Desire

by Louise Bagshawe

  On the wall in front of him, his cinema-sized TV screen, on mute, was tuned to a rolling news channel. They had talking heads on the screen, discussing Lisa Costello - the ‘Brit Bride Killer’, as they were rather amusingly calling her.

  The story had been the same for hours. They varied the talking heads, they had reporters outside Steen’s home and his office in Artemis Studios, and more reporters out in Thailand. In an hour, they might give over five minutes to sport, five to the financial crisis, and another five for weather and headlines. Otherwise, it was all Lisa, all the time.

  Any jury in America would hang her out to dry.

  Felix was thinking. He looked around, taking in the sheer luxury of his surroundings. This was his American base, one of four that he owned around the world, along with the flat in Venice, the Mayfair townhouse, and the farm in the Dordogne.

  In the States, he chose to live in Colorado. Mountains agreed with him: the clear air, the views for miles outside the bulletproof floor-to-ceiling windows that marked his modernist designer pad; they were tinted ochre on the outside only, so were completely clean and safe, and free from prying eyes. But from inside, next to the wooden log furniture covered in down cushions, the Red Indian art, the real cowhide logs, those windows placed him almost outside, on the slopes down to the plains, under the Rockies’ big sky.

  He loved that. The sense of freedom. No assassin liked to be hemmed in.

  It was a risk, a base in America. If they ever caught him, they’d kill him. The Europeans were far more squeamish. He liked that about them.

  But Felix enjoyed risk. It gave him a thrill. And right now he was thinking of another one.

  He did well enough. With his real estate and stock portfolio, and that nice emergency account in the Caymans, his net worth was coming up to ten million dollars. But Felix was not a big killer, not one of the top names on the scene. He earned well enough, and was known to be reliable. But for those key jobs, the ones that made you a legend in a tiny crowd of people, the big clients went elsewhere.

  He wanted that to change. He was greedy. There was much further for him to rise.

  Perhaps he’d been hasty in the matter of Josh Steen.

  So, a producer was just a producer. But the publicity - he’d underestimated it. This was now a huge deal in America. Not quite the Kennedy assassination, but a juicy, celebrated slaying. Just as he’d promised his little piss-ant client, they were all blaming Lisa Costello. She was now more famous than she’d ever dared to dream of.

  But she was still out there.

  He’d had the opportunity to kill them both, murder-suicide it, and chosen not to. Hell, nobody paid him to kill the wife - why should he work for free? He had promised to lay the death on Lisa Costello. Nobody was looking anywhere else. Not at Felix. Not at his customer.

  Yet Lisa was still on the run. They were reporting that nobody had caught her, her passport had not been presented at any airport.

  Felix didn’t like it. There was a small alarm buzzing in his brain. Faintly, perhaps, but it was there. What if Lisa Costello thought she was innocent? What if she actually made the argument in court? There were fantasists and conspiracists on the Internet for any little thing. There would be for this case too. Trying to prove her innocent, just because they could.

  He’d expected her to be caught. Within hours.

  It was still less than one day since she would have awoken in that bed, soaked in blood. Plenty of time for her to be brought in. But Felix hated loose ends.

  He reached for his remote and turned up the TV. The caption said ‘Rich Frank, Editor of USA Weekly’. A squat, jowly little man in a very expensive suit was sat in the newsroom, beaming while an earnest news-reader asked him questions. He was smirking like the cat who’d got the cream.

  Felix fingered the edges of his own copy. This magazine was everywhere now, in supermarkets, book-stores, even the little delis that normally only took the Enquirer. He imagined the Sam Murray exclusives were very good for trade.

  ‘Your magazine has the hot story this week,’ the pretty anchor purred at Frank. ‘Tell us about that.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, Ellen.’

  ‘Emma,’ the girl said, smile frozen.

  ‘Our reporter Sam Murray was an actual guest at the wedding when these fatal events occurred,’ Frank said with obvious relish. ‘Not only that, but he actually talked to Ms Costello, the killer—’

  ‘Alleged killer.’

