by Shaun Hutson
Hailey recognized the two men immediately.
Craig Levine and Matt Dennison. Vocalist and drummer respectively. Early twenties, unshaven, long shirts undone and flowing loose outside their grubby jeans. Levine was wearing a pair of Caterpillar boots, which he had resting on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Hailey noticed chewing gum stuck between the treads of the sole.
Dennison was wearing a pair of yellow wrap-around Ray-Bans, despite the fact that every light in the room was on.
Sitting next to him was a girl Hailey thought could be no older than twenty. She was blonde, dressed in a pair of jeans that looked as if they’d been sprayed on, and a tightly fastened black jacket that pushed her ample breasts together to form a cleavage you could lose a Filofax in.
She was stroking Dennison’s hair, occasionally flicking at strands of it with one index finger. Every time she did so, she giggled.
There was a large ghetto-blaster propped on top of the television in the corner of the room. Hailey recognized the sound of Waterhole’s latest album coming from it.
‘This is Hailey Gibson,’ Trudi said, waving a hand in Hailey’s direction.
‘I suppose you know who we are?’ said Levine, grinning. ‘Most people do.’
The room was filled with raucous laughter again.
‘Jumped-up little shits.’
From the bedroom of the suite another man appeared.
Mid-thirties, a little overweight. The Armani suit he wore fitted a little too snugly, Hailey thought, as she shook his hand.
‘Ray Taylor,’ the man said. ‘Manager.’
‘You’re supposed to curtsy now,’ Levine said.
More raucous laughter.
Hailey sat down opposite the two band members, trying to prevent her gaze from straying too often to the blonde, who was still stroking Dennison’s hair.
‘Leave it out, Sophie,’ said the drummer finally, looking round at the girl, who pouted for a moment then wandered off towards the bedroom.
‘I’m going to help Jenny try on those clothes she bought,’ said Sophie before disappearing from view.
‘Women,’ said Dennison, shrugging his shoulders and grinning.
Hailey was aware of his gaze travelling up and down her slender legs. He had barely looked at her face since she entered the room.
I’d eat you alive, you little bastard.
‘You’re from Jim Marsh, aren’t you?’ said Taylor, pouring himself a drink from the mini-bar.
Hailey nodded.
‘Worked for him long?’ Taylor persisted.
Hailey told him.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, we’re going to have one, aren’t we, Matt?’ said Levine, also grinning.
Trudi hurried to the mini-bar to fetch what they wanted.
‘I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you,’ Hailey said.
And the quicker I can get out of here the better.
‘I just came to check some details about the gig and the party afterwards.’
‘Are you coming?’ Levine wanted to know.
‘No, it’s just the way she’s sitting,’ Dennison offered.
More laughter. Hailey smiled politely.
Christ, it was an effort.
‘I’ll be there, yes,’ she said.
‘I’ve seen the guest list,’ said Taylor. ‘Why the local politicians?’
‘It’s a charity gig, isn’t it? It’s good publicity for them. It makes them look hip and they’re doing something for a good cause. The local papers will be running the pictures for weeks.’
Taylor smiled.
‘So we’ve got to have our photos taken with a load of old cunts, just for charity?’ Dennison sneered.
‘It won’t take long,’ Hailey reassured the drummer. ‘And Jim wants some photos of the band taken inside his factory, too. But that can be done the following day.’
Taylor nodded and sipped at his gin and tonic.
‘I hope he realizes how lucky he is getting us to do this gig,’ the manager said. ‘I can’t remember the last time I let the boys do something for nothing. It’s against my principles.’ He smiled crookedly.
‘Well, it’ll be good publicity for the band, too,’ Hailey reminded him.
‘The last thing this lot need is more publicity,’ Taylor told her.
‘Making headlines for helping people is better than making headlines for trashing hotel rooms and punching photographers,’ mused Hailey.
‘I don’t like fucking photographers,’ Levine interjected.
Trudi laughed, but found she was the only one. Her cheeks coloured and she looked down, fumbling for a cigarette in her handbag.
‘Well, as long as you promise not to hit any of them before, during or after this gig,’ said Hailey, looking directly at Levine.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said scornfully. ‘The last one was trying to get pictures of Jenny’s tits. He wasn’t showing her any respect. That’s why I smacked him.’
‘He was a creep.’
Hailey looked across towards the bedroom as she heard this new voice.
Jennifer Kenton emerged wearing a black trouser suit. She ran a hand through her shoulder-length blonde hair and crossed to the sofa. She leant forward and touched Levine’s face.
Hailey recognized her immediately. She’d been in half a dozen failed feature films during her career. She still made films now, but most of her work was for television. She too was wearing Ray-Bans.
‘I don’t like creeps hanging around me,’ she continued. ‘You’d better make sure the photographers that cover this gig and the party afterwards behave themselves.’
Hailey nodded. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She smiled.
‘You’d better worry about it, otherwise I’ll have your job,’ Jennifer Kenton told her haughtily.
‘That’s it, babe, you tell her,’ Levine chuckled.
