Ugley Business (20 page)

“I thought you’d decided he didn’t exist.”

“Well, if he doesn’t, then it was a random person who ran over my cat.”

“Did you see his face?”

I nodded. “Not likely to forget it.”

We split up and took different entrances into the ballroom, and when I got there I stood and stared. Livvy and her team had turned it into a cyberpunk dreamland. The walls and ceiling were entirely covered with white parachute silk that pooled artistically on the white marble floor, lit in bizarre bright colours from underneath. There was a bar set up in the middle of the huge room, dispensing drinks on four sides, and above it on a platform was a punky band in neon colours. Around the edges of the room were metal tables and chairs, all set with large jugs of iced water and lots of glasses shaped like lab beakers. It was all very surreal, kitsch, and cool.

I wandered round for a while, watching the room fill up with air-kissing celebs, avoiding the predatory reporter and photographers. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t like to be in the glossies, so much as I really didn’t think Karen would be too pleased at the exposure. Not to mention what excuses I’d have to come up with if people saw the photos.

“Unknown beauty steals the show as role-model Lara Croft.” “Robbie Williams wants to know: Who’s That Girl?” Was Robbie even on the guest list? I had no idea. But a girl’s allowed her fantasies.

Angel’s guest list had mostly been prepared by Livvy, but it included her three best friends from boarding school: Livvy (of course), Penny and Charis. I’d seen Livvy in a funky boiler-suited approximation of a fighter pilot, all the better to cling to her radio and clipboard and PR paraphernalia. Charis, who I’d last seen at Angel’s birthday party, dressed completely in black and purple, to match her hair, was wandering around in something green and flowy, her hair now blonde, some sort of woodsprite I think. I saw her with Angel and went over to say hello.

“Isn’t this fantastic?” Angel gushed. “Livvy never tells me what she’s planning. She’s had someone on the door checking passes all day and I’ve not been allowed in.”

“It looks great,” I said. “Hi, Charis.”

“Hi,” she said shyly. “I like your outfit.”

Charis is like the opposite of Tammy: looks really scary (most of the time) but is a complete pussycat underneath. Whereas Tammy looks like a baby kitten but is a scrapping ball of menace.

God, I hoped she was okay. When this was over I was going to catch a squirrel for her to kill, just to rebuild her confidence.

Just joking, okay? I couldn’t catch a squirrel. They’re vicious buggers.

“Listen,” I said to Angel, “I need to tell you something.” I drew her away from Charis and gave her a brief physical description of the man I who had run over Tammy. “I know it’s not much to go on with everyone all dressed up, but I just thought you should know.”

She nodded. “Thanks. I’ll keep an eye out. Basically I want to be aware of anyone who’s not a celeb, right?”

“Well, that does narrow it down.” I looked around at the Who’s Who that surrounded me. “A lot.”

I moved off again, bumping into people whose faces I knew best from CD covers and Sunday papers, smiling and avoiding the roving photographers again. It was hot in the ballroom, despite the high windows open behind the parachute silk, and I grabbed a glass of water from the bar. Then I spat half of it out, because it was neat vodka.

“Bloody hell,” I spluttered, and a model who I was pretty sure had just publicly come out of rehab shifted away from me pretty fast. Oh, if only I could tell the press what she’d been drinking.

I requested a large glass of very cold water, and while I watched the barman—topless, very fit, and painted all over in Day-Glo colours—pour it out, tuned into the conversation going on next to me.

“…So I told him, fuck him. If he can’t even get me on bloody Parkie then what good is he? I mean, Paul McCartney’s been on bloody millions of times, and what has he done in the last ten years?”

I flicked a subtle look in her direction. Soap star and ex-
Big Brother
housemate. I think.

“I know what you mean,” the brunette moaned. “I tried to get on Ross but they weren’t interested. Anyway, who wants to go on TV to be insulted? What I’m doing is launching in the States. They know how to treat a celeb over there.”

“The way to get noticed over there is to get a sexy walker,” the blonde confided. “Find out who’s newly single and offer yourself up as a date. The papers’ll get you, and that’s your start.”

“Well, it’d have to be a Yank bloke, because there is just no one available over here. They’re all married or gay. Or,” the brunette winked, “both. Remember Carlos?”

