The Siren's Sting

by Miranda Darling

  There was no doubt in her mind who was behind the kidnapping and why. She was burning with fury. It all made twisted yet perfect sense: Issa had almost no money of his own, but fifteen million euros was the sum that Krok had offered him for his land on the promontory. Kidnap the boy, force Issa to sell his land to him, then get the money back in ransom; use the ruse of kidnap threats to Emile to throw any potential investigations off the scent. Just like with Clémence and the suicide threats, he had been laying the groundwork. The threats to Krok’s son had the added benefit of terrifying Clémence. It was the sort of cruel, devious plan that Krok would find pleasure in. He didn’t even have to worry that anyone would put the pieces together, as Stevie had done. The man was untouchable—there was no proof. What could a man like Issa do against the power of Vaughan Krok? Issa would have to give up his land to the monster. That was the price that evil would extract from Issa, and Issa was prepared to pay.

  But then the accident had intervened. Krok was possibly unconscious; he might even die. What would happen to Farouk then? What were the orders? Were there any contingency plans? So many things could go wrong. Stevie needed to make sure that Farouk came back safely, at any price. Justice they could seek later. The boy was all that mattered to her, and all that mattered to Issa: his whole world was in hostile hands.

  16

  As Stevie’s taxi pulled in to the drive of Lu Nibaru, it almost ran into Mark and Simone’s white station wagon reversing out. Stevie had completely forgotten about her cousin.

  Mark rolled down the window. ‘We can’t stay, Stevie. Sorry. There’s been a kidnapping right near here—Simone is terrified for her life and, frankly, I agree with her! We’re going home.’

  Stevie raised a hand in farewell, her mind far away, ‘Godspeed,’ she managed to say, and waved without smiling as the car took off up the dirt driveway.

  Despite having repossessed her solitude, Stevie hardly slept that night. Her mind churned and when the sun began to show itself, she got out of bed, glad that the night had ended and that there would be time now for action. She took a pot of black coffee to the roof and, wrapped in an old blanket against the cool morning air, sat on the low stone wall and watched the sea turn from pink to mauve to blue. The beauty of this arid coastline was stunning, but she wondered at how much pain and evil was hiding in its cracks today—like scorpions, she thought. Her tossing in the night had given rise to the beginnings of a plan, or at least a first step. She had not told Issa of her suspicion about who was behind the kidnapping; she was afraid he might do something rash and make the situation worse, if that was possible.

  Issa said he had tried to contact the potential buyer for his property many times—the source of the ransom he would pay for Farouk—but he could not reach Krok. Stevie knew this was because Krok was in hospital in London and out of action. However, Clémence was the next best thing, and she could reach her. Stevie took out her phone and called.

  Clémence answered after two rings. ‘Stevie!’ She sounded surprised.

  ‘I just wanted to see how you were doing, Clémence, all that horrible business about Vaughan’s accident.’ Stevie wanted Clémence off her guard.

  ‘Oh, you’re too sweet. I’ve been with him 24/7 until now. They say he will make a good recovery.’ Stevie could tell by Clémence’s bright, brassy tone that someone was probably listening.

  ‘Are you back on the Costa? I heard a rumour . . .’

  ‘I am, Stevie, but not at the big villa. I rented a place in Piccolo Pevero. Marlena’s with me but Emile is in London with the nannies. You should visit us sometime . . .’

  When Stevie rang off, she wondered if Clémence knew what her husband had done, if she cared. It was all drama when it was her son, but would she feel the same if someone else’s boy was in danger? She would soon find out.

  Clémence’s villa in Piccolo Pevero was a much more modest affair than the Villa Goliath. Stevie fired up the old jeep and, dressed in a loose yellow linen sundress and flat sandals, Rolex watch and Ray-Bans, knife strapped to her upper thigh, set out to do battle.

  An armed major-domo let her into the house and motioned towards the patio. There a woman in a purple and green bikini and matching turban was reading a newspaper; an identical woman in a red voile kaftan sat bare-headed in gold sunglasses looking out to sea. Marlena and Clémence, only Stevie had to move closer to see which was which. She had been hoping to find Clémence alone. Both sisters turned towards her as she approached. Marlena put down the Wall Street Journal and looked up.

