by John Marrs
‘What if he knows where you live?’
‘You’re not helping me feel better about this.’
‘I’m serious. I know somewhere in Venice you can stay that won’t cost you anything, you’ll be surrounded by people so you’ll be safe. And I know a guy who works on the door at the Pink Pussycat in Santa Monica who could get you work so you wouldn’t have far to travel.’
Savannah looked at Peyk and realised that under the strangest of circumstances, and despite not knowing a thing about him, this was the first friend she’d made since she’d arrived in the city.
Two hours later she found herself standing in the doorway of a room at the Venice Beach International Hostel. Inside were two single beds, two lockers and a bathroom with a sink, toilet, shower and a large mirror on the wall.
‘It’s the best room we have,’ began Peyk apologetically, sensing Savannah’s disappointment. ‘But you’ll have it to yourself most of the time. I’ll make sure Ron only puts people in here if we’re busy.’
‘It’ll be fine. Thanks again, Peyk.’
‘Oh, and take this,’ he added, and passed her something from his jacket pocket.
‘A gun?’ Savannah replied, taken aback.
‘It’s for your protection.’
‘Well I didn’t think you wanted me to rob a bank with it.’
‘Do you know how to use it?’
‘Of course. It doesn’t mean I feel comfortable with it though.’
Peyk closed the door behind him and left Savannah to become acclimatised to her new surroundings. While her motel room was basic, it was still expensive and Peyk offered this accommodation for free. If she worked hard at the new club that Peyk suggested, it would enable her to save up and afford something better.
Savannah looked at the gun and went to put it in the locker, but hesitated and placed it inside her handbag instead. She began to unpack her clothes and hang them up on the rails, and placed her many cosmetics on a shelf in the bathroom.
And she was unaware she was already being watched from a room behind the bathroom mirror.
*
TODAY
Tommy and Savannah’s silence was broken by Nicole, who rushed past them out the front door, glancing over her shoulder towards Tommy, who responded with a nod.
Thirty seconds later, Eric walked briskly past him in the same direction as Nicole, and Tommy sprang into action.
‘Sav, can you hold the fort here for a few minutes? I won’t be long.’
‘Sure, honey, is everything okay . . .?’
But before she got her answer, Tommy was out of the door and running towards the beach.
CHAPTER 55
Nicole picked up her pace as she made her way towards the second floor of the car park where their pick-up truck was.
She was not alone, and it took all her strength not to just turn around and stand her ground and confront the urgent footsteps making their way up the concrete ramp behind her. But that wasn’t part of the plan, yet.
Finally the Chevy was in view. She reached into her pocket and removed a bunch of keys, looking down to find the one that opened the door.
But before she could find it, she was pushed hard from the side and fell to the floor. Her cheek and wrist took the brunt of the impact, but she was too distracted by the snarling face looking down at her to feel pain.
‘Clumsy,’ Eric smiled.
CHAPTER 56
Tommy’s eyes darted in all directions until he caught sight of the two people he’d left the hostel to find.
He half-walked, half-jogged until they were a few metres away from him, but just as he prepared to approach them with his rehearsed spiel, Jake blindsided him.
‘Hey stranger, I’ve been looking for you. Where are you heading in such a hurry?’
‘Oh hi,’ began Tommy, his eyes flitting between Jake and his targets. As much as he wanted to talk to Jake and discover what had made him lose his temper at the King’s Head pub, now was not the time.
‘So what have you been up to?’
‘Oh just been busy in the hostel, you know.’
‘Okay,’ replied Jake, unsure of Tommy’s reticence to converse. ‘Everything alright? You seem a bit distracted.’
‘Look, Jake,’ continued Tommy, ‘I’m really sorry but I’m kind of in the middle of something right now, can we catch up later?’
‘Yeah, sure—’ Jake replied, but Tommy had hurried away before he finished his sentence.
CHAPTER 57
Nicole lifted her head from the car park’s concrete floor and struggled to focus her eyes on Eric.
‘You pushed me,’ she muttered, taken aback by his sudden violence.
‘You’ve been pushing me for days, Nicole,’ Eric replied. His imposing figure stood over her, arms folded in defiance. ‘Now let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Where are they?’
‘Where are what?’
‘Don’t play stupid. Where are my mother’s diamonds?’
‘I don’t know anything about any diamonds . . .’ Nicole replied, and clambered to her feet. But she wasn’t fast enough to shield her nose from the brunt of Eric’s headbutt, and she dropped back to the floor, clutching her face and howling.
Eric let out an exaggerated sigh, then kicked her in the stomach. Nicole’s eyes opened wide as she fought to breathe. She’d expected their confrontation to be verbally unpleasant and threatening, but she had never seen this Eric before.
‘Nicole, you were stupid enough to leave a diamond in the car, along with Maria’s note.’
Now it made sense to her how Eric knew about her discovery. She thought she’d covered her tracks, and her mind raced as she tried to settle on a reply, but as she struggled to get to her feet, Eric kicked her again.
‘Okay, so we’ll do this the hard way,’ he continued, and as Nicole fell to her side, he climbed on top of her, rolled her onto her back and pinned her arms and legs down with his own. Then from the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a small bottle with a clear liquid inside and a syringe. He jabbed the bottle’s membrane and drew the liquid up the barrel.