Who? Oh, yes,
Big Brother
again.

“Married with kids, yada yada yada, and also making moves on all the guys in the house. But, only at night or in the hot pool or something, so the cameras wouldn’t see.”

My my. You do learn something new every day.

“Hey, speaking of sexy,” the blonde craned to see past the barman, “who’s he?”

I diligently followed her gaze.

“Which one?”

“Well—both, but I meant the blond. I think Neo is engaged.”

What were they talking about? I stepped to the side and looked over. And then I saw a marvellous Neo and Trinity, talking to someone in a long leather coat. Luke. With those stitches in his forehead he looked gorgeously dangerous, and my hackles rose up. I was not letting some two-bit soap star get her claws into my—erm, my colleague. Damn. I didn’t have any claim to him at all, now.

“Wow, he is fit,” the housemate said. “Actually, I saw him earlier.”

“No, you didn’t. Don’t try and pull first dibs on him.”

“But I did! Tell you what, we’ll flip for it?”

The blonde dithered. Eventually she picked up a two-sided cocktail stirrer. “Pink, he’s mine. Yellow, go get him.”

The brunette nodded. I couldn’t watch. I drained my water and strode over to Luke and put myself under his arm.

He looked down. “Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Erm, what are you doing?”

“How do you feel about soap trash and
Big Brother
housemates?”

He looked confused, but said, “Not particularly well disposed. Why?”

I indicated the pair, who were glaring at me so fiercely I thought I might combust. “They were flipping a coin over you. Well, a cocktail stirrer, but you get the idea.”

“So you thought you’d rescue me? Aren’t you sweet?”

I’m afraid I blushed.

“Oh, hey, I know you,” Trinity said. “You work with Angel, right?”

I peered at her. She didn’t look familiar. “Erm, yes. At the airport.”

“I thought so. You look different with your hair like that.”

Which was a polite way of saying, I look different when I’m sober. The last time I met Angel’s friends I got really, really drunk.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I really don’t remember you.”

She grinned and took off her shades to reveal gorgeous violet eyes, and then I realised. “I’m Penny,” she said. “We met at Angel’s birthday party?” She touched her short black hair, which had been long and blonde last time I saw it. “I guess I do look pretty different. My agent sent me to John Frieda and told them to do something different and look what I got?”

“It suits you,” I said, because, annoyingly, it did.

“Just as well, or I might have sued. Have you met my fiancé, Daniel?”

Neo took off his shades and held out a hand. “I think we have met. You were the drunk girl, yes?”

I blushed again. Penny bashed Daniel, who rolled his eyes. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Luke grinned, “Sophie’s hilarious when she’s drunk.”

“Okay, change of subject,” I said, and Luke laughed. “Aren’t you hot in that outfit?” I asked Penny, who was, as I recalled, a model, and therefore looked perfect in her all-in-one PVC.

“I am slowly roasting.” She grimaced. “But it takes about an hour to wriggle into this thing, so if I pee I’ll miss the rest of the party. So I can’t drink a thing.”

“You have to suffer to be beautiful,” Daniel told her, and she sighed.

“Sophie doesn’t. Look at her, she’s gorgeous, and she’s wearing comfortable shoes, too.”

“Actually they’re a size too big,” I consoled her, and quietly glowed from being called gorgeous by one of the beautiful people herself. Luke still had his arm around me, his leather sleeve hot against my bare shoulders.

“You do look pretty hot in that outfit,” he said in my ear, and I shivered at the feel of his breath on my neck.

“The good kind of hot?”

“Oh, yes.”

Excellent. “So what were you talking about?” I asked, rather blatant I know, but I was all out of subtle.

“You kissing Angel,” Luke said. “Hey, you reckon you could go find her and show Daniel, ‘cos he was pretty interested.”

Penny rolled her eyes at me. I rolled them back.

“What is the big deal?” she said. “When I was in Milan, I snogged a girl for an ad campaign and no one batted an eyelid.”

Yeah, right. A gorgeous blonde like Penny in Italy? The only way no one could have batted an eyelid was if no one saw the campaign.

“How come I never heard about this?” Daniel wanted to know.

“They didn’t use the shots.”

There you go.

