Killer Affair

  Killer Affair

  REBECCA

  CHANCE

  PAN BOOKS

  For three wonderful, supportive, loyal friends, Greg Herren, Laura Lippman and Chloe Saxby (who strongly feels she deserves it ‘for just being fabulous’)

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  PART TWO

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  Mile High

  Killer Diamonds

  Prologue

  It was an ocean liner come to rest in the heart of London, its glittering, prow-shaped facade jutting towards the Thames. From its terraces and balconies, the view was unparalleled: the beautiful curve of the Playhouse Theatre with its glowing lights, the flow of boats along the wide river, the sprawl of the South Bank beyond, London’s bounty spread like a fabulous offering of endless possibilities to the gilded, privileged guests who occupied the penthouse suites.

  However, the young woman who was climbing out of the black cab outside the hotel entrance on Whitehall was in no mood for relaxing on a private balcony with a glass of champagne, resting her arms on the rail, gazing down over the glittering city as she made plans for that evening. Her jaw was set determinedly, her eyes hard. The liveried doorman, reaching into the cab for her two suitcases, asked if she was a guest at the hotel, to which she responded curtly that no, she had a booking at the spa and needed to check her luggage.

  If the doorman thought it was strange for a day spa visitor to arrive with a pair of large, battered suitcases, there was not a hint of that reaction on his face; his demeanour remained entirely polite and neutral as he carried them inside. Privately, he speculated that, judging by the airline tags on the cases, she had come straight from the airport. Her deep tan, together with the dark shadows under her eyes and her air of jet-lagged exhaustion, were clear indications that it had been a long-haul flight. Perhaps she was heading for the spa to restore herself after a taxing trip; but then, he asked himself, why did she look like a woman on a mission, rather than one who couldn’t wait to float in the swimming pool, gazing up at the flickering, hypnotic waves reflected on the dove-grey ceiling, after sweating out the stress of the trip in the steam room?

  And then, as he handed her the cloakroom ticket for the suitcases, the doorman looked her directly in the face for the first time and realized who she was. It took all of his professionalism not to acknowledge that he had recognized her as he wished her a pleasant visit to the spa.

  ‘Was that—’ the other doorman asked under his breath.

  ‘Yes!’ he said, just as quietly; any public discussion of famous hotel guests was grounds for instant dismissal.

  The second doorman shook his head.

  ‘That was rough,’ he said sympathetically. They were standing side by side, no guests needing assistance with doors or luggage; it was a perfect moment for a swift exchange of gossip. ‘Going through that on live TV – everyone watching you get totally shafted—’

  ‘She got no sympathy from my missis, I can tell you,’ the first doorman said. ‘Thinks it’s no more’n she deserved. Practically threw a party to celebrate.’

  His colleague grinned.

  ‘Yeah, the wives’re bound to feel that way, eh?’ he said. ‘All things considered!’

  Upstairs in the spa, the young woman was explaining that she had rung an hour ago to book a day pass, and the receptionist, a very attractive Eastern European called Irina with a strong accent but perfect command of English, was asking if she would like to add on any massage treatments. Irina found the young woman just as brusque, as oddly determined, as the doorman had done. As Irina explained to her that her day pass, costing a hundred and forty-five pounds, included full gym access and a light lunch, the young woman seemed entirely uninterested in what she was purchasing for that considerable amount of money, apart from the spa access itself.

  That was unusual enough. Even more so was her indifference to the elegant foyer, with its open line of flickering flames set into a curving black glass surround, its white walls and even whiter floor, polished to a glossy, mirror-like sheen. Guests almost always commented on the fireplace, or at least glanced around, appreciating the sheer luxury of the surroundings. This one, however, might have been standing in a council gym smelling of chlorine and gym bags.

  Irina, however, was far too professional to show a flicker of surprise at the visitor’s unusual affect; she processed her credit card, showed her to the lavish women’s changing room, handed her a robe and slippers, and left her with a smile, wishing her a relaxing visit to the spa. When Irina returned to reception her colleague Karen was on the computer, staring avidly at the details that had just been entered about the recent guest.

  ‘Do you know who that was?’ Karen babbled. ‘She must just have got back from Australia! She looked weird, didn’t she? Like, really wound up?’

  Irina shook her head. She recognized the internationally famous guests – film stars and athletes – but rather than watching British television, she spent her free time either at the gym or studying for her personal trainer certificate, and as a result she rarely knew who many celebrities were. If anything, this was an asset, as it meant that she could deal with them in an entirely professional way, without any temptation to blurt out that she was their biggest fan.

  ‘She’s actually prettier than I thought she would be,’ Karen said, very excited. ‘Wow, I wonder how she’s coping with – oh my God, Irina!’

  Karen clapped her hands to her mouth, a reaction she would never have permitted herself if anyone else had been present.

  ‘Do you know who else is here?’ she blurted out. ‘She came in a couple of hours ago! Oh my God, should we do something?’

