Killer Diamonds Page 7

  Angel, overwhelmed by his grandmother’s stern tone, blurted out:

  ‘Granny Viv, don’t be cross! I needed the loo and Mummy said . . . Mummy thought . . .’

  As he spoke, however, he stepped forward, and Vivienne gasped in horror. Part of Thierry’s body was revealed, lying at an awkward angle across the fireplace surround.

  ‘My God!’ Vivienne exclaimed, not quite believing what she was seeing.

  She ran over to Thierry and screamed as she saw the blood, which was no longer flowing from his skull, but had settled into a red halo beneath it. Dropping to her knees, she placed her index and middle fingers against the carotid artery, checking for a pulse – just as she had been taught when, at only nineteen, she had played Sister Fortunata, the heroic nun who nursed plague victims during the Black Death in Siena in the historical epic No Greater Love. How the audience had yearned for her to yield to the seductive charms of the handsome Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté, twenty years older than her and in his glorious prime, playing the noble Doctor Luigi whose hands kept meeting Sister Fortunata’s over the corpses of plague victims . . . but it was not to be. Rather than allow the young nun to succumb to the pleasures of the flesh, God took her for his own (to quote the final line of the film, as spoken mournfully yet worship-fully by Doctor Luigi) and Sister Fortunata died a martyr’s death, although conveniently without any nasty pustules to mar Vivienne’s exquisite teenage beauty.

  No Greater Love had not been a career highlight for Vivienne (although, off screen, Gian Maria Volonte had been a personal one). Reviews had been scathing, some observing that the medical staff of the fourteenth century seemed oddly familiar with modern practices. Vivienne and Gian Maria had probably been too carefully coached by the doctor who had been hired as a consultant, but she had always taken her roles extremely seriously. Which now meant that, almost thirty years later, she knew exactly how to determine whether Thierry was still alive.

  She had her answer after a few seconds, but she held on for several more, unwilling to accept the evidence her fingertips were relaying to her. But even as she resigned herself to the fact that there was no pulse in his pale neck, she noticed that the halo of blood beneath his head was starting to coagulate. The fresh red colour was darkening perceptibly, the texture thickening.

  Vivienne had uttered the words many times before on stage and screen, twice in No Greater Love alone. But that made it no easier for her to part her exquisitely curved lips and say in disbelief, ‘He’s dead.’

  Pearl shrieked theatrically, unable to deliver a convincing scream of horror because secretly she was hugely relieved. A dead Thierry would be unable to tell Vivienne the true reason Pearl had hit him with the Oscar. Even despite the prompting she had given Angel, Pearl was aware that her mother would believe her assistant’s version of events rather than her daughter’s.

  ‘He tried to grope me, Mummy!’ Pearl said, pulling Angel into her arms, sinking to sit with her son in her lap. ‘He wouldn’t stop, and I had to hit him to make him! He was saying really creepy things—’

  ‘With Angel right there?’ Vivienne said, her voice dripping with incredulity.

  Slowly, she got to her feet, her gaze fixed on her daughter. It had taken Vivienne a long time not to be swayed by Pearl’s imploring expression, those wide eyes, and the blonde curls and high forehead that she had inherited from her father, a wonderfully handsome actor with whom Vivienne had starred twenty-seven years ago in a completely forgettable movie – so forgettable that she could remember neither the title nor the plot, nor, at this moment, her co-star’s surname. He had been as stupid as he was pretty, and although she hadn’t meant to get pregnant, she had consoled herself with the reflection that her baby was bound to be absolutely beautiful.

  She hadn’t, however, anticipated Pearl inheriting her father’s minimal brain capacity. Brent, bless him, had been one of those big, handsome lunks, dumb as an ox but sweet as a Labrador puppy, who simply didn’t have the range for movie stardom. He had eventually snagged a recurring role in an American soap opera as a heroic surgeon, perfect for his handsome face and limited talents, and Vivienne sometimes hooked up with him when she was in LA. Brent wasn’t outstanding in bed, but he was eager to please and had a nice cock, and frankly, sometimes that was more than enough when you wanted to get laid.

