Diamond (27 page)

She was about to try and pull up the ladder as quietly as she could when she heard Bowyer make the awful, strangulated sound cats make when they’ve had their tails trodden on.

‘Fuck off!’ a male voice roared.

Lawrence Harville.

She froze for a moment, then made her way down the ladder and on to the upper landing, aiming for complete silence, holding her breath until she had achieved it.

What was he doing here? And how did he get in?

His tread was back, and on the stairs. She had to confront him now. She ran to the top of the staircase.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, her fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife in her pocket.

He was disconcerted only for the merest flicker of a second, then his face relaxed into a laconic smirk.

‘Just checking over what I might need to do to the place when it’s mine again,’ he said.

‘You’re trespassing. Get out.’

‘What are you going to do, call the police?’ he asked politely. ‘I’m not sure you’d make what they call
a credible witness, now. Not after what you’ve been charged with.’

‘A crime’s a crime, whoever reports it, and you’re committing one. Get out.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said, the smile still in evidence. ‘Come down, Jenna. Let’s talk. I’d rather keep things amicable. There’s no need for all this shouting.’

‘I have nothing to say to you except to tell you to give yourself up.’

‘I beg your pardon? Give myself up? What on earth are you talking about?’ There was distinct menace in his tone now, the smile withering at the edges.

‘You’re behind all this. The drugs, Jason’s imprisonment. You set him up. Somehow you’ve got Mia and her friends eating out of your hand, but you can’t keep it up forever, Lawrence.’

‘What utter rubbish,’ he said, his face contorted with anger. ‘He fed you all this, did he? Your jailbird lover?’

‘No, I worked it all out for myself.’

‘Well, better get back to La-La-land, my dear, because you don’t seem to understand the real world. But I can teach you all about it, if you want. Come down.’

‘I’m going to call the police.’

He made a sudden move up the stairs and she tried to pull the knife out but her skinny jeans were so tight she couldn’t wrestle it out of her pocket quickly enough.

He took advantage of her impotent struggling to take hold of her elbow and drag her, yelling and kicking, down the stairs and into the half-decorated master bedroom.

‘Sit down,’ he snarled, pushing her on to the bed. He seemed to think she’d been reaching for her phone and hadn’t bothered to take the knife off her. She fidgeted with
it in her pocket, trying to ease it free of its confinement without Lawrence guessing what it was.

‘Why couldn’t you have just been nice to me, Jenna?’ he asked, standing over her. ‘I gave you so many chances, but you kept your distance, every time. I was kind to you but you threw it in my face. We could have been so good together. We still could.’

She laughed with disbelief.

‘You can’t be serious. I’d rather shag a whole pit full of snakes.’

‘Bravado, Jenna, hot air. Stop lashing out and think. Use your brain, instead of what’s between your legs. You were obviously hot for loser boy, but it would never have worked out, now, would it? Be sensible.’

‘He’s worth a million of you. And I bet he’s better in bed.’

‘Well, shall we find out?’

‘I’d kill myself, first.’

‘No you wouldn’t. Come on. You and Watson – it’s just a mismatch. You and me, though, we understand the finer things in life. We could work so well. And it would mean that you could keep this place. You could do what you liked to it, carry on with all the plans you had. I wouldn’t mind, even though you’ve cut the heart and soul out of my kitchen.’

‘But you aren’t going to get this place back. I’ve no idea why you think that.’ Jenna shook her head at him, all the time trying to make calculations as to her best chances of getting away.

‘Come on, Jen. Bledburn hasn’t worked out for you. You’re up on a charge of perverting the course of justice – you’ll get a hefty fine at the very least, prison time at
worst. Just cut your losses and sell up. I can afford to buy it back now.’

Jenna was too furious to speak for a minute, then she managed to grind out, ‘With dirty money, yes.’

‘No comment, as I’m sure your lawyer advised you to say at your interview. You wouldn’t want to be here any more. Have you seen the press setting up camp outside? You’re going to be a virtual prisoner, anyway. Come with me to an hotel and we’ll sort out the conveyancing tomorrow.’

