Scandalous Lies: An addictive, sexy beach read

by Nigel May

  ‘Who rattled your fucking cage? Just get back in there and enjoy yourself and if you change your mind about a line or fancy a quick bunk-up in the toilets let me know.’

  ‘How can I enjoy myself? I’ve been stood up. Scott’s not turned up and I’m running around in there trying to avoid Victoria who suddenly seems to have forgotten that she’s a psycho bitch and is being sweetness and sugary nice to everyone. Plus our gracious hostess, Evie, has made it clear that Scott and I are going nowhere and that he only wants me for ...’ Her words faded away as she found herself unable to finish the sentence. She didn’t need to.

  Jack grinned, Joker-like. ‘Yeah, about Scott, he won’t be coming tonight. He had a little run-in with my fist. And my foot too. In fact both. If I haven’t killed him, which I’m pretty sure I haven’t, then he may be coming around about now in the car park behind his office.’ Jack looked at his watch as if to check the time.

  Chloe’s mouth fell open. ‘You what? What have you done? You’re not supposed to hurt Scott. If anything it’s Victoria who needs not to be here.’

  ‘That’s just it, isn’t it, Chloe? Don’t you get it? If something happens to Victoria then you’re prime suspect number one because you’re the one noshing off her husband behind her back. All fingers point at the horny nanny. But this way nobody suspects. You love Scott, so why on earth would you be connected to anyone beating the crap out of him? And anyway, I thought he needed teaching a lesson for poking my shag. He doesn’t even fucking compare!’

  The buzz of the coke rushed through Jack’s veins as he continued his confession. He was definitely riding some kind of narcotic madness high and he was loving the power. Loving every crest. ‘I’m a bit worried there may be an imprint of my jackdaw on his face though.’ He lifted up his hand to show Chloe the bruising and the dried specks of blood on his knuckles.

  Chloe placed her hand to her mouth in shock. ‘You’re fucking mad, Jack. Scott will know it’s you!’

  ‘How? Only if you tell him and that’s unlikely as you’re the one who told me where he works, you’re the one who told me he was coming straight here from his office, you’re the one who wants rid of his wife. Which may well have happened by the time you track down your cashpoint lover boy.’

  Jack patted his pocket again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Jack held out his jacket and opened one of the pockets wide for Chloe to peer inside. She could see a small pistol housed in his pocket alongside the bag of coke. The sight of it caused her to inhale sharply.

  ‘What? You’re going to shoot her? Here? You’d never get away with it.’

  ‘Well, if I don’t, then you’ll be going down with me too, won’t you? You want her gone. You’ve hinted at it a million times. It wouldn’t take much to convict you, would it? Here you go, take the gun and do it yourself if you like.’

  Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out the gun and forced it into Chloe’s hands. In a panic she shoved it back into his jacket.

  ‘Just leave me alone,’ she pleaded.

  ‘And now your fingerprints are on it too.’

  Chloe could feel a prick of misery stab at her eyes as tears began to form.

  ‘You’re evil, Jack. Pure evil.’

  ‘And you love it, Chloe. You always have done. Now, let me carry on with my evening, I have lots to do and standing here talking to you isn’t getting any of it sorted.’

  Chloe ran into the ladies before Jack could see the first flow of bitter tears cascading down her cheeks. At that moment any feelings of nostalgic love or bad boy respect that she’d ever housed for him disappeared.

  Jack smiled to himself and walked back towards the main hall where he could hear Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ pumping out of the huge speakers either side of the dance floor. He was just about to enter when Andy came storming out, a look of horror written across his face.

  Not that Jack noticed. ‘Let’s go dance, man. I love this song. Remember the time we sat up all night watching her perform this during half-time at the Superbowl. She was seriously fucking hot, Andy. Let’s go.’

  Andy wasn’t in the mood for dancing and grabbed Jack by the collar of his dinner jacket. Not taking no for an answer he dragged his friend away from the main hall and into a little alcove at the bottom of the stairs beyond the toilet. It was as hidden a place as he could find.

  ‘What the fuck, Andy? C’mon, dude, this evening is going like a dream.’

  ‘Well it’s just become a nightmare. One I don’t want to relive or go anywhere near. Two of the guests here are Georgia and Devon Bellamy. Names ring any bells?’

  ‘Nope, should they?’

  ‘Her mother, his ex-wife, found dead with a slit throat and a bullet ripped through her chest and the new boyfriend with his brains blown out and the gun in his hand?’

  Jack’s face suddenly went as white as the cocaine housed in his pocket, his mind suddenly registering what he knew Andy was about to say.

  ‘Jack, we should get out of here now, this is too close for comfort. The police may have decided that her new fella topped himself after killing her but we both know what a crock of shit that is. We know that we butchered them both.’

