by Riley Banks
But back to my birthday.
Falling in the middle of the summer holidays, it was another scorcher.
Hot and humid.
When the mercury soared into the 40s, there was one place I liked to retreat to.
The local pool.
It seemed as good a place as any to spend the day.
At least, surrounded by strangers, I could pretend they were there for me. That they were my birthday guests.
That’s how I met her.
Joanne Parker.
It was her birthday too. Only she didn’t have to conjure a party out of her overactive imagination.
She had real friends. Real family. People who loved her and lavished her with gifts.
‘Would you like to join my party?’
I was so busy watching the party that I had not seen her sneak up on me.
‘No. Why would I?’
‘Are you sure? You look sad.’
‘I’m not sad. I’m fine.’
‘Okay. So do you want to join us?’
She was irrepressible.
‘Why?’
‘Because I really want you to.’
‘Why?’
‘You ask that a lot, don’t you?’
I can feel a reluctant smile tug at the corner of my lips. I try to hold it at bay but she has seen.
‘Please come. You’ll have a lot of fun.’
Fun? It was such a foreign word.
I stare at the party guests. They are eating frankfurts and party pies. There is a giant birthday cake with twelve candles.
I could just pretend it is my party, that they are my guests. That they are all here for me.
‘Sure,’ I say. It’s just one day. How much could it hurt?
Joanne takes my hand and leads me away.
I didn’t know it at the time but that simple invitation changed the course of my life.
Where would I be – who would I be – if Joanne hadn’t found me?
A tear slid down Charlotte’s cheek. She missed her friend so much.
After that day, the two girls had become inseparable, best friends forever.
The normality of Jo’s life was such a refreshing oasis from the sordidness of hers.
Charlotte saved the document but sleep was still a long way off.
She could feel the ghosts reaching out for her, drawing her in.
She needed a diversion.
Work.
Where did I put that press pack?
She got out of bed, searching inside her suitcase for the thick folder Highgrove had given her.
Inside was an official history of both the Company and the Harvey family.
Charlotte had to admit that beyond what she had read in gossip magazines and seen on celebrity TV - beyond her own tragic ties to the Harveys – she knew very little about them.
She flipped open the dossier, her eyes scanning the bio of great grandpa Harvey.
William Sydney Harvey the First.
Her brain extracted the most important facts.
The family fortunes all began with a bold property acquisition that took place while the Germans tried to bomb the shit out of London.
In the morning, the falling bombs had decimated every property in the street.
Every property except the one Harvey bought.
The one he paid a paltry sum of three hundred pounds for but which was now worth in excess of thirty million.
Talk about luck.
Harvey’s luck followed him throughout his career.
Wherever the fighting was the fiercest, and the property prices the lowest, Harvey was there to snap up another bargain.
Headlines referred to him as the buyer who couldn’t be bombed.
Typing the phrase into Google’s search engine brought up ten pages of hits.
Charlotte opened them simultaneously, glancing through an odd assortment of conspiracy theories and personal opinions.
According to the World Wide Web, Harvey was either psychotic, suspicious, into satanic worship or in league with the Nazis.
Charlotte saved each search in its own folder, making a note to follow up on some of the theories.
Given her own history, she believed things were often simple, not sinister.
Her father was just a criminal. There was no darker meaning behind his actions.
If there was anything mysterious in Harvey’s past, Charlotte doubted it was demonic activity or devilish pacts with the Nazis.
More than likely, he’s just an opportunist making money from people suffering. Doesn’t make him a bad guy and doesn’t provide a story angle either.
All the same, she scribbled random words in a spiral-bound notebook.
Back to the press kit.
After the fourth purchase, Harvey incorporated his own company, branching out into the global market.
And with World War 2 in full swing, he had no shortage of markets to buy into. By the end of the war, Harvey had established himself as a real estate tycoon; a person that the whole world was taking notice of.
The company continued to spread its fingers across the globe, entering when the market was down, emerging on top with unanticipated profits.
Charlotte scribbled some more notes:
Could he predict a rise or did he simply inflate the market by getting involved?
Slums grew into billion dollar prime real estate in cities across England, America, Europe, Japan, Singapore, the Middle East and Africa, and even Australia.
Harvey bought up farming land in alpine and coastal areas turning them into trendy spa resorts that the affluent flocked to like seagulls to the ocean.
She jotted down other words that rattled around her brain. It sometimes took only one word to give an angle or lead to a specific line of questioning.
Her scribbling seemed aimless at first, with words like chance, witchcraft, spy and crime across the top of the page. But she began writing words under each heading: crazy, foolish, gambler, inside information, intelligence, knowledge of market, crystal ball, fate, karma, prayer, religion, psychic, fortune teller, paranormal, science fiction, mathematical equation, Satanism, mind control, divination, double agent, war profiteer.
Do the Harvey’s have Germanic roots? Better check that out.