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘What’s the sense in hanging around? Sell up and live with me here or fuck off to London. I don’t really care.’

‘I suspect my bail conditions will involve staying in Bledburn, actually.’

He shrugged.

‘Whatever. It’s your move. Literally.’

‘I’m staying here. And I’m not selling, you can get lost now.’

He took a step closer and, yes, she could get the knife out of her pocket now. She clicked up the blade and brandished it.

He laughed.

‘Not a smart move, Jenna. Threatening behaviour with an offensive weapon on top of your existing charges? My, my, they’re going to throw the book at you, aren’t they?’

‘I’ll throw this at you if you don’t just fuck off,’ she said with desperate clarity.

Lawrence lunged and she was about to jab the blade at his face when they were distracted by an almighty noise and rushing wind through the window.

‘God, a helicopter,’ she breathed.

‘Some press outfit or other,’ said Lawrence. ‘I bet you’re on News 24. Aerial shots of this place all over Sky. You should turn it on and see.’

‘I don’t have a TV.’

‘On your phone then?’

‘You just want to be a star, don’t you, Lawrence,’ she said with pitying sarcasm. ‘Is that what this is all about? You don’t have any talents of your own so you’ve decided you’ll get a bit of fame by association with me?’

He was at the window now, looking out at the hovering copter. He seemed to have forgotten that Jenna had a knife, but he soon remembered when she came up behind him and put its tip to the side of his neck.

‘Get. Out,’ she said softly. ‘Just turn around and walk out of that door, to the front door, then out of the front gate. You’ll get your picture taken, and you’ll like that, won’t you? Your fatuous, grinning mug all over the front pages tomorrow. Except it won’t be – it’ll by my face, and Jason’s, because you are completely irrelevant.’

‘Put down the knife,’ he said, his voice wobbly with fear.

‘I could up the ante,’ she said, pushing it that tiny bit further, just enough pressure to make him think his skin would puncture at any minute. ‘I could say I won’t put it down until you call the police and make a confession.’

‘I have nothing to confess,’ he said levelly. ‘Whatever you’ve come up with about me is false. You’ve jumped to conclusions, because you don’t like me, and Watson hates me.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Just put down the knife and I’ll go. I promise. Please?’

‘OK.’

She moved it an inch from his neck.

He hurried out of the room and she followed him to the front door.

He turned back before leaving.

‘You will sell this place to me,’ he said. ‘And if you don’t, I’ll buy it at auction after the repossession. Because you’re finished, Jenna. So sleep on it. I’ll still be around in the morning.’

It was a relief to see him go, but his words haunted her as she went to the kitchen to pour herself a stiff drink.

She was finished.

Coming back from a scandal like this would be incredibly difficult, both personally and professionally, but perhaps not impossible. Her mind ran over the situations of various celebrities who had ended up in hot water – you still didn’t see them panhandling on street corners. Well, not many of them. Oh, God.

She drained the tot of brandy and went to lie on her bed, the trials of the day taking their toll, at last, on her reserves of energy. She felt sapped and wrecked, a shell of herself. But at least she lay on her own bed in her own house, whereas Jason …

The thought of him, standing on that parapet, terrified and desperate, brought tears to her eyes and she wept until she was spent, then went to the kitchen for more brandy.

There was no evidence against Lawrence, nothing she could do about anything. It was hopeless, and all was lost. She made sure her phone was switched off and drank brandy until she passed out.

She woke up with a fearful headache and Bowyer curled up on her chest. The weight of him had led to nightmares in which she was being pressed to death as torture to try and extract information about Jason’s crimes. Waking up was both a relief and a torment.

She needed water, but the idea of lifting her head from the pillow didn’t appeal. The idea of doing anything didn’t appeal, come to that.

She could hear distant voices, unusually, because this place was so quiet and protected from the outside world. Of course it would be the press, manning their barricades, in case she came out to give a statement. Not bloody likely.

She shut her eyes again, thinking of Jason. For some reason, she pictured him in a suit with arrows on, eating thin gruel in a darkened dungeon. Obviously this wouldn’t be the case, but the vision pierced her heart all the same.

