by Andy Maslen
Hair and makeup in Stella’s new world meant little more than a ponytail and a dab of moisturiser. She felt something more was needed for a black-tie charity ball at the Café Royal. It was odd, primping and preening for a man she might have to torture and kill, but then the world was a funny place. She did her hair in a tight plait at the nape of her neck, then pinned it up in a makeshift bun.
As she applied blusher, eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara and lipstick, she watched herself in the mirror. The woman staring out at her – pouting, pressing her frosted pink lips together, opening her smudgy, smoky eyes wide – seemed to move of her own volition. Stella began to feel she was merely a spectator. As if the woman she was watching were the real human being getting ready to go out and Stella were merely a reflection. She suddenly felt cold, empty. The butterflies that had been swarming beneath the tight satin of her dress quietened, then disappeared altogether. The traffic noise from the road outside her open window faded. Her breath came in shallow gasps, then it, too, stopped. The face of the woman in the mirror smiled at her. Then it, she – other-Stella – spoke.
“If it’s him, Stella, what are we going to do? I mean, we can’t just abduct him from the hotel. There’ll be about a million paparazzi outside.”
Stella answered, mechanically. Fascinated by the other woman’s poise.
“A back entrance? Through the kitchens?”
“Don’t be stupid! Barney Riordan's a footballer. An athlete. He’s twice your size. Come on, think.”
“I’ll say I feel sick. Ask him to take me home. He hasn’t got a girlfriend, he told me. He’ll come.”
“Better. And you’ll do it? If it’s him.”
A nod.
The woman smiled. Then she blew a kiss.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Charity
STELLA JUMPED, STARTLED by the doorbell. She misted her wrists and cleavage with perfume. She pushed her feet home into the high-heeled black suede shoes she’d bought to go with the dress and tottered downstairs to the front door, holding onto the bannister for dear life.
“Coming!” she yelled, then grabbed a small, black, sequinned clutch bag she’d pre-filled with credit card, tissues, emergency lippy, little helper, perfume, and door keys, and pulled the door open. Her bag promptly burst open, spilling its contents onto the floor.
“Fuck!” she said. Then, “Shit! Sorry. I mean, you look nice.”
Barney Riordan stood on the threshold, his smile deciding whether it should stay in place or leave by a back door.
“Thanks,” he said, grinning, “I think. Let me help you with your stuff.”
He bent and handed a few things to Stella. She grabbed for the little helper before he could touch it.
Riordan had dark-brown eyes, blond hair cut short and brushed into a parting with some kind of gel, and a good smile. He’d gone for a kind of nineteen-forties look, like a hero in a film about wartime pilots. He was about five-eleven with wide shoulders and a flat stomach. Good posture, but then, you’d expect that from a professional athlete.
The dinner suit was clearly bespoke. Nothing fancy. No upturned lapels or contrasting buttons. But it fitted perfectly. His wide shoulders filled the midnight-blue, shawl-collared jacket, but didn’t strain it like a bouncer’s cheap monkey suit. He’d set it off with a crisp white shirt with a pleated front and black studs instead of buttons. The bowtie looked hand-tied. As he leaned forward to kiss her chastely on both cheeks, it caught the light from the lamp above his head and flashed indigo.
“You look nice too. Lovely,” he said.
Outside, double-parked in the narrow street with its engine idling, was a deep, dark-purple saloon, its paintwork shimmering in the evening sunlight.
“Is that your Bentley?” Stella asked. “Of course it is! Duh!”
Riordan smiled. “Flying Spur. Not too flash, is it?”
She shrugged. “My usual ride’s only got two wheels.” She gestured at the black Triumph. “Anything with four is flash.”
She sauntered around the car as if to admire it, and glanced down at the registration plate.
R104DAN
She experienced a sudden jolt of fear, then anger. What if this is the car? The car that killed Richard? The car that killed him? The churning in her stomach intensified. What if it was the car that killed Lola? That burnt her to death, strapped into her little car seat?
Her hand shook as she fastened the seat belt. The muffled click did nothing to reassure her as to her safety. If it turned out to be Riordan, she’d handcuff him to the steering wheel and sit a jerry can of petrol on his lap, then–
“Next stop, the Café Royal,” Riordan said, breaking Stella’s fantasy into little charred pieces.
He was a careful driver. As they motored silently south along Hampstead Road towards the Euston Road, Stella leant back in the seat, more of an armchair, really, and tried to relax. The interior of the car smelled of leather and Riordan’s aftershave, a light, spicy fragrance that made her smile despite herself.
As they approached the huge east-west artery they needed to cross before heading into the centre of London, a small, grey car lurched out of a side street in front of them, just yards away.
Stella screamed.
Her hands flew out to clutch the dashboard.
Riordan swore and jammed on the brakes.
The little car weaved across the road in front of them and executed another signalless turn across the oncoming traffic. The driver appeared to be an elderly man, judging from the tweed cap, though it was impossible to be sure as the top of his head was barely level with the steering wheel.