  ‘Still trying to figure out which one of us is the evil twin, Stevie?’ Her smile was like glass. ‘Is it Marlena, the smuggler, the pirate runner, the drinker? Who loves a fight and won’t back down?’ She turned to glance at her sister. ‘Or is it dear, sweet Clémence with her doe eyes and her painted talons, clutching at anything with money until she tears its very hide away?’ She laughed as her sister got up and walked inside.

  ‘We both knew we were destined for better things than the basement flat on the Avenue Foch,’ Marlena went on. ‘Our mother always told us so. We just went about it in different ways. Who is to say which is the most noble—’ she flashed another of her brittle smiles ‘—or the least ignoble?’ Her smile vanished. ‘Are you judging us, Stevie?’ she taunted.

  Stevie shook her head. ‘No, I’m not. Not on your past. What is that to me? I didn’t live it with you. Decisions were made based on the circumstances you found yourselves in.’ Stevie took off her aviators and folded them carefully away into their old leather case. She looked up at Marlena with her emerald eyes. ‘But I will judge you on the choice you are about to make—with your sister.’

  Marlena’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let me tell you something. We grew up in the worst flat in the best district in Paris. We were friends with everyone who had money, but we had none of our own.’ She leant forward and took a cigarette from an onyx case. She smoked menthols. ‘Our mother was determined to change that. She was a seamstress at a great couture house.’ Marlena lit her cigarette and slowly exhaled. She was obviously playing for time to figure out what Stevie was up to; Stevie did not interrupt her, curious to see what this dangerous woman would say. ‘Our father was Polish and a bad gambler. He rarely won, and if he did, he would buy things like lobster and champagne, but we never had more than one pair of shoes. Our mother would bring back scraps of material from her work—silks and fur and sequins—and she would sew them onto our plain cotton dresses. We used to call them “pieces from heaven”. But then we grew up and the scraps were no longer enough. Clémence married her first husband at nineteen because he offered to buy her a bicycle.’

  Marlena turned her feline head and gave Stevie a burning stare; Stevie returned it, betraying nothing, saying nothing. Often silence would make a person say more than they intended.

  Just then, Clémence came clacking out with a jug of sangria, her gold bangles jangling. She smiled at everyone and no one and sat down on the Versace sun lounge.

  ‘Marlena, don’t be a bitch.’

  Marlena looked away and said, her tone bored, ‘What do you want, Stevie?’

  ‘The boy,’ she said simply.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Clémence stopped mid-pour.

  Stevie turned her eyes on Emile’s mother. ‘Farouk Farmishan,’ she said, ice in her voice. ‘Your husband had him snatched so he could get his hands on his father’s land. I want him back.’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’ Clémence’s mouth was an O of surprise. ‘Krok hates children.’

  ‘Krok is indisposed at the moment.’ Marlena’s lip curled in a tiny smile of cruel amusement. Stevie did not know if it was for Krok or Farouk or her sister—or all three.

  ‘He had a terrible accident,’ Clémence added, in the tone of dazed astonishment usually used by Southern belles. ‘Awful guns. I won’t touch them myself.’

  ‘That’s why I am here,’ countered Stevie flatly. She turned the force of her gaze onto Clémence. ‘Wh
ere is the boy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Clémence insisted, her eyes large with an expression of amazement that did not quite convince Stevie.

  Marlena smiled. ‘Go home, Stevie,’ she said. ‘My sister has had enough to deal with without your accusations.’ She reached out and took Clémence’s hand in hers; their nails, Stevie noticed, were painted matching iridescent green.

  Stevie waved away the proffered glass of sangria. She could not help but notice it was the colour of blood. ‘It is nothing to you,’ she spoke directly to Clémence, ‘and everything to the boy and his father. You, as a mother, know that only too well. Call your husband or his henchmen or whoever you have to and find out. Either you rise to the challenge of acting like a human being—with all its implications—or you do not. There are no grey areas.’ She said this softly, murderously, her eyes still on the woman in front of her.