“Show us how it went,” he said, taking my hand and eagerly putting it in Penny’s.

“No,” we both said. “No offence, Sophie,” Penny added, “but you’re just not my type.”

“I know,” I said. “If I’m going to kiss a girl, she has to be tiny and blonde, like Angel.”

Luke started looking around. “I saw her just a second ago—”

“Down, boy,” I said, and Penny and I shared a smile.

As missions went, it was pretty uneventful. One of Livvy’s It Girl friends threw up all over the floor and the cleaning team came in and vanished it away in seconds. A
Pop Idol
finalist (At least I think that’s who it was. Me and Chalker spent the whole final drinking beer, throwing popcorn at the telly and ripping the piss out of the contestants.) and his girlfriend had a screaming row and she yelled that she was leaving—only no one could leave, because the ‘copters were all on dry land and the tide would be in until the early morning. Everyone had been allocated a room and people gradually drifted away until there were just a few left, slow-dancing to Tony Bennett. The band had long since packed up and gone to sleep in their van down in the village.

“Looks like that’s it, guys and gals,” Luke said. “No bad guy.”

“It’s a tough job,” I said, clicking my fingers, “but someone has to do it.”

He yawned. “What time is it?”

“Lara doesn’t wear a watch.”

“Well, neither does Spike. Livvy, what’s the time?”

She lifted her nurse-style watch. “Four-thirty. It’ll be getting light soon.”

“Four-thirty?” I said. “It can’t be.”

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Angel said, and we all grimaced at each other. We’d probably been the only ones at the party not drinking. And you know what? Celebrity parties without alcohol are really, really dull. Maybe they’re dull with alcohol too, I don’t know. At least you get to look at people through beer goggles. It’s amazing how ugly these beautiful people are in real life. And they’re all so sick of the sight of each other, their private lives are so public, that they have nothing to say to anyone.

Celebs are really, really boring.

“Right,” I said, swaying on my feet. I’d hardly slept in two days and I was
knackered
. “Bed?”

Livvy nodded. “The caterers are coming back tomorrow for all their stuff and there’s a cleaning team arriving at seven and, you know what? Someone else can deal with them.”

“Good girl,” Angel said approvingly. She tugged at the rather insecure zip on her wetsuit. “Bloody Brad Dennison kept trying to pull this down all night. And obviously I can’t run like this…”

“Who’s Brad Dennison?” Luke asked.

“He’s in some boyband or other. Can’t sing. Can’t dance. Can’t keep his hands to himself.”

“Standard boyband, then,” I said as we started up the stairs to our rooms. Livvy had her own room in the family wing on the other side of the house, and she said goodnight halfway up the landing, veering off in another direction. It had seemed cool when we went up to the third floor for our rooms to begin with. Now it seemed like torture, and I wasn’t even wearing heels.

Although the three bedrooms connected, there was only one bathroom, and we let Angel go in first to peel off her rubber wetsuit and wash away the sweat. She’d looked incredible, but whenever I caught her eye, she was grimacing with discomfort. How do those dominatrices manage it?

I avoided Luke’s gaze and shut the door to my own room, undressing in record time in case he decided to come in and talk to me. But he didn’t, and when Angel came out of the bathroom I went in, washed away my makeup, and looked at my tired, pale face. I’d put bronzer on to compete with all the exotic tans out there, and now I looked wan and exhausted. Which I was. I was looking forward to sleeping so much I almost wanted to delay it so I could keep the anticipation going a little longer.

But not that much. I shuffled back into the bedroom, looked gratefully at the bed and fell facedown on it.

I woke when the hours were still pretty small, the very faint sounds of a guitar seeping in through the gap under my door. I listened carefully, years of living with Chalker having taught me to recognise a song by its bass line or drumbeat or sometimes, just by a couple of chords, and this song was one I knew well. It was on
Top Of The Pops
when I was a little girl, when bands still occasionally played live, before everything was manufactured, and when we used to take long car journeys it was always played on the tape deck. It was “Heartswings”, Greg Winter’s most famous, and possibly most lovely, song.

I tiptoed out of bed to listen at the door, and when that wasn’t loud enough, gently turned the handle and watched Angel sitting with her back against her bed, playing for a few seconds before she saw me and stopped abruptly.