  Yes, a truly sweet guy. He’d wanted to be involved in Pearl’s life, but it had been very difficult, as Brent – what was his surname? – had been married at the time, and Vivienne’s team of publicists had worked hard to cover up the fact that their client was not only having a child out of wedlock, but with a married man to boot. In fact, Brent’s wife, an actress, had been having a contemporaneous affair herself with the producer of a film in which she had just been cast, so no one had really been betrayed at all; but those typical behind- the-scenes shenanigans were always kept secret from the general public, who wanted to believe the lies they were told about true love, fidelity and happily-ever-after among the beautiful people who featured on magazine covers.

  One of the reasons Vivienne couldn’t remember Brent’s surname, of course, was that Pearl had taken hers. Would it have made a difference, Vivienne wondered now, if she’d done what the publicists wanted? They had been desperate for Brent to divorce his wife and marry Vivienne, so they could spin the story of an overpowering love that had caused the two of them to behave badly, but could be excused because Brent was doing the right thing, making an honest woman of his beloved, giving their baby a father.

  But the thought of being married at the tender age of twenty-one, especially to a man she didn’t care about, had been anathema to Vivienne. Headstrong by nature, spoilt by and from her pampered years as a teen star, she had refused to be tied down to a man she found so boring she often sat on his face just to stop him talking during sex. When she snapped those very words at her publicists, they had been so horrified at the idea of their client impetuously blurting out a remark like that to a journalist that they had promptly backed off any further attempts to push her and Brent into walking down the aisle.

  Maybe if Brent had been around, it would have been better for Pearl, she thought. I wasn’t a very good mother. In fact, I was a very bad one. I was always working, always travelling, always out. Brent would have been a much more stable influence than all the nannies who dragged Pearl around from one first-class cabin, one hotel suite to another . . . but it’s much too late for recriminations now. I have to focus on the present . . .

  Vivienne was keeping a firm grip on herself, utilizing every ounce of self-control she had learned over her long career. From the moment she had ascertained that Thierry was dead, she had known that this was one of the most important crossroads in her family’s life. She had failed repeatedly with her daughter. This time she absolutely had to get it right.

  Vivienne took a deep, measured breath as she looked down at her daughter’s lovely face. She blamed herself for Pearl’s wildness and inability to settle; for the fact that Pearl had never worked a day in her life; for Pearl turning to drugs and drink; even for Pearl’s light-fingered tendencies. Vivienne knew perfectly well that she had led Pearl to rely on her financially because she was not to be relied on in any other way. The one thing she had always been able to provide for her daughter was money: an endless stream of money a positive river of gold that had flowed constantly into Pearl’s bank account, only to fountain out from Pearl’s hands as soon as it arrived.

  And then the fountain had dried up. Pearl had been too greedy – had managed to run up debts even larger than her income, so that she had begged her mother to bail her out. Vivienne had responded by setting up a trust fund for her, letting her know what sum would land in her bank account every month, trying to teach her some financial responsibility. But it had been too late. Pearl had learned too well that the river of money would flow constantly, and was incapable of adjusting to the new reality. Thefts were her way of compensating, and when caught, her justification was always the same: that
her mother had been unspeakably cruel to accustom her daughter to unlimited funding and then to expect Pearl, overnight, to learn to live within a budget, no matter how lavish.

  ‘I know what happened, Pearl,’ Vivienne said quietly. ‘I know why you killed him.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him! It was an accident!’ Pearl exclaimed, clutching her son even tighter. ‘I just hit him because he was groping me, trying to kiss me – it was disgusting – Angel, tell her!’

  ‘The man grabbed Mummy,’ Angel said, and his eyes on Vivienne’s face were terrifyingly limpid, clear of any signs of deceit. Pearl had trained him all too well. ‘He grabbed her and was being creepy and she had to hit him with the statue. She had to.’

  ‘What exactly was he doing, Angel?’ Vivienne asked gently.

  ‘Trying to kiss her,’ Angel said, elaborating on his theme. His mother was stroking his hair now, silently showing her approval, and that egged him on to add: ‘He was sort of squeezing her. Mummy was telling and telling him to let her go, but he wouldn’t. Honestly I promise.’