‘What are you doing?’ gasped Nicole.
‘I’ll give her credit, my mother put up a good fight for a weak woman. Are you going to do the same?’
ELEVEN WEEKS EARLIER – LONDON
The digital display on the medical monitor next to Mrs Baker’s bed read 4.45 a.m. when she woke to find someone replacing a syringe driver into her chest.
‘Is that you, Nicole?’ she asked groggily, and struggled to recognise the figure hovering over her. She felt cold breath against her ear when he spoke.
‘Hello, Mum,’ whispered Eric, to Mrs Baker’s horror. He held his face inches away from hers. ‘What have you done with my inheritance?’
Mrs Baker felt her heart racing and her eyes began to water, but she would tell her estranged offspring nothing.
‘You know my sister doesn’t need it,” he continued, his voice growing louder, ‘and after what you put me through, it’s rightfully mine. So tell me what I’m getting and where to find it.’
Mrs Baker trembled, but again, refused to talk.
Suddenly Eric had a thought.
‘She knows, doesn’t she? You’ve told Nicole.’
When Mrs Baker’s mouth twitched and her pupils dilated, Eric knew he was correct.
‘Once again you choose a stranger over your own flesh and blood. Well you won’t make that mistake again.’
When she turned her head to look away from him, Eric clamped his hand over her mouth. He felt the loose skin on his mother’s arms brushing against his own as she attempted to bat his hand away, but she was too weak to hurt him or to shout for help. Eric shook his head.
‘You are, and always have been, a stupid, stupid woman.’
Eric manoeuvred his other hand towards the syringe driver and plunged the needle into it. In less than a minute, a massive overdose of morphine left Mrs Baker dead.
Eric took in a deep breath, exhaled and smile
d, then stretched his arms above his head and yawned.
‘Looks like we’ll need Nicole after all,’ he said.
He turned to face his sister Bridget, who sat in the corner of the room and nodded.
‘You didn’t give her much of a chance to reply.’
‘She was never going to tell me,’ Eric added, ‘so it was quicker to cut out the middle man.’
Bridget picked up her coat from the arm of her chair and walked towards the door.
‘And remember,’ added Eric, ‘cremation, not burial.’
TODAY
It was one thing for Nicole to learn that her best friend was a liar, and then to be a victim of his vicious nature once he was provoked. But to hear Eric admit he murdered his own mother because she wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know horrified her. She kept a hold on her nerves to keep him talking and to play for time.
‘Why?’ asked Nicole. ‘She was going to die soon anyway.’
‘Why not?’ shrugged Eric. ‘She gave me life and then destroyed it, so I took hers away from her. It’s only fair.’
‘Of course it’s not fair! You could have just gone to her house while she was in hospital and searched for the diamonds yourself.’
‘I didn’t know if her housekeeper would recognise me from any old photographs knocking around the place, and if she had, it would’ve got a lot messier. Are you starting to understand the lengths I’ll go to get what I’m owed?’
‘But you aren’t owed anything!’
‘And Saint Nicole is? Just because you befriended a terminally ill, vulnerable old widow? You’re the same manipulative bastard I am.’
‘You killed your own mother for nothing! You’re evil.’
‘For nothing? Is that what you really think?’ Eric threw his head back and laughed, but his smile quickly faded. ‘Let me tell you something about your wonderful Grace Baker, Nicole. When you’re a nine-year-old boy who’s been repeatedly raped by your house master at one of the top boarding schools in the country; when you turn to the one person for help who should believe you, your mother; when that one person says it’s in your imagination and you’re lying because you’re homesick; when you beg and plead and beg and then plead some more and you even try to hang yourself with a bed sheet from the wooden beams of the school refectory because you can’t take it anymore; when that one person’s response is to remove you from that school and shove you into another one without even allowing you a visit home . . . When you kill that person, it is not for nothing. It’s called karma, and as you’re about to discover, what they say is true – karma is, indeed, a bitch.’
The manner in which Eric’s story tripped off his tongue without pause or hesitation gave Nicole no doubt he was telling the truth. She didn’t want to believe that Mrs Baker could have been so dismissive of her son’s plight – and it certainly didn’t excuse Eric’s subsequent actions – but the part she had played in creating the monster currently pinning Nicole to the floor could not be denied.
Eric hadn’t planned to tell her anything about his past, but when he witnessed a slight softening in Nicole’s eyes, it only angered him more. ‘Do not feel sorry for me,’ he ordered, ‘when it’s your own safety you need to be worried about.’
He jabbed the needle into Nicole’s arm as she twisted her body from side to side to try and throw Eric off her.
‘Just a little more pressure, and the morphine will reunite you with both of our mothers very soon. Now, for the last time, where are my diamonds?’
Nicole’s breathing became sharp and desperate. She had completely underestimated his determination and how much he hated her, and glanced around the empty car park, willing someone to disturb them.
‘In the air vent!’ she finally declared, ‘I found them in the air vent in the truck.’
‘I’ve already looked in there.’