Hailey glared at the former actress for a second.
Bitch.
Jennifer Kenton sat down on the arm of the sofa and Levine snaked his arm around her waist.
‘Get me a tequila sunrise, Trudi,’ the former actress said. ‘You’ll probably have to call room service for it.’
Trudi rushed to comply.
‘We’ve nearly finished, babe,’ said Levine, looking up at his wife.
‘Thank God for that,’ Jennifer Kenton muttered wearily. ‘I’m fed up with this hotel. It’s like a prison. The only trouble is if I go out I’ll probably get so many people asking me for bloody autographs.’
In your dreams.
Hailey glanced at her watch. ‘Well, I’m just about finished,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you all get on.’
‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Dennison, getting to his feet and hurrying across the room. ‘I reckon Sophie’s waiting for me in there.’ He pointed to the bedroom and flicked out his tongue.
Hailey also rose.
She shook hands with Ray Taylor.
‘See you at the gig,’ she said, smiling.
Jennifer Kenton looked her up and down disdainfully.
‘Don’t forget what I said about those photographers,’ she said.
‘It’s all right, Jenny,’ Trudi interjected. ‘I’ll make sure it’s cool.’
She ushered Hailey towards the door.
‘I told you they were cool, didn’t I?’ said the PR girl as she and Hailey emerged into the corridor. ‘I love working with them. And I said Craig was so funny, didn’t I?’
‘I could tell he reads a lot of Oscar Wilde,’ Hailey told her.
Trudi looked blank.
Hailey headed towards the lift.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ she called without looking back. ‘It’s been mega.’
All she heard was the sound of the door closing.
49
THERE WERE ALREADY a number of cars parked outside the school as Caroline Hacket arrived.
She selected a position about twenty yards from the main exit and swung her red Saab into it.
The rain, she was delighted to see, had eased to little more than drizzle. The storm had passed and the sky, though still bruised with cloud, seemed to have released the worst of the deluge.
Caroline sat for a moment behind the wheel, checking her reflection once or twice in the rear-view mirror.
There was a car parked a few yards away from her, its windows badly steamed. The passenger side-window was open a few inches, and she could see a harassed-looking young woman in her mid-twenties trying to pacify a child of two or three who was strapped in the car-seat. The child was crying, struggling to get out, and the woman had gone from cajoling and reasoning to shouting and threatening.
Caroline looked away. That was one thing she didn’t miss about kids.
And yet, people said it was different if they were your own.
She would never know.
Caroline continued to gaze through the windscreen, trying not to dwell too much on that subject. Aware that unwanted thoughts and memories arose with this kind of self-analysis.
The abortions.
The string of lovers
(no, lovers wasn’t the word, was it? Love had never been involved. It had been sex, pure and simple)
she’d had during her teens and early twenties.
The operation.
She still remembered that day when a doctor had told her she’d be unable to ever have children. How the news had not hit her like the thunderbolt she’d expected. Instead the realization of it had festered and grown within her, slowly. Like some kind of cancer.
It was this inability to have children that had caused her second marriage to break up. That and her husband’s affair, of course. For a short time she had blamed herself. If she had been able to give him the child he wanted so badly, then perhaps he wouldn’t have gone to another woman.
But any feelings of guilt she had harboured left swiftly.
She was left with the pain instead.
Caroline looked across towards the car closest to her and saw that the small child in the front seat had stopped crying. His mother was kissing him on the cheek and the child was laughing.
The realization that she would never know that joy struck her as hard as it had ever done.
She brushed a single tear from the corner of her eye, inspecting her reflection once again in the rear-view mirror. She didn’t want Becky to see that she’d been crying.
It was while she was retouching her mascara that she noticed another car parked about thirty yards behind her.
Or, more to the point, its driver.
It only took her a second to realize it was Adam Walker.
She had never seen the Scorpio he drove before. She had only ever seen him on that one occasion, but she knew instantly who it was.
He was leaning against the side of the Ford, gazing towards the school, hands dug deep into the pockets of his leather jacket.
He looked distracted, his eyes scanning the cars already stationed outside the school, and also those constantly pulling up and parking.
Caroline turned in her seat to get a better look at him.
After a moment or two he slid back behind the wheel, but didn’t drive off.
He merely sat.
Waiting.
Caroline glanced at her reflection once again, then swung herself out of the Saab.
50
THE TAPPING ON the window startled him.
Adam Walker looked round as he heard the sound, at first unsure where it was coming from.
Then he saw Caroline Hacket standing beside his Scorpio, smiling in at him.
Walker wound down the window.
‘You were miles away,’ she said to him. ‘You didn’t even see me coming.’
‘How did you know I was here?’ he wanted to know.
‘I’m parked just along there.’ She indicated her own vehicle. ‘Are you waiting for somebody?’
He nodded slowly.
‘Get in,’ he said, reaching across and unlocking the passenger door. ‘I think it’s going to rain again.’
Caroline accepted his invitation.
‘How are you, Adam?’ she said as she scrambled in beside him.