A quick read of the family tree revealed there were four William Sydney Harveys; the original who bought the first property in London, his son and current patriarch of the family, his grandson William who went by the name Bill and his great grandson William - Bill Junior, or BJ as it had been shortened to.
Made it easier to tell them all apart.
There was a lengthy Wikipedia article suggesting there was a defective gene in the Harvey family.
A reclusive gene – a genetic disposition to agoraphobia.
Perhaps there was something in it.
Will 1 disappeared from public view in the early 50s, handing the reins of the business to his son Will 2 who ran the company until his father’s death in the early 70s when, as sole heir, he inherited everything.
Will 2 disappeared from the public eye in the early 90s, handing control to his son Will 3 – Bill.
And while Bill was not yet a recluse, he had begun winding down his media commitments and public outings in the last few years, giving Will 4 – BJ – a greater share of the limelight.
Charlotte opened up a photograph of BJ, shocked at his similarity to Damon until she read that the two of them were identical twins.
As if the family wasn’t confusing enough already.
Foreign music hung in the air with the promise of promiscuity, of passionate French women hungry to please.
A handful of prostitutes sat opposite him at the cherry wood bar, plying their trade to two aging businessmen.
The first guy - a bald, fat dude with really bad teeth - laid a fistful of Euros across the bar, winking at the barmaid whose hair was just a shade too red to be real.
‘À bientôt,’ he called, wrapping flabby arms around a pair of hookers who, li
ke fruit left out in the sun, had definitely seen better days.
A moment later, the second guy left in a similar fashion, accompanied by the same kind of girls.
At least someone’s getting lucky tonight.
Their sudden departure improved Wilson’s chances, leaving him the only male surrounded by at least ten women.
‘Get me a scotch and coke.’
The barmaid’s tired eyes became flashing balls of fire. ‘Pardon?’
‘Scotch and coke,’ he repeated, slower this time, as if talking to a toddler.
‘I heard you the first time. Just wondering if you stinking English actually know how to use manners.’
‘What?’
‘I said you is a stinking British pig,’ she said, her spine straightening as if ready for a verbal fight.
‘Listen here, Froggie.’ Wilson’s voice rose a couple of decibels. ‘I didn’t come here to get insulted. I came to get a bloody drink. And some action if that’s possible. So get off your high freaking horse and get me a drink.’
All activity ground to a halt, even the music.
It reminded Wilson of one of those old western comedies, where the bar musician suddenly stops playing his out-of-tune piano seconds before a bar fight breaks out.
The small crowd glared at him, their eyes like poisoned daggers.
‘What you all looking at,’ he challenged, grateful the men were gone.
It’s all Miss Charlotte Bloody No-Lay’s fault. If she hadn’t given me a serious case of blue balls I could be back having hot sex with her and not trying to pick up some French dyke who doesn’t speak English.
Harlot Charlotte the frigging prude.
But Wilson knew better. She wasn’t a prude. Her tits had definitely arched into his chest, and she’d shivered with delight when he grabbed hold of her ass, not to mention her tongue whipping out to meet his when they kissed.
Nah, she wasn’t a prude.
The bitch wanted some action. She was just playing hard to get.
Damn I’ve got an itch.
‘Hey sweetheart,’ he said, nodding to a whore sitting a few stools away.
Nothing fancy but at this stage, he’d take almost anything.
‘Wanna have sex?’
‘Go… how you say this… fuck yourself,’ she answered, laughter exploding around her like fuel on a fire.
Fucking frogs.
The smuttiness of the evening clung to Isabelle like sewer filth. She couldn’t believe she had stooped so low as to take photos of someone having sex on the floor.
They were acting like mating dogs.
Nausea attached itself deep inside her stomach.
What she needed was a long hot bath and a backrub from her new lover, Pierre.
Instead, she was headed across Paris to a louche bar popular with salopes and prostituées.
Or as Jacobs called them sluts and prostitutes.
She parked her silver Porsche Cayman as close to the entrance as possible, walking to the door as fast as she could, her Manalo Blahnik’s clicking on the cobblestones, drawing too much attention.
She was horrendously overdressed for this part of town and was almost certain to end up robbed, or dead.
‘Excusez-moi, êtes-vous perdu?’ asked the concierge of the cheap hôtel attached to the boîte.
‘Non.’ As much as she wished she were lost, she had work to do.
It was dark inside the bar, and despite the ban on cigarette smoking, a heavy haze hung like smog above the tight cluster of patrons.
Ah, there he is. Keeping me from my lover so I can set him up with one.
Amused she watched as another prostitute spurned his advances, unable to believe he had trouble picking up a hooker.
This calls for desperate measures.
The blond Englishman raised his eyebrows suggestively as she took a seat across the bar from him.
Forget it. Not in a million years. And not with a million condoms.
Isabelle approached two girls, not yet hardened by their chosen profession.
‘Allez-vous coucher avec mon ami?’ She nodded towards Wilson, asking if they would sleep with her friend
He wasn’t bad looking. He’d be sexy if he stopped trying so hard. If he just kept his mouth shut.
