Veil of Darkness (16 page)

‘But nobody knows this, Dom.’

‘
I know
,’ Dom weeps again, great, dry, sobbing gasps pass through him. ‘Don’t you sodding well understand,
I know.
And I can never forgive myself.’

‘How could you behave in this way, Candice, you could have lost us the author; you could have lost the firm thousands, let alone the kudos of handling her.’

Candice Love jangles her bangles in a nervous show of contriteness. It is as near as she can get to an apology.

‘You knew bloody well what might happen to this novel and you deliberately and deceitfully tried to deal with it yourself, leaving me completely in the dark.’ Rory’s velvet voice rises until it reaches rasping proportions. ‘What if you’d fucked up? Who do you think you bloody well are? We’re not in this for personal acclaim, in case you hadn’t noticed. We’re supposed to work as a team! Jesus Christ, Candice, you must have known you couldn’t carry this through on your own. Once someone else had read this it was bound to cause a sensation.’

And then poor Candice, whipped like a dog, had to account for the third time for all her actions since reading page one of the manuscript of
Magdalene
.

At the high-powered offices of Coburn and Watts the morning has been spent frenziedly trying to repair any damage the lone Candice might have caused. Handled correctly, this author will make a fortune from book rights and advances alone.

Candice’s painful downfall was caused by the immediate interest shown by the four publishers to whom she had sent copies of the debut novel. The first two replied the following morning, one even arrived at the office by taxi and, unfortunately, met RC on the stairs only to discover he knew nothing about the book. The first action taken by Rory was to dish out extra copies to four more publishing houses and he knows damn well that the faxes and phones for the film rights will soon be buzzing. The North American rights should be huge.

The biggest film deal he has clinched for an author is a staggering $8 million record-breaker, and he reckons he can do the same here.

‘So come on, Candice,’ Rory grabs her when he has a spare second, Rory the dynamic hunk who Candice has lusted after for years without even a suggestion of returned eye contact, so that she is beginning to suspect the worst, ‘tell us,’ drawls this literary Adonis, ‘what is this phenomenon like?’

Candice, with the stuffing knocked out of her, must somehow redeem herself in the eyes of her influential boss, otherwise she’s out of the publishing world for good with no chance of getting him into her bed. ‘She is nineteen, Irish and beautiful.’ And I wish I was her, she might well have added, aware of Rory’s fetish for authors.

‘Has she any idea of the situation?’

‘No, her expectations are limited. She’s a barmaid in a hotel. The best job she has ever had was stripping in a Liverpool nightclub. I think she is surprised that her novel has attracted any attention at all.’ Candice thinks back to the girl with the green, excited eyes. ‘But she is ambitious. Loads of charisma and energy. I’d say she was the most perfect author that any publicity department could dream of.’

‘Better and better,’ says Rory, twiddling with the orchid in the button hole of his black velvet jacket.

‘Married? Involved?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Not that you know of?
Christ
! Candice! This girl is one hot property; she’s young and needs to be carefully handled. I would go down to Cornwall myself, but I need to be here to deal with the bids.’

‘I could go.’

‘You’ll have to.’ The faxes are whirring, the phones are bleeping and Rory’s egg sandwich has gone dry on his desk. ‘You can fly to Penzance in the morning. Kavanagh needs to be warned right off about media interest, fakes and scavengers.’

Back in the bar at the Burleston.

‘And who the hell are you?’

‘You don’t know me, but my name is Belinda Phelps, Dominic’s friend.’ When Bernie stares blankly back the girl assumes she needs to remind her, ‘You wrote to him. You sent him a card with a personal note?’

‘
A private note
.’

‘OK, OK.’ The blonde bimbo looks round, her black leather miniskirt sliding with her as one. ‘Can we go over there sit in the corner?’

Bernie is not allowed to sit in the bar while on duty, but Charlie seems to be coping well and this is an emergency. Belinda has the word ‘urgent’ in neon across her peeling forehead.

‘This is all rather sensitive, you understand.’

‘I haven’t got very long,’ says Bernie.

Belinda, her wide eyes paler than any recognizable blue, starts off in a conspiratorial manner, as if the two women are on the same side. ‘Only Dom is going through a really hard time just now.’

‘Yeah?’ Bernie is trapped, brain whirling, she can see nothing clearly. She is forced to light up a fag. She can’t sit here doing nothing with her hands and she has an aversion to olives.