The Bentley stopped, apparently without effort, though both Riordan and his trembling passenger were thrown forward hard enough for their seat belts to engage. Some sort of clever electronics must have been involved, because Stella felt herself pulled gently, but firmly, back into the embrace of her seat, rather than left to bounce around like a rag doll.
Riordan turned to Stella, once his own seat belt had released him.
“Are you all right? Sorry about that. Silly old sod could have killed us both.”
Stella shook her head. “Fine. I’m fine. Let’s just go, please.”
Leaving the keys to the Bentley with a valet presumably employed especially for the occasion, Riordan escorted Stella across the pavement and towards the entrance of the Café Royal. A length of very new-looking red carpet had been laid from the kerb to the revolving doors, and someone had even strung twisted red-velvet ropes from brass poles along each edge. Thirty or forty people were clustered against the ropes, phones held aloft, some on selfie sticks, their owners facing away from the carpet the better to capture themselves in the same image as one of their idols. A group of paparazzi had bagged most of the front row and were firing their expensive-looking cameras every time a car arrived at the kerb to disgorge its occupants. Two dinner-suited security guys flanked the door, their eyes flicking left and right, mouths set in a professionally grim line. And there, front and centre to the left of the door, was Daisy.
“Barney, before we go in, can you do me a massive favour?” Stella asked.
“Sure, what do you want me to do?”
“See that girl there with the big round glasses, the pretty one with the fringe? Can you go and say hi? She was supposed to come with me today to interview you at your ground.”
God love him, he was a generous soul, as well as a modest one. He smiled and ambled over towards Daisy, who looked as if she might faint before he reached her. Stella looked on, dazzled by the flashes from the cameras and bemused that anyone should want to photograph her in the first place. Barney was speaking to Daisy. Then he leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks before returning to Stella’s side and escorting her inside.
“Thank you,” she said over her shoulder, as she timed her entry into the revolving door.
The hem of her dress caught in the door, almost causing a ‘wardrobe malfunction’, as the paparazzi would no doubt call it, but Riordan sh
ot a hand out and grabbed the edge to stop it turning before the final few degrees of rotation stripped the dress from her back.
Inside the foyer, bunches of sky-blue-and-white balloons bobbed at the ends of seven-foot silver ribbons tied to chunks of silver-grey granite on the floor. Knots of guests stood between two huge marble fireplaces, above each of which stood five huge glass vases filled with flowers that looked as though they had been picked in some exotic jungle earlier that day. The tall, lemon-yellow spires of tiny branching flowers glowed in the soft light emanating from hundreds of sky-blue or white candles.
A slim, beautiful waitress – deep brown skin, almond-shaped eyes and about nine feet tall, Stella judged – weaved through the thronging worthies and approached them. She carried a tray of champagne flutes.
“A drink, sir? Madam?” she asked in a south London accent that belied her supermodel looks.
“Have you got any sparkling water, please?” Riordan and Stella asked in unison.
The waitress nodded and smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
“I thought you footballers were all about the champagne and the high life,” Stella said, taking a moment to reassess Riordan.
He smiled. “Some of us are. I don’t drink.”
“No?”
“No.” Another smile.
She smiled back, a little more relaxed now. “Me neither.”
The beautiful waitress returned with two flutes of sparkling water, each garnished with a slice of strawberry.
Stella sipped her water and looked around. The place was wall-to-wall penguin suits and the kind of dresses her mother would have called “too much of everything”. The younger women had all apparently decided to enter a competition that was probably called “baps out for the paps”. How else to explain the plunging necklines that threatened to depart east and west simultaneously? The hem lengths were just as bad. Bad? Stella, when did you get so old and disapproving? When a girl leans forward to kiss someone and flashes her knickers at everyone behind her, that’s when. Some of the older women looked a little more elegant, although she could still see acres of crêpey flesh. Stella suppressed a shudder.
They moved through the crowd into the ballroom, a vast, glittering space in which every surface was painted, coated or plated in gold. The room had been decorated for the occasion with thousands more of the pale-blue-and-white ribbons, glued into the standard looped format that signified an anti-this or pro-that charity appeal.
Stella was asking Riordan more about his non-drinking – it was a fitness thing, apparently, though she wasn’t entirely sure she believed him – when a hand tapped her on the right shoulder. A deep, male voice spoke. A voice with an Edinburgh accent.
“It’s DI Cole, isn’t it?”
She turned. Standing in front of her was a short man, wide through the shoulders and sporting a paunch. His immaculate dinner suit gave him a shape that was more solid than flabby. White hair cropped short and appraising eyes, crinkled with age, or experience or just a lot of laughing. His name was Gordon Wade. He was the Assistant Chief Constable for Lothian and Borders Police.
“Yes, sir. What are you doing here?”
He laughed. “We are allowed south of the border, you know. I didn’t even get frisked in Carlisle.”
Stella could feel herself getting hot. She strove to regain some kind of poise. “Sir, may I introduce Barney Riordan? Barney’s–”
“Hello, Barney, how are you?”
The two men shook hands.
“Fine thanks, Gordon. How’s Susan?”