Bowyer’s hungry mews eventually forced her from her bed to feed him.

She drained a litre of water and took some painkillers. No food – she couldn’t even face a sliver
of dry toast. A sense of dread at what might happen when she switched on her phone hung over her. She postponed the evil hour by taking a long bath, but it couldn’t be avoided forever.

Dressed in capris and a vest top, for another glaringly hot day, she pressed the on button and awaited the onslaught of text tones and missed call alerts.

There were many. She left the phone bleeping away to itself while she tidied the room and straightened the bed, then came back to it.

She had to return the calls from her people at work, her PR and her lawyer. The rest were personal or speculative contacts from various arms of the media.

The calls were long and heated and, by the time she had dealt with them all, her throat was dry and she felt hot all over, and wrung out.

In the meantime, the morning papers had been delivered. She turned them face down on the kitchen table so the England cricket team’s latest woes were all she had to worry about.

‘I don’t want to know,’ she muttered to herself.

She lay on the bed again, staring at the ceiling, screening phone calls, until finally there was one she thought she should take. It was from the police station.

‘Ms Myatt? Sergeant Black from Bledburn Central Police Station. I’ve got a young lady here who wants to make a statement. She’s asking if she can speak to you first.’

Mia?

An arrow of hope shot into Jenna’s heart. Was it possible?

Without enquiring any further, she gabbled, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ and hung up.

The next question to arise was how to get out of here without running the paparazzi gauntlet. The front door was clearly out of the question – was there any chance of vaulting over the back wall? She hadn’t even made it to the end of the garden yet – at a certain point, two thirds of the way back, it became too tangled and overgrown with brambles to contemplate. But perhaps if she took a good, hacky knife and a stepladder …

She hurried to the kitchen and selected the most evil-looking of her Japanese Saji knives, grabbed the stepladder she’d been using to strip the bedroom wallpaper, and set off through the back patio doors. Stepladder under her arm, knife held out in front of her for optimum safety, she marched across the less neglected stretch of the garden, until she reached what had once been the orchard and was now a dark and twisted thicket, hosting who knew what.

She put down the stepladder, resolving to come back for it, because this would be hard and possibly dangerous work. Her knife sliced through the thorny branches with ease, but there were so many of them, and the distance to hack through so uncertain that she was soon disheartened. It was going to take far too long.

Perhaps she could just climb the wall a bit closer to the house? But, she thought, she would probably be seen. The beauty of going over the rear wall was that it backed on to the church graveyard, and she doubted that the vicar would allow enterprising snappers to set up their tripods among the lichened headstones.

But she was already scratched halfway up her arms and hot and itchy with the effort of what she had done, and still the wall was nowhere in sight.

She dropped the knife and took a deep breath. Her
priority was to get to the police station. Never mind all this ducking and diving.

She wiped her forehead and bent to pick the knife up again. Something lay, not far off from its glinting blade, at the foot of a withered apple tree. It was a coin, an old one, not in current circulation, with a hole bored into it, as if it had once been a pendant or keyring charm.

She picked it up and saw that it was a gold sovereign, of a design much imitated even now in the form of rings and other jewellery. This was no copy, however, but a genuine article. It had been a keepsake, perhaps a treasure.

And on the bark of the old tree, she noticed some initials carved. DH and FJ, with the classic heart around them. DH must be some olden Harville, she thought, and FJ his sweetheart. Perhaps they had married.

She resolved to look into the history of the Harvilles and try to identify these lovers, now long gone. But first, there were lovers in today’s world to consider: herself and Jason.

She put the sovereign charm into her bag and turned back. There would be no wall-climbing today.

She put on a cardigan to hide her scratches and opened the front gate to the expected barrage. Clicks and shouts and rude, forceful figures standing in her way. She swept past them all, keeping her eyes to the front and her mouth shut.

Even as she climbed into her car, a camera was pushed in beside her, so that she had to struggle to get the door shut. She drove off, chased by a gaggle of the more desperate sorts until they could no longer keep up with her.