? he thought frantically. He only had one chance and it had to be perfect. He hoped it would work, because shortly after he did it, he would either be dead or as close to death as he could ever be. He found himself laughing alone, the three men staring at him curiously.

  He recovered quickly. ‘And the funicular?’ he asked. ‘How’d you manage that?’