  Clémence looked away; Marlena’s smile did not give Stevie much confidence. ‘Why would we help you, Stevie?’ Marlena said. ‘Even if we could? These people mean nothing to us.’

  Clémence put a placating hand on Stevie’s arm. ‘Vaughan is mad with anger. He is totally irrational right now, desperate to find out who tried to kill him.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident?’ Stevie said.

  ‘Of course not,’ broke in Marlena. ‘He has so many enemies. He is too dangerous even to talk to over the phone right now. I’m afraid we can’t help you.’

  ‘We have too much to lose,’ added Clémence, a note of pleading in her voice.

  Stevie got up slowly. ‘You have already lost.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Clémence reached for Stevie’s arm again but Stevie stepped away.

  ‘You have lost your human credentials.’ Stevie said, then she made a decision. She looked down at Clémence. ‘I am not leaving. I will sit in your house until either of you change your mind, or I can get Krok on the phone myself.’

  Marlena shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

  Stevie chose a white-painted cane chair under a shady canopy of bougainvillea. The scene should have been marvellous—a pool nestling among natural granite boulders, the heady scent of thyme and cistus, the trill of the cicadas. But she could think only of Farouk. A small green scorpion appeared from a crack in the rocks. She moved her foot carefully away. To think of all these scorpions in the sun . . . She looked back at Marlena and Clémence, tanning themselves. Evil likes to enjoy itself too.

  She didn’t know what she would do next, but she wasn’t leaving. The twins were her only lead to Farouk right now. To distract herself from her pounding rage at their indifference, she picked up a book of Slim Aaron’s photographs sitting on top of a pile on the coffee table. The photographer was a well-known documenter of la dolce vita and the international jet set. His gorgeous photographs captured the great and the good and the fabulous at play in their hideaways all over the world. Interestingly, he had begun as a war photographer. One day the death and tension became too much for him and he decided to walk on the sunny side of the street, as he put it, for the rest of his life.

  Stevie flipped through the photos, trying to think of something that would help Farouk. She saw pink swimming pools on the Mexican coast, tree houses in Brazil, ranches in Arizona, chalets in France and Switzerland, yachts on the Mediterranean, a safari in South Africa . . . She was about to flip the page when something gave her pause. She looked more closely at the photograph. A group of four—two couples by the looks of it—stood in the foreground of a luxurious camp, dressed in tailored khakis.

  The woman on the right caught Stevie’s eye: she was tall and lean, her hair swept into a long, high ponytail, a pair of large gold sunglasses pushed back on her forehead. Her nails, rather incongruously given the background, were painted aquamarine. The face—Stevie could have no doubt—belonged to Clémence. Her boot was resting on the head of a huge wildebeest, and she cradled a shotgun in both hands. No one else in the picture was holding a gun and there could be no doubt that Clémence had shot the beast herself, in a former life, with a former husband. Clémence Krok, the photograph told Stevie, was not afraid of guns at all. From the look of it, she was very much at ease with them. As Josie always said, even criminals stick to what they know. And Stevie suddenly knew who had tried to kill Vaughan Krok.

  She carefully set down the book, page open, and called to Marlena as she passed, on her way into the house. Marlena stopped and glared at her, but her curiosity was aroused by Stevie’s small, beckoning hand. She came.

  ‘I have a proposition for you, Marlena.’

  Marlena smirked in contempt. As if Stevie had anything she wanted, it seemed to imply.

  ‘I know it was Clémence who tried to kill Krok.’

  ‘What?’ A short, sharp retort, like a revolver shot.

  ‘You didn’t know?’ Stevie studied Marlena’s face, but it betrayed nothing. It was possible she didn’t know.

  ‘She could never do that, not in a million years would she have the strength to do that.’

  ‘I think you underestimate your twin, Marlena.’ Stevie pointed to the open page.

  Marlena’s eyes followed and she froze. Then, recovering quickly, she snapped, ‘Stupid girl. Her vanity was always her weakness.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘It doesn’t prove a thing.’