“God, you startled me. Did I wake you up?”

“Yes, but I don’t mind.”

“You said you were really tired.”

I shrugged. Once I was awake, that was it. I wasn’t going back to sleep now. “I’m okay,” I said. “I can sleep tomorrow.”

She strummed a few more chords, then shook her head. “If I play any more, I’ll start crying,” she said.

“Play ‘Beautiful Girl’,” I suggested, and then I did see a tear in her eye. “What?”

“He wrote that for me,” Angel said. “When I was little. He hated all the lullabies he knew, so he wrote one for me.”

Bloody hell. I wish someone had written a number one song about me. Maybe I could get Chalker to do one, “My Annoying Little Sister”. Except I’m not very little.

“I always liked that song,” I said. “I used to wonder who he wrote it for.”

She shrugged and said nothing, blinking furiously.

“How old were you when he died?” I asked quietly, and she closed her eyes.

“Twelve.”

Less than a year after IC Winter shocked the nation one last time by going and dying on us. God. Poor Angel. I don’t know what I’d do without my parents.

I made a mental note to call them when I got home.

“I’d been at boarding school a year,” she said, “I started about three months after Mum died, and I met Penny and Livvy and Charis, and I sort of forgot about it all. Well—not forgot, but started a new chapter. I’d been gearing up to living without my parents for a while anyway, but I sort of thought I might get so see them in the holidays.”

“You saw your dad,” I said.

“He used to come up at weekends too,” she said, smiling tearfully. “He’d roar into the courtyard on his bike, which the headmistress hated, but from what I could tell she hated everything that was to do with the twentieth century anyway. All my friends fancied him. Charis had a massive crush on him and she was mortified when she found out he was my dad. I mean, imagine fancying your mate’s dad!”

“I always thought your dad was pretty cute,” I said, with hindsight, because I’d been a child when he died. But then I guess that’s the magic of it—like Marilyn and James Dean and Natalie Wood, the Winters never did and never will get old. People remember them as young and beautiful, and they always will do.

“He was great, my dad,” Angel said, and that nearly brought me to tears too, but I’d cried so much in the last couple of days I just couldn’t any more. I’d found my limit. I’d dried up.

I should drink some water. This couldn’t be good.

“What do you—” Angel began, but then the door opened and she jumped and dropped the plectrum inside the guitar. “Dammit!” She looked up. “Luke, you scared me. Make some noise when you open the door.”

“I figured it might creak more. Is this one of those girlie midnight feasts?”

“No—”

“Is it a pillow fight?”

I rolled my eyes. “Do you see any pillows?”

“I see four, right there on the bed.”

“Which is right where they can stay. Did you want something?”

“To see what you two were up to.”

It was pretty obvious what he hoped we were up to.

Angel was still shaking the guitar, trying to get the plectrum out. “I hate when this happens,” she said. “My dad used to be able to shake out a plectrum in seconds but I usually end up having to unstring it…”

She gave it one last shake and something fell out on the carpet.

But it wasn’t a plectrum.

“What is that?” Luke said, coming over. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxers and he smelled warm and sexy.

“Is that a key?” I asked, trying to focus on the matter at hand.

“Looks like.” Angel picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It wasn’t small and it wasn’t new, and all three of us frowned at each other.

“You got any locked doors in that church of yours?” Luke asked, and Angel shook her head.

“The only doors are on the stairs and I don’t even have keys for them,” she said.

“No secret compartments anywhere?” I asked.

“If they were secret, I wouldn’t know.”

“Priest holes or anything?”

“In a church?” Luke said, looking at me patronisingly. “That sort of defeats the object.”

I scowled. “I’m tired, okay?”

Angel closed her hand over the key. “I’m tired, too. I vote we all go back to bed.”

Luke opened his mouth and I jumped in quickly with, “To our
own
beds.”

He looked moody. “You don’t want to share with either of us?”

“No,” I said, too tired to argue.

He sighed. “Sophie, can I talk to you?”

“In the morning.”

“No, now.” He took my wrist and pulled me through into his room. It smelled of him and his aftershave and I needed to get out, or I’d agree to whatever he wanted, so long as it involved both of us being naked.