‘Lui? Non!’ The two hookers shared laughter at her suggestion.
‘Quel est le probléme?’
‘Il est un porc anglais!’
They would not take the English pig’s money.
What about her money?
‘Combien de fois?’ she asked, indicating the two of them.
The girls looked at each other, wondering how far they could inflate their price. ‘Quatre cent.’ 400.
She offered them eight. They agreed.
For their part, the girls put on a good show - fondling and kissing each other before allowing him to take part.
The other patrons had seen it all before. Nobody paid any attention even when a beautiful, elegant Frenchwoman pulled out a small camera and took photographs.
William cursed as the latest photograph and video files downloaded to the computer.
For the most part, they were worthless.
The photographer had snapped Wilson in a bar picking up two hookers, and the video cameras in the bedroom had captured every millisecond of their boisterous threesome.
Racy, sure. But blackmail?
It was the stuff of legends.
At least in Wilson’s mind.
The cameras in Wilson’s room weren’t to blackmail him.
They were there in the hopes of catching action that could be used to blackmail Burke and Robertson – and anyone else the horny bastard managed to slip his dick into.
If William had been a betting man, he would have laid a healthy wager on Burke being tucked up in Wilson’s bed – or him in hers.
But she had ditched him the first chance she got.
Not for another guy or to do anything they could have used as ammunition.
Ironically, she had ditched Wilson to research him.
With growing trepidation William watched her mindless scribbling, sweat coating his palms as she wrote random words in her little black book.
For a second there, she had come close to the truth. Too close for his comfort
William was going to have to keep a very tight rein on Charlotte Burke. Her presence on this press trip was not to research his past but to act as bait for someone far more important.
If she gets hurt, Baker, you’ll only have yourself to blame.
Chapter Ten:
Damon picked up a second croissant, the crumbling, airy pastry so decadent he couldn’t refuse. Breaking it apart, he spread a thick layer of creamy butter and raspberry jam, savouring every mouthful.
The dining room had been reorganised to accommodate one long table rather than the usual smaller ones. At the head, Damon unfolded The Sun off a stack of newspapers, and scanned the headlines, keeping his eyes peeled for Miranda Evan’s by-line or a mention of the company. Nothing.
What do you know? His non-disclosure agreement seems to be working.
It was a strange request from his father, asking the press not to publish anything until the press trip had ended.
Damon had his doubts it was possible or even ethical.
He read through the remaining newspapers with methodical care; The Guardian, Washington Post, Le Parisien, Chicago Tribune, Daily Mail, The Observer, The Times, The Daily Telegraph.
He scanned the pages of the Telegraph, alert for Charlotte’s name.
But all he saw was one mention of his family - a business feature by Jonah Walsh on a new property acquisition.
He folded the double page spread, putting it to the side.
Back at the office, it would be filed away with all the other press releases and clippings on the company.
Doubting there would be two features in the one newspaper, he flicked apathetically through the remaining pages. Near the end, he saw it - an article on the prospects
of peace in the Middle East.
It had nothing to do with Harvey Incorporated, but it did have Charlotte Burke’s by-line highlighted under the headline.
It joined the other documents, which he then slid into his briefcase.
Savouring the last mouthful of croissant and thick black espresso, Damon moved his chair away from the table, ready to leave.
The dining room door opened, and two women entered.
Maybe one last coffee.
‘Where did you get to last night? And who was that guy you were… tonguing?’
‘Ugh, please don’t remind me, Miranda. There’s half an hour I’d like to forget.’
‘He was kind of cute.’
‘From a distance maybe. Believe me, up close…’
‘Did you sleep with him?’
‘Give me some credit. I kissed him. It was a mistake. It went no further. End of story.’
‘Bet he wasn’t impressed?’
‘You can say that again. Speak of the devil, he just walked in so can we please change the subject?’
Charlotte glanced down the table at Zac.
Good, he was ignoring her.
The sooner he forgot last night, the better.
‘Can you believe my editor called me at half passed six this morning?’ Charlotte said, eager to move the conversation away from Zac and the tragedy of last night.
‘What on earth for?’
‘Wanted to know if I had anything to report. Can you believe it? We’ve been here less than 24 hours and he already expects a miracle.’
‘My editor wouldn’t even know my phone number.’
‘I wish mine didn’t. You know he even had the nerve to say other journalists could have taken my place.’
‘Someone offered me a thousand quid to take my place,’ Miranda said. ‘About the only time my editor took an interest in me. She told them all to back off and that the place was exclusively mine.’
‘Idiot doesn’t even care that they made us sign that stupid NDA. What does he care if I get sued, as long as he gets his bloody story?’
‘You reckon they’d actually sue us? If we printed details?’
‘Who knows? Did you read all that fine print before you signed?’
‘Nope. You?’
‘Some of it. Load of BS if you ask me. This whole trip is pretty questionable. What the heck are we supposed to learn with all these parties?’