  Pearl’s hands settled on his shoulders, holding him tight, her thumbs caressing circles on his narrow bones, her head lowered to kiss the crown of his head. He felt himself blossom with pride: Mummy had told him what to do, and he’d got it exactly right. He must have done, because Grandma Viv was nodding, and that would mean that Mummy loved him now more than ever . . .

  ‘Pearl,’ Vivienne said, even more gently, raising her gaze from her grandson’s face to her daughter’s. ‘Thierry was gay.’

  All the blood seemed to drain from Pearl’s face. Both her light brown mascara and the matching eyebrows she pencilled in over her pale blonde hairs suddenly stood out in vivid relief against her chalk-white skin. Angel started to writhe in her grip.

  ‘Mummy,’ he said, ‘you’re hurting me. Mummy, what’s wrong?’

  Pearl’s knuckles were whitening too as she dug her fingers into her son’s shoulders. Angel remembered that he was hungry, and that he needed the loo, and he started to whimper.

  ‘Mummy, please . . .’

  ‘You’re hurting the child, Pearl,’ Vivienne said.

  Even Pearl’s lips looked pale from the shock of Vivienne’s revelation. She managed to stammer: ‘But he did – he did grope me—’

  ‘Turn out your pockets, please, Pearl,’ Vivienne said quietly. ‘I have to tell Baxter to contact the police, and you don’t want to be found with any of my jewellery.’

  ‘Fuck you, you bitch!’ Pearl swore furiously.

  She let go of Angel, who instantly wriggled away, running to the en-suite bathroom. Standing up, Pearl theatrically pulled out the linings of her jeans pockets, turning around to show her mother that there was nothing in the back ones, then tearing open her bag and dumping its contents all over the rug.

  ‘See?’ she hissed. ‘You’re always suspecting me of the worst! I hope you’re bloody ashamed of yourself.’

  She put her hands on her hips, her voice rising.

  ‘Are you going to say sorry, Mummy? Well, are you?’

  The toilet flushed, and Angel could be heard crossing to the sink, turning on the tap.

  ‘What a good boy,’ Vivienne said with an odd inflection. It took Pearl a moment to realize that her mother sounded, suddenly, very sad. ‘He never used to be that good about washing his hands, did he? As I remember, the last time you both stayed here, we kept having to remind him . . .’

  Before Pearl could do anything to stop her, she crossed swiftly to the bathroom door, swinging it open. As Vivienne had suspected, Angel was not washing his hands. Having turned on the tap to cover any noise he might make, the little boy had ducked down in front of the sink and was swiftly emptying the heaps of sparkling gems from his pockets into the cabinet below. Pearl, on her mother’s heels, took in the sight and quickly exclaimed:

  ‘Angel! What are you doing? Did you take some of Granny Viv’s jewellery? Oh Angel, how could you?’

  On hearing these words, Vivienne, who had been keeping iron control over her emotions, turned on her heel and backhanded her daughter so hard across the face with one slap that Pearl was thrown back to the floor, gasping in shock, blood welling up from a cut. One of the many rings that Vivienne was wearing had been a special gift from Randon Cliffe. It was a magnificent single diamond in an old-fashioned inverted setting, which meant that the culet, or point, of the round-cut diamond was facing upwards rather than down. Randon had been told by the jeweller he had bought it from that this was how the first ever engagement ring had been made.

  The setting was highly unusual. Diamond experts considered it failed to maximize the sparkle and life of the stone being used, causing it to lose crucial light transmission. But Vivienne had so many jewels that she particularly prized rarity, and she and Randon were both amused by the way the sharp, pointed culet drove up from the base of her finger like a knuckleduster. Certainly, it had easily slashed Pearl’s cheek open.

  ‘My God, Pearl,’ her mother said in tones as cutting as the inverted diamond. ‘It’s not enough that you’re a thief and a killer – you’ve turned your son into an accomplice! You didn’t even tell him to go to the bathroom and hide what you’d stolen, did you? He thought that up all on his own, to protect you! How dare you blame him for trying to cover up your crime? How dare you try to make me believe it was Angel, not you, who stole my jewellery?’