“Look,” he said, “about last night…”

Was it really only last night? It seemed weeks away. And yet, in emotional terms, only seconds away.

“It was a misunderstanding,” I said wearily. “I was under the somewhat mistaken impression that you gave a damn about me—”

“I do give a damn about you,” Luke said.

“Anything else? Or just a damn?”

“Sophie—look—we were both kind of stupid last night and—”

Kind of? I should get an award for it. “I get it,” I said. “Really, I do. It was a misunderstanding. I’m sorry I bugged that conversation—which was actually Maria’s idea, in case you’re interested—”

“I know. She told me.”

So why had he still yelled at me?

“So really it was just me being stupid and not listening properly. Newsflash, Luke: the only thing I’m really good at is fucking things up.”

“You’re good at other things, too,” Luke said, smiling faintly, and I was too tired even to blush.

“I’m going to go to bed,” I said, “I’m dead on my feet.”

He walked over and reached out a hand to me, and I found myself arching towards it—
sod
my principles—and then he paused, not quite touching me, his eyes fixed on the window.

Then he walked over to the window, leaving me standing there, all cold and empty. I wrapped my arms about myself and turned to look at him. “What is it?”

“I thought I saw—
shit
.”

He dashed to his bag and started pulling clothes on.

“What? What did you see?”

“Someone down on the quay.”

“So?”

“By the car.”

“
So
?”

“They were aiming something at it.”

I froze. “I’m going—” I said, but Luke shook his head.

“You stay here with Angel. Get your gun—any one of them you like—and your phone and don’t go anywhere until I call you, okay?”

I nodded, somewhat reluctantly. I really wanted to go and check the car was okay.

Luke pulled me to him and kissed my forehead, and then he was gone, and I stood there, frustrated.

Then I went back through Angel’s room, where she was sitting up in bed, looking confused.

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. He saw someone by the car. It’s probably nothing, but he just went to check it out.”

I looked at the sky outside, getting lighter and lighter, and then at the clock on Angel’s dressing table, and sighed. I might as well get dressed.

It was colder in the house than I’d expected, but then early mornings always are. I remember sitting on the sofa at home in my Ace uniform, inhaling coffee, trying to get myself in a fit state to drive to work, and I’d be so cold I’d have a sweater and fleece on over my work shirt.

I pulled on the jeans and T-shirt I’d driven down in, added my fleece and the DMs, and strapped on a thigh holster for one of Docherty’s guns. I emptied the clip from the other gun and slipped it into one pocket, put my phone in the other, and waited.

And then, five minutes later, the castle shook with a huge explosion.

I sat there, paralysed for a few seconds, and then I realised that Luke had been out there. The next thing I remember I was standing on the quay, staring at a blackened hole in the ground and the bits of car that were bobbing around in the sea.

Villagers came out of their houses, the punky band poured out of their van, party guests came streaming down the hill from the house, and I stood there and stared, my body apparently finding some liquid from somewhere and squeezing it out through my smoked-up eyes.

And then my phone started ringing. I pulled it numbly out of my pocket and stared at the display, but it didn’t have Luke’s number there so I hardly paid any attention as I lifted it to my ear and said, “Hello?”

“Sophie Green?” said a voice, a gravely, accented voice.

“Yes?”

“
Tvuj druh Docherty is bez citu
.”

I was still staring at the blackened, warped quay, not thinking at all. “What?”

“
Já explodovat jemu
.”

It took a few seconds for what he was saying to get to my brain. And then I felt very cold, all over.

“Janulevic?”

“
Ano
.”

I didn’t know what that meant, so I started looking round and said, rather hopelessly, “Does anyone here speak Czech?”

No one listened, so I repeated it louder. And then I did a Bridget Jones and yelled, “
Oi
!”

And then everyone turned to look at me, and I asked quietly, “Does anyone here speak Czech?”

A girl raised her hand, and she looked vaguely familiar. One of those tennis starlets. I’d seen her earlier, dressed up as Barbie. She was very brown and toned.

“Can you please speak to this man and ask him what the hell he’s talking about?”

She frowned and took the phone, and gabbled a bit of Czech, and looked faintly alarmed.

“What? What is he saying?”

“Are you Sophie Green?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know someone called…” she stumbled over the name, “Docherty?”