“Och, mustn’t grumble, that’s what she always says to me. But it’s her bloody highland spirit speaking. The pain comes and goes. We cope.”
Stella blinked. “I’m sorry, sir, but do you two know each other, then?”
“We do. Barney and I are both patrons of the little outfit holding this shindig. Small world, eh? And as we’re both off-duty, why don’t you call me Gordon, then I can call you Stella, and it’ll all feel a lot friendlier, eh?”
“Yes, of course. Certainly.” A moment’s pause. “Gordon.”
He smiled again. “There, that wasn’t so difficult, now was it? But now it’s my turn to ask you a question.” He took a sip of his champagne. “Mmm, bloody good stuff, though I’d rather a couple of fingers of Glenlivet and a drop of stream water. So, without wishing to sound rude, what’s a nice girl like you doing at a bunfight like this? Especially being squired by young Mr Riordan here?”
Stella looked round at Riordan, but he seemed happy to listen.
“I’m looking into a cold case, sir– I mean, Gordon, and I needed to interview Barney and he was busy and we came here.” Realising, as she finished, how lame this sounded, she continued, though she could feel the sides of the hole she was digging for herself getting steeper and steeper. “It’s not a date, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I assure you I wasn’t. Or not until now, at any rate.” He winked at her. “Your secret’s safe with me Stella, though you might need to use the back door if you’re to escape the attentions of the vultures out the front later on.”
“Don’t tease her, Gordon,” Riordan said. “I think she’s about as far out of her comfort zone as it’s possible to get.”
Wade touched Stella briefly on the shoulder. “Don’t mind me, Stella. I’m an awful tease. But seriously, if you need any help on this cold case of yours. Off the record, I mean. You know, someone to talk to. Well, after your work for me on that corruption case, I owe you one. Two or three, as a matter of fact.”
She looked down for a second. An ally. Far away from London.
“Yes, Gordon. I would like that.”
“Here, then,” he said, and gave her a business card and winked again. “Take this. Break glass in case of emergency, eh? Any time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and rescue my wife, who seems to have fallen into the clutches of our major donors director.”
Stella turned to Riordan, who was busy signing autographs.
“Barney, I need to talk to you about your car. It can’t wait any longer, I’m afraid.”
He smiled, shook hands with the final well-wisher and followed her away from the throng of donors, celebrities, charity staff and black-and-white-clad waitresses.
“I’m all yours,” he said, when they’d reached the sanctuary of a Steinway grand piano that occupied an entire corner of the ballroom.
She put her empty flute down on the piano’s mirror-polished lid.
“First of all, can you tell me, please, where you were on the sixth of May last year?”
“Yes,” he answered straight away, surprising Stella.
“Go on, then.”
“I was in Qatar. Playing a demonstration match for the sheikh, or the prince, or whoever’s in charge there. He’s a friend of our owner. It was his birthday. The whole team flew out for it. First class all the way, air conditioned stadium. Fuck knows how much it all cost. We all got half a million and a gold Rolex, just for a kickabout.”
“And you’re sure about the date?”
“Absolutely! Want to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my birthday too. The sheikh found out, and he gave me a Ferrari as well. Bit over the top, but money doesn’t mean the same to them as it does to us, does it?”
Resisting the impulse to ask him which ‘us’ he was talking about, Stella pressed on.
“Anyone have the keys to your Bentley while you were away?”
He shook his head. “Not a chance. Locked up tighter than a duck’s arse with my other cars. Why are you asking all this, anyway? You never told me.”
“Hit and run. We believe the man–”
“Or woman.”
“Pardon?”
“You said, ‘the man’, but it could have been a woman, couldn’t it?”
Stella remembered a case she’d worked on as a newly promoted detective sergeant. A woman had killed another woman in a hit and run. The victim had been the wife of a police off
icer; the perpetrator was married to an organised crime boss. The search for the driver had continued for six years. When they finally found her, she’d told them that by six p.m. on the day it happened, she was under the knife in the clinic of a Dutch plastic surgeon, having her face changed.
“Yes,” she said. “It could have been a woman. We believe the person who committed this crime was driving a purple Bentley. The same shade as yours.”
Riordan’s eyes widened for a moment. Then he rubbed his knuckles over his chin, frowning.
“You’re saying someone killed some people, and he was driving a car in Viola del diavolo?”
“Or she. And, yes, I am. A man and a baby girl.” My baby girl. Little Lola.
Riordan frowned and wrinkled his nose, as if he’d tasted something bitter. “That’s bang out of order, that is. That’s not right. Look, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t my car, all right? But this mate of mine, plays for Manchester United, right? He was really taking the piss out of me the other week. Says I’ve gone to all this trouble and I’m not even the only bloke in London with a Bentley in that colour. He texted me a photo he’d taken.”
While Riordan was getting his phone out and scrolling through his photos, Stella kept very still. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her ears, as if she was deep underwater. Her palms felt sweaty and the tips of her fingers were tingling.
“Here it is!” Riordan said. “Look. Right there. He took it a couple of weeks ago.”