  ‘Right. Alleged,’ Frank added, waggling his eyebrows. ‘Anyway, he talked to her the night before. Saw her fighting with her husband. This special edition of USA Weekly has the whole story.’

  ‘And I gather it has sold out?’

  ‘We’ve reprinted four times.’ He looked like he was about to have an orgasm. ‘I can tell people out there, the team is working real hard to supply all the extra copies.’

  ‘Well, now you have the exclusive pictures of the murder scene for the next issue. They’re pretty gruesome. Lots of blood. We can’t show that on TV.’

  ‘No, folks will have to buy our magazine. Not suitable for kids,’ he added, putting on a sanctimonious face.

  ‘This means big money for you.’

  ‘The money’s nice, but our mission is to expose the truth,’ Rich Frank lied. ‘And Sam Murray’s just the man to do it.’

  ‘His previous exclusives included the Tom Cruise story and that Christian Bale telephoto lens thing?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Obviously this is far bigger. And I can tell you, Ellen, Sam isn’t finished yet.’

  This time she didn’t bother to correct him. Felix watched, fascinated; the woman was evidently as gripped by this as the rest of her audience.

  ‘Well, you hit the streets before anyone else, and got the reward,’ she coaxed, ‘but now CNN, Fox have their cameras there, and every major paper in America is on the case. What other exclusives do you think you’re gonna get?’

  ‘We’re saving some of it for next week’s special edition. Sam has a major lead on the whereabouts of Lisa Costello.’

  The presenter actually gasped. ‘Are you serious, Mr Frank?’

  ‘Totally serious,’ he said, and tilted his double chin up proudly. ‘A second, midweek edition of the magazine will be on newsstands tomorrow. We have details no other organisation has. So look out for that.’

  She tried to rally, but Felix could see this was a killer blow. Her bosses in the newsroom would be screaming at her through her earpiece - get details, get a location, anything!

  ‘Surely if you know anything, or Sam Murray does, he has to go to the authorities. Otherwise wouldn’t that be obstruction of justice, or . . . or concealing a fugitive?’

  ‘Oh, honey, you can be sure that Sam’s sharing his information with the FBI. USA Weekly always operates to the very highest standards,’ Frank managed, with a straight face. ‘We just ain’t sharing with you guys.’

  Felix smiled. They already had the Breaking News graphic up on the screen. So this Sam Murray wasn’t just lucky, he was also good. That was helpful.

  ‘Sam Murray was once in the FBI training programme,’ Frank was saying. ‘He has experience with law enforcement. He’ll do whatever he can to help in the investigation.’

  ‘And now he writes stories for your magazine?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rich Frank shamelessly. ‘Great, huh?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll all be looking out for that news tomorrow. An awful lot of people want to say hi to Ms Costello . . .’

  Damned right. And I’m one of them, Felix thought.

  He flicked off the TV. This was a situation. If he didn’t take her out, there was a remote chance she might discover the truth. And if he did take her out - then he would be the one that found the girl every cop was looking for. It would be a suicide, and the whole Josh Steen murder would be put away for ever. Especially after he persuaded the girl to make a full confession in her suicide note.

  Felix wasn’t a tracker. This was one reason he’d never made it
to the very top. Clients showed him the target, he slew them in untraceable ways. That was his deal, and he was good at it. If you wanted somebody offed who was in the witness protection programme, or some retired CIA agent who’d gone off grid, then you paid more, and you went further up the chain. He shrugged his shoulders at the thought. He was a killer, not a goddamn detective. His client had hired him because he’d killed Jack Stone, another Hollywood mogul, and framed the wife for it. That was known to a small segment of the Hollywood underworld. Like the drug dealer his customer used.

  Word of mouth. So important in business. He grinned.

  But once Lisa Costello was in police custody, she would be impossible to kill. The world would have to wait for the trial. Bent cops were a lot rarer than anybody thought. He was interested in getting to her before that happened, before she could talk to a judge. Yeah, this job was spiralling. But Felix had to roll with the punches.