  Irina stared at Karen, baffled, as the latter started to spill out a flood of information about the guest who was already in the spa and the one who had just entered.

  ‘But there are four floors,’ Irina broke in, trying to reassure her. ‘They maybe will not even see each other! So one gets her nails done, or is in the steam room – even if they are both in the thermal spa, it is dark in there, they could be very close by and still not recognize the other one—’

  ‘No, you don’t get it!’ Karen interrupted. ‘I think she’s here deliberately! That’s why she looked so weird!’

  ‘Oh.’ Irina finally understood. ‘Oh no, that is not good. What should we do?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Karen said, pi
cking up the phone. ‘I’m going to check!’

  The young woman, meanwhile, had stuffed her creased, travel-stained clothes into her locker, and donned the hotel robe over her bra and knickers. She hadn’t bothered to retrieve a swimsuit from her suitcases: she had no intention of actually using the lavish facilities. As the receptionist had guessed, she was searching for another guest. She hadn’t realized how dark it would be inside the spa; black floors, black walls, soft lighting. Irina had been quite right: it was possible for two people to pass each other without any flicker of recognition.

  The young woman stopped just inside the entrance, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Her gaze was caught by the flames set into a black glass wall to her right. The image was like something from a dream, beautiful and hypnotic. No wonder it was placed in front of a row of white marble loungers, clearly the final resting place where spa visitors, having completed the circuit of all the steam rooms and pools and saunas and whirlpools that the huge floor could offer, arrived at last, worn out by sheer physical pleasure and ready to collapse happily, probably lulled into sleep by the sight of the flickering fire, the sound of the water jets bubbling in the pool beyond . . .

  And there she was: the person the young woman had come to find. It was that easy. Her target was stretched out on the far lounger, her black hair flowing over the white towelling cushion, her eyes closed, her breath slow and even. The young woman looked round for a water dispenser, but spotted something even better at the far end of the gigantic space, beyond the space-age sauna: a huge, curved stack of flaked ice piled in a coppery bowl the size of a fountain, gradually replenished by more ice slowly dropping onto the sculpture from a slanted tube above.

  Marching over as fast as she could in the hotel slippers, she dug both her hands into the ice, heaping her palms as full as possible. Then she stalked back to the lounger area. There were only a few other visitors to the spa, and they were all much too happily focused on their own relaxation to notice one young woman on the warpath.

  Her target was asleep, or at least in a deep trance. The young woman stood over her, quite unaware of the cold biting into her palms, the ice dripping slowly to the marble floor as it started to melt. So many emotions were roiling inside her that she could not have said which one was uppermost. But as she lifted her hands and dumped their contents into the sleeping woman’s face, she felt a rush of wild savagery that was as hot as her palms were freezing.

  The ice tumbled onto the woman’s eyes and nose and mouth, a series of brutal shocks: first the impact of the sharp slivered edges, then the cold burning into her skin. She shrieked in fear and panic, scrambling to sit up, not yet realizing what had happened. Her hands flew up to her cheeks, scrabbling frantically to push the ice away; she screamed again as she realized what had cascaded onto her face.

  Just then, the main door of the spa swung open, and the manager entered, followed by a very excited Karen, whose head was turning back and forth as eagerly as a Labrador trying to spot a rabbit. They stopped dead at the sight of the woman on the lounger, her hands working on her face as if she were trying to fend off an invisible swarm of bees.

  ‘What the fuck?’ the woman blurted out, her eyes finally opening now that she knew it was safe to do so, that it was only water that had landed on her, nothing more dangerous; but her lashes were wet and heavy, her vision blurred, and she couldn’t make out the features of the woman standing over her.

  She recognized the voice, though.

  ‘You bitch!’ the young woman hissed. ‘You’ve completely ruined my life!’

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Sexy Lexy was on the warpath. Her target was Frank Callis, striker for Kensington, top of the Premier League table, and come hell or high water, she was going to make sure she took him up the aisle . . .

  Caroline paused, fingers fractionally raised from her laptop keys, considering what she had just typed. Had she pushed it too far? Would Lexy think it was funny, or that it sounded too much as if she had chased Frank till she let him catch her, as Caroline’s grandmother had said disapprovingly when she thought a woman was setting her sights too blatantly on a man?

  And what about the style? Caroline wanted to flatter Lexy, make her sound clever and sophisticated. Was this opening a little too crude for that?

  She tried a spin on one of the most famous lines to ever begin a novel:

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a glamour model in possession of a great pair of boobs must be in want of a footballer husband . . .

  But regretfully, she deleted it. Lexy wasn’t likely to recognize the start of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and nor were her fans. It was a shame, though; this actually worked very well. Maybe Caroline could use it for her blog?

  She retrieved the line, cutting and pasting it over to a blank document, then switching back to her draft of Lexy’s life story. The woman sitting next to her cast a desultory glance at the screen of Caroline’s laptop, saw that it was just boring text, no tweets or gossip, and looked away again, scrolling down the Daily Mail website on her phone.