‘I know, that’s why I put them back there an hour ago, I thought it’d be the last place you’d look again.’
Eric stared into each of Nicole’s eyes, searching for a tell-tale sign she was lying. ‘Huh, clever,’ he conceded, then removed the needle, yanked her to her feet and shoved her towards the vehicle. ‘Open it,’ he barked, pointing to the door. ‘Try to run and I will kill you.’
Nicole unlocked the truck, opened the passenger door and leaned inside to pull the air vent out, but it was jammed. She jabbed her fingers between the plastic strips and yanked hard, but nothing moved. Impatiently, Eric pushed her to one side and with two big tugs, pulled the unit from its casing. Nicole made a couple of tentative steps backwards, but when Eric spotted her, she stopped.
He shoved his hand inside the vent, felt around with his fingertips and pulled out a small velvet pouch. He turned to look at Nicole and grinned.
CHAPTER 58
‘You’re a bloody idiot, Stuart,’ Jake told himself as he watched Tommy run off up the boardwalk.
He quickly realised his mistake, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d referred to himself using his former persona. He wondered if it was spending too much time with Tommy that caused his slip-up, because there was something infectious about Tommy’s wide-eyed vulnerability that reminded him of himself before he’d allowed fame to corrupt him. And Tommy also had a quality about him that made Jake want to be completely honest about who he was and who he used to be.
Up until moments earlier when Tommy brushed him off, he’d even considered broaching the truth with him. But today’s meeting was a reality check, because Jake understood Tommy was never going to want anything but friendship from him, and he hated his clichéd behaviour in falling for a straight man he could never have.
No, he thought, and decided against placing his deepest, darkest secrets upon Tommy’s shoulders. Tommy was probably moving on from their friendship anyway, because all friendships made in hostels were transient. And in his experience, that was the case with all his relationships.
TWO YEARS EARLIER – NOTTING HILL, LONDON
‘What do you mean you did me a favour?’ Stuart repeated slowly.
Geri stared at her fallen protégé, briefly wondering if it would be better to backtrack rather than admit the truth. She decided against it.
‘What do you think it means?’ she snapped. ‘Pretty self-explanatory, sweetheart.’
‘You set me up? You got Katie to put those drugs on my lap just as we arrived at the hotel?’
‘That’s pretty much the bare bones of it. Let’s not forget tipping off the paps on your arrival. But I didn’t expect her to shove so much of that shit up her nose that it killed her. Typical of her though, wasn’t it? She took dying for fame too literally.’
‘But why?’ a stunned Stuart replied, ‘I didn’t do anything to you!’
Geri laughed. ‘Why? Why not? Because I bloody can! And you’re right, you didn’t do anything to me but you were quite happy to do a lot to Zak Stanley.’
Stuart stared at Geri, unsure of how to respond. Nobody, bar Zak’s sister, was supposed to know of their relationship.
‘Don’t think there’s a single aspect of your life I don’t know about, Stuey,’ Geri continued smugly. ‘I know about your little liaisons with the Hollywood hunk, I know you’re not pure as the driven snow when it comes to using illegal substances in the bedroom; in fact, I even have video footage of you two indulging in your sordid sex and coke romps. Which is why you’re going to keep your mouth shut about everything that’s been said in this room, because if I hear one word publicly from you, my footage is going to “mysteriously” leak online . . . and how much more humiliation can you take in twenty-four hours?’
‘If you . . . if you do that,’ Stuart stuttered, ‘then I’ll tell the press about the miming, your secret tax shelters, how you and Katie set me up, how you’re really to blame for her death. You’ll be ruined.’
‘And then I’m going vehemently deny it before suing the arse off you as you signed a non-disclosure agreement when I let you into my band. And it’s valid for five years after you leave – o
r are thrown out. I’ve got you over a barrel, sweetheart, a position, if I recall correctly, that you’re quite fond of.’
Stuart stepped backwards, reeling from the storm of threats and revelations Geri was raining down upon him.
‘You did all of this because I wasn’t interested in you?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘Like I said, it’s simply because I can.’
‘No, there’s more to it than that.’
‘Well I guess you can throw ratings into it too. The new series starts in a month, and everyone’s gonna be watching to see who’ll be the next wannabe to fuck up.’
‘You bitch.’
‘I’ll give you that, you’re perceptive. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s been lovely catching up, but I have a meeting with a young lad who’ll do anything, or more precisely, do me, to replace you.’
Suddenly anger, frustration, adrenaline and the drugs powering through Stuart’s nervous system connected in an angry alliance Stuart had never experienced before. Without thinking, he sprinted towards Geri, dragging her to the ground and clasping his hands around her neck. Twice he smacked her head against her parquet flooring before her security staff heard the commotion, dashed in and pulled him off her. One held Stuart’s arms behind his back as the other punched him twice in the stomach and once in the face.
A stunned Geri struggled to her feet and steadied herself with a trembling arm on the drinks cabinet. She coughed and spluttered and her throat hurt but she was still able to find her voice.
‘I rescued you from Holiday Inn hell, I made you a star and even after I ruined you, I still own you, you little prick,’ she bellowed. ‘And I will destroy you unless you get the fuck out of my house!’