  No time to learn the tracking skills the big boys used. He would take a short cut. He was a big fan of short cuts.

  This Sam Murray was ahead of the pack because he used to be FBI. Following Lisa would be hard; following Murray, a lot easier. For a start, he was probably using a corporate credit card.

  Felix wasn’t interested in tomorrow’s hot edition of USA Weekly. He wanted to go wherever Sam Murray was right now. He flipped through the magazine, looking for the masthead, the name of the company. It would take him a day or so to establish a safe link at a credit agency, one that would give him access to Sam’s data. But it could certainly be done.

  The blood began to race around his veins - he was ready for this, ready to hunt again. There was a job waiting on a banker in Zurich, but he would pass. It didn’t hurt to be a little unavailable.

  Felix had money in the bank. He wasn’t hurting. It was time to do a job for glory.

  Chapter Three

  Kowloon airport was thick with passengers, and there were plenty of Western girls travelling alone; at least that gave her some cover. Lisa looked around carefully at the ticket counters. She needed to get this one just right. By now they were looking for her. Not Alice Kennedy, her; but they’d have her photograph right in the computer terminals.

  It had to be a flight to Europe. Australia was no good; Lisa wanted to keep moving, keep going, in and out of countries and police jurisdictions. There were flights to London, but that was far too obvious, and she was a bigger story over there, the latest WAG they loved to loathe. It had to be the Continent.

  She scanned the desks for the most stressed-out-looking agent. Perfect; there was an Air France counter with a heavily made-up forty-something booking in some kind of school trip. They appeared to be German kids, and they were fighting and shouting and snapping at their teachers. Lisa got in line, her gaze travelling to the departures board. Air France flew to Paris; that was cold, expensive, not a friendly city to get lost in. But they went to Rome, too. Lisa had been too long in California; she had the sunshine bug under her skin. Rome was a better choice. That was where she would go. She’d been the summer before she met Josh, when she was romancing that broke Italian ski bum, gone there to meet his family in the off-season, decided he wasn’t for her. But the city itself had been wonderful. She’d had no money then, and she remembered how hospitable it was. Laws that forced restaurants to give you a glass of water and let you use the bathroom. Plenty of youth hostels. Tiny dark trattorias in the side streets, with the menus all in Italian and a half-carafe of rough house red already set on the table. You could buy a square of thin, crisped pizza and eat a scoop of fresh pear sorbet and still have change from five euros. And the local police seemed to have a commendable lack of interest in doing any actual police work.

  Maybe it would be different now she was properly on the run. More expensive, that was for sure. The dollar had collapsed. Even Josh had grumbled at European prices when they last stayed in Paris at the Georges V. And she was no longer on that kind of budget. How long would her cash last her?

  The last of the kids had straggled off towards the check-in counters, cursing in German, and Lisa approached the ticket agent, who looked ready to cry.

  ‘I’d like to get a standby ticket to Rome, if you have one,’ she said, handing over her passport. ‘But I’ve run out of cash, so I only have US dollars left.’

  Tap-tap-tap . . . Why did airline computers take so bloody long? She’d never noticed it before, but now it was right in her face.

  ‘Dollars are OK. Luggage?’

  Something about the tone told Lisa to beware. Maybe they’d put out a warning for a girl her age without bags.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, patting her backpack. ‘I’ve been all over the world with this.’

  The ticket agent unbent slightly, flicking through Alice’s passport. ‘Yes, I see, Egypt, Paris, Cuba, Miami . . .’

  ‘I just love to travel,’ Lisa said, as jauntily as she could. She was starting to sweat. Jesus, let me on the plane, would you? ‘Next year I have to settle down. Get a real job.’

  But the agent had blessedly lost interest. ‘Lastminute tickets are available, economy class is five hundred dollars US.’

  She reached into her wallet and peeled off the bills. She hated how fast they were going. What about when she was done? What kind of a life could she have, what could she do? Work as a waitress like an illegal immigrant, off the books and under minimum wage? How long then before her boss realised who she was? Then he’d try blackmail . . . rape, maybe . . .