  Angel stared in horror at his grandmother. He had never seen Grandma Viv hit anyone before, and it scared him just as much as the man lying in a pool of his own blood. He had hoped, desperately, that if he managed to hide the jewels, Grandma Viv would believe Mummy, would hug her and tell her it was okay; that she had been right to hit the nasty man, it was all a mistake. Grandma would explain it to the police, and everyone would be nice to Mummy and tell her not to worry.

  But now he had messed it up by getting caught. He should have locked the bathroom door, but he was scared to lock doors in case he got stuck inside. It was only while he was weeing that he’d got the idea to sneak all the jewellery out of his pockets, because they were bulging and he was scared that Grandma Viv would spot them and blame Mummy – only Mummy had blamed him, which was so unfair that he couldn’t even find the words to say how unfair it was – and all of a sudden he felt tired and hungry and miserable and angry and guilty and scared, such an overwhelming rush of bad feelings that he thought he could explode with them . . .

  He wanted to kick something to let the feelings out; not just kick, but break something, smash it into such tiny pieces that it could never be repaired again.

  ‘You’ve had your last chance, Pearl,’ Vivienne was saying, so icily that her daughter shivered in fear.

  ‘You can’t have me arrested,’ Pearl said sullenly, not meeting her mother’s eyes. ‘The publicity will be terrible for you.’

  ‘My God! How many times have I heard this?’

  Vivienne’s wonderfully modulated, theatre-trained voice started low and rose to a throbbing, passionate contralto. It wasn’t acting: there was nothing faked about her fury and passion. That was the essential quality of a diva. Her emotions were always utterly real, but the way they were expressed was indistinguishable from one of the more dramatic characters she had played on stage or screen. Her gestures, her vocal control, were all a product of the amount of time she had spent in front of a camera, being observed, being taught to consider herself the centre of every room she inhabited.

  ‘How many times, Pearl? Do you have any idea at all how often you’ve played that card?’ she demanded of her daughter. ‘My God, every single time you shoplifted or ran up a huge debt with your drug dealer or got arrested for driving drunk or stole from me or my friends, only to hear, “Oh, but Mummy, you have to hush it up, because otherwise the publicity will be terrible for you!” A man is dead because of you, and you’re still trying to get me to hush things up! Well, not this time, Pearl. Thierry was worth a hundred of you. He was loyal, trustworthy, thoughtful and as honest as the day is long. Whereas
you –’

  She drew a long, trembling breath, remembering her grandson’s presence, and managed to bite back the words that would accurately describe his mother’s character.

  ‘You’ve turned your son into a liar,’ she said. ‘And you’re not even ashamed of that. If you were, you would have tried to protect him. But I just saw you throw him under the bus, Pearl. You tried to make me believe that Angel was a thief! You made the poor little boy carry everything you’ve stolen!’ Vivienne’s outrage was increasing with every word.

  Pearl’s jaw was set defiantly now. ‘You can’t get me sent to prison,’ she spat up at her mother. ‘I’ll tell all sorts of stories about you in court! I’ll make up all sorts of things! I just hit him to get him off me—’

  ‘Probably because he caught you red-handed,’ Vivienne said wearily. ‘Pearl, your only piece of luck in this entire miserable, tragic story is that Thierry came from a very conventional bourgeois family in Lyon. He wasn’t out to them, although they had their suspicions, and, poor thing, they made him so ashamed of being himself he swore he never would be. They treated him very badly. He once told me they said they would much rather have a dead straight son than a live gay one. Well, now they will,’ she added grimly. ‘And I hope the bastards choke on it.’

  She walked over to Thierry’s body and bent over him, tenderly stroking his hair, disordered by his fall, from his bruised face into the style in which he had always carefully brushed it.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said softly. ‘It’s for Angel, not for her. It’s so her little boy can grow up without being called the child of a murderess. Hopefully you can understand, because you were so damaged by your terrible parents. I’m trying to make sure Angel does better.’

  She leaned over to kiss Thierry’s forehead. His eyes were open and sightless, and she slid the delicate lids gently closed with soft touches of her thumbs. Then she walked over to the bedside table, picked up the telephone, and pressed a button.