  ‘Maybe not to a court, or to you . . . but it will be enough to convince her crazy husband that she did it, and who knows what he will do to her?’

  Marlena blanched visibly. Stevie had struck home. She felt a pang of regret at having to use blackmail in such an insidious way, but greater things than scruples were at stake. She swallowed to keep her voice cold and calm. ‘So I propose a trade: your sister’s life for Farouk.’

  Marlena said nothing for a time, her eyes on the reclining form of her twin by the pool. Clémence, oblivious, waved at them, her bangles tinkling. Marlena looked back at Stevie and said, in a voice Stevie had never heard her use before, ‘I don’t know where the boy is, I swear.’

  Stevie nodded. ‘But you can find out. And you will. And we will get him back safely.’ She took out her phone and photographed the picture of Clémence, then she looked at her watch. It was almost midday. ‘You have until seven this evening. Otherwise this photo goes to Krok with a suitably provocative message.’ Stevie stopped and stared Marlena full in the face. ‘And you know there’s no point running. You know better than I do that he can find you anywhere and he will never stop looking. Your only hope is to help me. My company will get a copy of this message, and instructions to send it on if anything happens to me. Bear that in mind also. And now I think I will leave you to make your inquiries. Time is short.’ She nodded to Marlena. ‘I will be back at seven.’

  Stevie passed the day in restless activity. She swam out to the buoy in front of her grandmother’s house, she did her calisthenics on the roof, activating her muscles, stretching out the knots that had accumulated with tension and hours spent on hospital furniture. She left a message for Josie, asking after David’s condition. Everything else would have to remain unsaid; she did not want to risk worrying David, if he did come to.

  She did take the precaution of emailing herself the photo and a brief description of the situation, with the subject heading: In Case of Missing. If she did disappear, Josie would check her emails and find it. Not that it would do much good at that point, she thought.

  The power of the photo was in the deterrence.

  Perched on a granite boulder at the edge of the crystal sea, soaking up the last of the warm afternoon rays, Stevie asked herself the question she had been dodging since her encounter with the twins: was she prepared to go through with her threat to expose Clémence to her psychotic husband? She could only hope it didn’t come to that. She knew she had to believe she would in order to have any power over Marlena; the woman’s instincts were finely tuned to any sort of weakness and she could not afford to show any doubt or Farouk would remain missing, if not worse. The twins had made a choice when they got involved with Vaughan Krok, an
d they had made another choice when they refused to help Stevie; these choices had consequences.

  Back in the small kitchen, Stevie made herself a simple dinner of prosciutto, bread and cheese, some olives. She would need the strength. Then she dressed carefully: she had to be ready for anything. She put on her blue swimsuit, then a pair of loose black silk pants, a navy blue cotton safari jacket. She filled the pockets with sugar lumps, a powerful torch and her phone. She could not know what the night held, but it would certainly be best to attract as little attention in the night shadows as possible, no matter what. She strapped her knife to her calf and set out to find the twins.

  Stevie parked the jeep a short distance away from their villa, facing downhill. The engine was noisy and she wanted to surprise them in case they had had any clever ideas about calling Krok’s men themselves.

  All was quiet at the villa; the lights were on around the pool. Stevie climbed over the granite boulders that surrounded the pool and looked in. It seemed that Marlena—it would have to be Marlena— had given the security men and staff the night off. The sisters sat side by side on a cane lounge, deep in conversation. They were holding hands. All looked as it should. Stevie crept through the boulders like a ninja then appeared suddenly by the pool’s edge. The sisters started.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Stevie, walking towards them, exuding a sangfroid she did not feel.

  They looked up at her. Marlena, for the first time since Stevie had met her, looked vulnerable, even frightened. There had been a change.

  Stevie stood in front of them. ‘Where is the boy?’

  ‘They’re holding him on Cavallo,’ Marlena replied softly, her usual sneer gone. ‘In the boatshed of the yacht club.’

  Stevie needed to keep the advantage. To do that she had to take complete control, and she made a split-second decision.