  Ugly scenarios flashed before her, but that was the great thing about fleeing for your life; there really was no tomorrow if you didn’t get through today.

  ‘There you go. Where’s check-in?’

  ‘You only have the backpack?’

  Lisa nodded.

  ‘I can do that for you,’ the agent said. ‘Did you pack this bag yourself?’

  Bought it, packed it, ran with it, Lisa thought. She went through the security questions, trying to sound as bored as any other traveller. Finally it was hauled behind the agent’s desk, a security sticker on it, and the boarding pass was handed over. The woman told her she should get to the gate. Lisa didn’t have to be asked twice. There was no quick passage through this airport. The queues for the metal detectors were long; they made her take off her shoes, and she worried there might be white flesh left under her instep, that she could have missed a spot when she was using the fake tan, but if there was, nobody noticed, and the secondary passport check was brief, and now she was running for the gate, and the crowd were already starting to filter through.

  Lisa forced herself to go to the newsstand and buy a novel. This flight was eighteen hours, it was important she have something to do. Staring into space would attract attention. She purchased a John Grisham thriller, a Harlequin romance, some mints and a large bottle of water. No alcohol this time, however much she was tempted. She didn’t trust herself. She would never drink again.

  She handed over her boarding pass, received a stub, and made her way into the aeroplane. It was night-time now, and she hadn’t slept a wink since she’d woken on the worst day of her life with Josh’s blood all over her. She couldn’t see how she could have killed him, but she still wasn’t sure; and she was afraid and exhausted.

  Her seat was all the way down the back of the plane, and miraculously it was a window seat. That was perfect. Nobody would have to climb over her to get to the lavatory, or stretch their legs. She strapped herself in and extracted her thin red airline blanket, forcing herself to stay awake while the stewards checked on the seat belts and tray tables. There was a Chinese couple sitting beside her, and they nodded and smiled and clearly spoke no English, so that was perfect too. Lisa made a show of pretending to read her novel while the plane groaned and strained its way out on to the runway. How did the law work? she wondered desperately. Was she in French control once the plane was in the sky? How far out from Hong Kong did they need to be? Could the police phone in to the flight, force them to turn back?

  She did not kno
w, and she couldn’t keep worrying about it. She thought of Josh, brutally stabbed, lying there lifeless, and his mother and sister, and she thought of Alice, who’d tried to help her a little when she most needed a friend and who would wake up in pain from the tight binding, alone and in the dark. Lisa had no family, no friends she could trust, and not much of a future. She had gotten herself on this plane with no idea if she could ever make it off it - or what would happen if she did.

  Twenty-four hours ago she’d had everything.

  Now she had nothing.

  The plane banked and steadied at cruising altitude and the little ping of the seat-belt light going off sounded over her head. She found her elasticated blindfold, pulled it over her newly cropped hair, and turned her face towards the tiny plastic window, out of the view of the airline staff, the thin blanket covering her. It was somewhat cold in the cabin, but she would not ask for another blanket. She would not draw attention to herself in any way.

  Lisa was out of ideas, and out of energy. She shut her eyes, and let herself drift off to sleep.

  The lieutenant’s name was Prem Songakul, and he enjoyed being interviewed by the big American with the pleasant manner and the open wallet.

  ‘We don’t understand where she go. No credit cards gone.’

  Sam nodded sympathetically. He slid a hundred-dollar bill over to Prem’s coffee cup.

  ‘I don’t take bribes,’ the lieutenant announced unconvincingly.

  Sam soothed him. ‘Of course not, and I’m not allowed to offer them. This is a legitimate expenses payment, Lieutenant; your time is very valuable.’

  Prem put it in his pocket, appearances nicely dealt with.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Sam said. He pushed an entire packet over the table. In his long experience, smokes were one of the world’s most reliable forms of currency. ‘Please, take them. I’m trying to give up.’

  That was even partly true. He was always trying to give up lots of things. Never managing it.

  ‘Thanks. So she kill him with the royal knife.’