  Caroline had checked the Daily Mail earlier this morning: there was, as usual, a piece about Lexy in the sidebar that ran down the right side of the page. Lexy’s management team was indefatigable, conjuring up stories about their most prominent client from practically nothing, but this one was a genuine triumph of the publicist’s art.

  ‘Sexy Lexy’s Near Miss!’ the headline shrieked.

  It was a royal dilemma for Queen Elizabeth I when she found a puddle in her way – and Lexy O’Brien, reigning queen of reality TV, had exactly the same problem yesterday.

  Sir Walter Raleigh famously laid down his cloak for the monarch to keep her feet dry but Frank Callis, Lexy’s heartthrob footballer hubby, was nowhere to be seen.

  With her favourite high-heeled suede Gina stilettos costing £390 (see box for Get the Look for Less), Lexy couldn’t afford to ruin them.

  Luckily she spotted the puddle in time and a short skip to the left was all she needed to avoid a watery disaster.

  Carrying one of her many Birkin bags, the reality star and entrepreneur flaunted her famous curves in skintight jeans, those Gina heels, and a low-cut tee showcasing her latest boob job.

  Caroline usually hated press descriptions of women ‘flaunting’ or ‘showcasing’ their bodies, but in Lexy’s case, she had to admit that the verb was perfectly justified.

  The article continued breathlessly:

  Lexy recently confessed to boosting her bust from a 34C to a 34DD cup, admitting that breastfeeding and previous surgeries had left her breasts ‘a bit shit’.

  In her weekly column for Lovely! magazine, Lexy shared that her operation, costing £7,500, had ‘perked up her boobs’, restoring them to the size and shape of her glamour-modelling days.

  ‘They’re back to their prime,’ the star wrote. ‘I’m over the moon. I’ve got my volume back and there’s no more sagging. It’s a real confidence boost! ’

  Fashion editor: We know Lexy loves her Ginas and this pair’s a particular fave! Remember her Instagram caption last year: ‘In my Ginas 4 my b’day gonna dance all night #killerheels #ginalove #becauseImworthit #soglam’! Get the look for cheap with these fab ASOS stilettos at just £24.99!

  Caroline had read the story in reluctant admiration, which was blended with envy at how striking Lexy looked in the candid photos. Of course Lexy had seen the paparazzo’s camera: she was playing up to it, exaggerating her side-step round the puddle, first pulling a comic face of panic, and then flashing her best smile when she side-stepped the obstacle.

  She was a relentless self-publicist. It was the secret of her success.

  Many aspiring glamour models, all teeth, tits and hair, had tried to parlay their youthful, plump-cheeked prettiness into marriage to a high-earning sportsman, and quite a few had succeeded. However, Lexy had achieved the Holy Grail: although she had snagged a footballer, she had, uniquely, surpassed him in the fame stakes. Fra
nk had a regular presenting gig giving sports commentary on Sky TV, as well as various guest slots on radio shows, but he was as modest and retiring as Lexy was outgoing and attention-seeking, and it was Lexy who dominated the tabloids, Lexy who kept rolling out new products, all relentlessly branded with multiple photos of her famous face and equally famous cleavage.

  Sensibly, Lexy made no secret of the fact that both face and cleavage had had surgical interventions over the years. They had been well done, however – Lexy was too self-protective to overdo the injectable fillers, a particular danger – and her teenage prettiness had evolved into the striking good looks of a confident woman in her prime.

  She was thirty-seven, and in considerably better shape than Caroline, who was ten years younger than her. It was an unpleasant observation for the latter, who was squashed uncomfortably into a seat on the South West Trains 9:35 a.m. service to Bournemouth. Caroline wasn’t fat, precisely, but she was no sylph, and it wasn’t easy for her to cross her legs under the table for any length of time, which would have reduced the space they took up. She felt that she was spilling over normal boundaries with not only her body but her laptop, which was taking up more than a quarter of the four-seater table and garnering annoyed glances from the man opposite her, who was compensating by shoving his knees aggressively into hers.

  Caroline couldn’t even dream of being Lexy’s size, a slim 8–10. It was impossible, unattainable. She would be ecstatic if she could fit into a 12 – not a Marks and Spencer or Wallis 12, however, with such a generous cut they were effectively vanity sizing! No, she wanted to be a Topshop or River Island 12. If she were that enviably slim, she could kick off her shoes, curl up in her window seat, remove her knees entirely from contact with the man facing her. Lexy would be able to manage that without any effort at all . . .

  Caroline couldn’t picture Lexy on this train service, however. Not even in the first-class section, which was near-identical to standard class apart from the fact that it was slightly less crowded. Lexy was surely whisked back and forth from London in a chauffeured limo, rather than waiting, shivering, on the wind-whipped, ugly platform at Waterloo in a throng of intent, narrow-eyed travellers who, knowing exactly where the train doors would open, were poised to dash on and claim their preferred seat. The term for this, Metro had said that morning, was ‘pre-boarding’.