‘You might imagine he is in his element, what with all the publicity crap, but underneath he’s going through hell because he believes he ought to have been able to save them both.’

If only Bernie could snap herself out of this semicoma. She is already nervous about Candice Love’s arrival in the morning. The fax said nothing more. And now, baffled, she still fails to see what this is leading up to. ‘
Save them both
?’

‘The dad and the kid,’ nods the blonde, blinking wildly. ‘He was forced to fight the father off and it seems that this might have caused the man’s death. Did Dom have a drink problem when you were with him?’

At this Bernie can’t help snorting. ‘Like hell. We all did. We were pissed as farts the whole time.’

‘Aha,’ says Belinda knowingly. ‘So it started a long time ago.’

‘Not so bloody long,’ corrects Bernie. ‘Last year to be exact.’

‘Last year?
Are you sure
? Dom assures me it was ages ago.’

‘Look,’ says Bernie impatiently while inside her heart sickens and sinks, hurting so much it’s like there’s a chainsaw hacking its way down the centre. She wants to hide, and be alone. ‘
What is this
? Why are you here? Did Dom send you? Does he want to see me?’

‘
God, no
,’ says Belinda, ‘that is the last thing he needs right now. Dom and I are working hard to build up our relationship. Poor Dom, he’s so insecure underneath, so emotionally vulnerable, a child at heart with such a thick defensive veneer…’

‘Balls,’ says Bernie too loudly, causing several Burleston guests to pause and look distastefully at her.

‘
I’m sorry
?’

‘I said balls.’

‘But you must have noticed Dom’s inability to form any lasting relationships, especially with women. His desire to hurt them. To love them and leave them. It’s his mother, you see, he wants to punish her for sending him away at eight years old. Did you know that, Bernadette?’ And Belinda leans forward confidentially in order to pass on these special secrets. Bernie wants to slap her face and knock it out of the way. But she does nothing. She just sits here taking it. ‘Poor Dom was sent away to prep school when he was just eight years old. Before that there was a string of nannies. I can see from your expression that Dominic must have hurt you, too. He must have hurt you very, very badly, Bernadette.’

‘I don’t need this shit.’

‘Bernadette. Please don’t push me away like this.’

‘You fuckin’ eejit. I’ll push you over this bloody table if you don’t get out of here.’

‘Now now, ladies,’ says Charlie the barman, gliding over on feet like castors, his circular tray making do as a shield. This is not the time or the place to be fighting over young men.’

‘Young men?’ screams Bernie, losing her cool. ‘Young bastards with their brains in their pricks.’

Poor Belinda looks mortified as she hurries out of the Burleston bar, red, palpitating, muttering and wondering whether it might have been wiser to leave matters alone. But she’d been so afraid that the questing Dominic might take it into his head to renew this old relationship, which had clearly been rather special,
on her side
, that much was obvious. Is it possible that Belinda might have construed matters wrongly in spite of her psychology A level? After all, she and Dom have only been a serious item for twelve days, five hours and… might she, too, be the victim of some lamentable infatuation?

Heartbreak hotel.

Total is the darkness of Bernadette’s despair.

‘But Bernie, he sounds like a right little jerk.’

‘But I love him, Kirsty, I love him.’

‘How can you possibly love a man who makes you so unhappy?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Bernie weeps majestically on. ‘How can you understand?’

‘Ask a silly question,’ says Kirsty, eyes staring back into memory.

Bernie is dragged from her deepest pain by the look of fear on Kirsty’s face. ‘You can’t still think he’s looking for you?’

‘I know he is.’ Kirsty goes quiet.

‘But why can’t you divorce him? Take out an injunction or something? Surely the law has some way of protecting women from bastards like him?’

‘I never dared tell the police,’ Kirsty spreads helpless hands, ‘when it was all going on. Listen, I was so scared of Trev at that time I believed he was hiding out in my head. And if I’d asked for help he might have kept away for a while, but sometime he would have been back, crazier than ever. He’s always made out it’s me who’s cracked and I was frightened they would believe him and take the kids away. He said that’s what he’d do if I left him.’

‘But he won’t find you here. He can’t.’ Poor Bernie’s face is bruised from crying. Her eyes are so swollen and sore she can only just peer out.