‘I’m fine. I didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘You were waiting for Hailey, weren’t you?’
He looked surprised.
‘It’s OK.’ She grinned. ‘I’m very discreet.’
‘What’s Hailey said to you, then?’
‘Nothing. She doesn’t have to. We’ve been friends for long enough.’
He nodded slowly.
‘You’re out of luck today though,’ Caroline informed him. ‘She asked me to pick Becky up. Hailey’s still at work.’
‘What would you say if I told you it was you I was looking for?’
‘I’d say you were a liar.’
He reached into the glove compartment of his car and pulled out a battered paperback.
Caroline laughed as he showed her the cover.
‘Where did you get that?’ she wanted to know, inspecting the book.
She flipped it open and glanced at the author photo inside the back cover, shaking her head. Still smiling.
It showed her sitting on what looked like a bar stool, with legs crossed. She looked very efficient, in a black two-piece and court shoes. There was no smile though. That was her enigmatic face, she mused.
‘I got it from the local library. They ordered them both for me. I’ve already finished Murderous Minds.’
‘And?’
‘Very interesting.’
‘Just interesting? Not devastating, or ground-breaking, or incredibly powerful? Just interesting?’
‘I didn’t mean it to sound like an insult. It was very good. I enjoyed it. Why didn’t you say you were a writer the first time we met?’
‘It’s not the sort of thing you just drop into a conversation, is it? And besides, I’m hardly Catherine Cookson, am I?’
‘I’m impressed,’ he said, smiling.
She handed the book back to him.
‘Why the fascination with murderers?’ he enquired.
‘I’ve always been interested, ever since I was a kid. All the gory details – but not just that. It’s why people kill that fascinates me. What drives someone to take another life?’ She shrugged.
‘Hailey told me you were working on a new book at the moment. What’s it about?’
‘It’s like a dictionary of murderers.’
‘I’d like to read it when it’s published.’
‘I’ll let you have a copy. At least then I’ll know someone’s read it.’
‘How long have you been writing?’
‘Over ten years. I was a journalist on a local paper before that. That’s how I met my first husband. He owned the paper.’
‘I admire anyone who can write – or can do anything creative.’
‘You know what it’s like. You paint, don’t you?’
Walker nodded.
‘What else did she tell you?’
He looked perplexed.
‘About me?’ Caroline continued.
‘Just that writing was your hobby,’ Walker said. ‘She wasn’t talking behind your back, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘I wasn’t worried about that. I’m just curious about you and Hailey.’
‘There’s nothing going on between us.’
‘Adam, I saw the way you looked at each other. And I know Hailey. Her marriage has been on the rocks for the last six months. Rob’s been acting like a complete bastard. If you and her have got a thing going, then good luck to you. Both of you. I certainly wouldn’t blame Hailey, and I’m not going to drop you in it.’
She glanced at the dashboard clock.
‘I’d better go,’ she told him. ‘Becky will be coming out any time now.’ She paused and touched his arm. ‘If there is something going on between you and Hailey, then that’s your business. If there isn’t, then give me a call.’ She laughed and closed the door.
He w
atched as she walked back to her car, then beyond towards the school gates.
Only when he saw Becky emerge from the school, among the hordes of other children, did he drive off.
And from the heaving skies the rain began to fall again.
51
‘HE SAID HE was waiting for you,’ Caroline Hacket said as they sat in her kitchen.
She watched Hailey sip her coffee, then look towards the door, which was half open. In the sitting room beyond, Becky was watching TV. Hailey crossed to the door and pushed it shut.
‘Did he say why?’ Hailey wanted to know.
‘He didn’t have to,’ Caroline told her. ‘Listen, I told Adam and I’m telling you, Hailey, whatever’s going on between you two is your business.’
‘Did he say we were having an affair?’
‘He said there was nothing going on.’
‘But you didn’t believe him?’
‘I just thought that you’d tell me if you were sleeping with him.’
‘I’m not,’ Hailey insisted.
Caroline eyed her friend impassively.
‘Oh, Christ,’ Hailey groaned. ‘Listen, Caroline, what I’m telling you is the truth. I had lunch with him a couple of days ago. We ended up going back to his house . . .’ She allowed the sentence to trail off.
‘And nothing happened?’ Caroline said quickly.
‘I’d suggested showing some of his work to Waterhole, to see if they were interested in using it on their album covers, that kind of thing,’ Hailey murmured. ‘Things got out of hand. I was mad with Rob. I wanted to get back at him because of his affair with that slut.’
‘So you did have sex with Adam?’
‘I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I told him I wanted him. We started – but I couldn’t go through with it.’ She explained more fully, slowly. She told Caroline everything. Like some kind of confession. As if it was difficult to speak the words.
Truth hurts, doesn’t it?
‘You led him on,’ Caroline said flatly.
‘No,’ Hailey snapped angrily. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
Wasn’t it?
‘Hailey, you let the guy go down on you. I think he could be forgiven for thinking you wanted to be a little more than just friends.’
The two women regarded each other silently for a moment.