‘I don’t think he will. Not really. And the kids are safe for the moment, thank God, as long as I can keep out of the limelight. It’s not that Trev reads books, but news like that gets around, especially locally, and Trev has his mates; there’s blokes at the pub he goes round with. He’d know if I had a book published.’

‘So can’t you divorce him from here? Where you’re safe? There must be ways of doing it without him finding you.’

‘I will. But wait till I get my kids back. Wait till I find a home for them. The moment I get on my feet I’m off to find out what I can do. But first I have to get my head together.’

‘He’s evil.’ The sniffing Bernie is briefly inflamed, and relieved, by straightforward hatred. ‘Sick. You need to get even with him just like I need to get even with that cocksucker, Dominic’

‘Look at you, Bernie, look in the mirror, see what you’re doing to yourself. We mustn’t give in, that’s what’s important now if we want to come out of this winning,’ says Kirsty, squeezing her hand. ‘Think what Magdalene would do if she saw us being so pathetic. God, she’d have taken those nerds apart and fed them to the ducks by now. Like the time she found that rapist and took out his eyes with the crochet hook she used for her hassocks.’

‘Stop it, Kirsty! Stop it!’

Bernie shivers, terribly tired, and it’s not the result of the crying this time. Trying to imagine Magdalene’s revenge makes her blood run cold. If Trev is a monster, then what does that make Magdalene? The anti-heroine in Kirsty’s book, the nun with her prayer book and her arsenal of weapons, is more innately evil than Anthony Hopkins in
Silence of the Lambs
, madder than Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
and more manipulative than Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
.

Bernie laughed at all those films, but she can’t raise a smile for Magdalene.

The nun has the power to draw people to her.

Sometimes Bernie thinks she would rather not be part of this, as if, in some unexplained way, contamination might be possible. Perhaps she should make an act of contrition, lest her sin be proclaimed at God’s tribunal in the valley of Jehoshaphat and she suffer the punishment of the damned.

As Mammy has so often threatened.

It’s still a puzzle to understand how a character so grotesque can evoke such reader satisfaction, such understanding of where she comes from, demented black laughter, even, when joined by eye to Magdalene, this savage, satanic, sanctified sister.

L
IKE A HOUND WHO
has finally found the scent—proved by the satisfied howl he emitted when the girl at the surgery made her disclosure—Trevor Hoskins can now make some progress. He spends hours during his long, lonely evenings dialling through the telephone book—a Cornish edition of Yellow Pages that British Telecom sent him for free, a service he hadn’t known existed.

‘Good evening,’ he says authoritatively. ‘I am detective inspector Bates from Merseyside CID and I’m looking for a white female with two children believed to be working in a hotel in Cornwall. Her name is Kirsty Hoskins, thirty years old, height five feet five inches. She could be using a false name. She has long brown hair worn up in a knot, a pale complexion, large brown eyes, and her main distinguishing feature is the gap between her two front teeth.’

He smiles when he puts the phone down and crosses off the last name on the list. One down… more to go. He can afford to take his time. He will track her down eventually, as she must have known that he would. If they ask what the law wants her for he merely says, ‘That’s confidential, I am afraid,’ in a voice that suggests something sleazy.

Trevor visits his solicitor and fills in the legal-aid forms. Now he is hot on Kirsty’s trail he must plan his next actions with care. His solicitor is too young, in Trevor’s opinion, to be dealing with cases other than driving offences—which Trevor considers a waste of time—and he seems concerned that, although Trevor is not suing for divorce, he wants custody of his children.

‘I love my wife,’ lies Trevor, in Gas Board time, the give-away van safe in the firm’s private car park. ‘She can’t help her mental illness. And I doubt that she’ll want to divorce me, either. We’ve been to hell and back, me and her. But we’re fond of each other, Mr…’

‘Gillespie.’

‘Well… Mr Gillespie,’ says Trevor, uncomfortable with the higher rank in spite of the tender years, ‘she has lied to my own mother on occasion—broke her own arm once and swore I’d done it and my mother will testify to this. Kirsty seems determined to show that during our eight-year marriage I constantly abused her.’ Trevor pauses to roll his eyes, to smile with mock understanding. ‘She was always cutting herself with bits of mirror, bruising her arms, biting bits of her own body. If I was smashing the hell out of her, don’t you think she’d have left before now?’