  The sound of Katy Perry singing was blanked out by the sound of the almighty roar of horror flashing across Jack’s brain. Despite not wanting to reflect on the past, Jack suddenly found himself back at the darkest day of his life …

  Seventy-Two

  Several years before …

  Andy and Jack had been in the house a little longer than they had planned. Normally they worked to their rule of in and out as quickly as possible. No searching for money under the mattress or scanning the paintings hanging on the wall to see if any were genuine Monet’s, Manet’s or Matisse’s, not that either Jack or Andy would have been able to recognise one anyway. The closest either of them had come to art was probably watching The Da Vinci Code.

  But something about the house they’d broken into that night had sparked their interest. And surprisingly for two non-art-lovers, it was the array of interesting paintings decorating every room.

  They’d had no idea that the two people living there were of an artistic persuasion when they’d broken in. They’d been watching the couple, a stunning woman with an air of days-gone-by chic and beauty about her which oozed class and a man whose taste in clothes and waxed moustache were eccentric to say the least, for weeks. As ever with their criminal activities, Jack and Andy wanted to make sure that they knew occupiers’ habits. What time they left and how long the house was usually empty for. Most nights the couple would leave the house around 8pm and not return until after midnight. Where they went, Jack and Andy neither knew nor cared. All they knew was that the house was worth a mint and that there would more than likely be prize pickings inside.

  They weren’t wrong. After days of observation they watched Sophia Bellamy and Nicolas Belvoir leave their plush home just after eight one evening and drive off out of sight. Within five minutes the two men had expertly picked the lock, worked their way inside and smashed the alarm.

  As per usual, the two men split up and scanned every room, grabbing anything they deemed of value. Jewellery, money, fancy objects … if it shone, they stole it.

  They could have been in and out in fifteen minutes. If they had have been, then what followed would never have occurred. But things don’t always go to plan.

  Both Jack and Andy found themselves drawn to the artwork on the walls. It was bright and vibrant and attracted them like moths to a flame. The colours were rich and nothing quite made sense, making it more enticing. Splats of electrifying paint mixed with strips of neon-bright colour. Every one of them was random in its form yet they all possessed the mark and style of the same artist.

  Both Andy and Jack couldn’t resist commenting on it as they regrouped in the sitting room.

  ‘The paintings everywhere are awesome. I love the colours,’ said Andy.

  ‘If they were smaller I’d nick one,’ remarked Jack.
‘They’re much better than a picture of a vase of bloody sunflowers, that’s for sure.’ All of the paintings were massive and had obviously been painted on a huge canvasses.

  It was then that they saw it. It was Andy who spotted it first. On the table in the sitting room was a scrapbook, about twelve by twelve inches in size with a photo of one of the paintings they’d seen around the house featured on the open page. Alongside it were some words describing how the creation was painted and another photo. It was of the stunning looking woman they’d seen leaving the house earlier than night. She was naked but instead of feasting on the curves of her breasts and the small neat triangle of hair between her legs, both Jack and Andy were immediately captivated by the fact that she was covered in paint. Her hair was coated and tangled, her breasts a collage of shades and her legs possessed more colours than a rainbow. Yet even in this state of camouflage her happiness at her artistry shone through, her smile almost as broad as the page itself.

  Andy flicked through the pages. On every one there was a similar set of photos and words. The image of a painting, the description of how it was created and a joyous paint-covered nude of the lady of the house. Running a gloved finger down the writing he began to read.

  ‘This is amazing,’ said Andy. ‘She paints them herself using her own body. She covers her tits and ass and literally rolls around on the canvas. Beats a brush any day I guess. Smart.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind dipping into her paint pot,’ joked Jack, looking at the beauty of the woman’s body. She may have been old enough to be his mother but she was one seductive lady.

  The two men spent an extra five minutes flicking through the scrapbook admiring the contents. It was time that they couldn’t afford.

  They were snapped out of their appreciation by the sound of the front door slamming and the voices of a man and woman laughing.

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve forgotten that book. I promised Frida I would show her how I created the paintings. I’ll just fetch it from the sitting room, darling, wait two ticks.’

  Andy and Jack immediately began to panic. They needed to escape and they needed to do it now, before being caught. Jail was not an option.

  But before they had a chance to run they heard the voice of the man crying out that the alarm had been smashed. He had obviously seen it hanging off the wall. He called to the lady but it was too late. She had already walked into the sitting room and come face to face with Jack and Andy.

  For a moment she was dumbstruck, unsure what to do. After a split second she went to scream. Without thinking about anything but the need to escape and in blind fear that they had been caught in the act, Jack picked up a small craft knife that was sitting alongside the scrapbook. The woman had evidently been using it to trim her photos. As the first mini-notes of sound started to erupt from her throat, Jack rushed towards her and swung the knife in her direction. To this day he still didn’t know if he really meant to do what he did. The sharp blade sliced through the soft skin of the woman’s throat and all noise ceased as she fell to the floor, blood gushing from her neck.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Andy could say no more. He tried but words failed him at what he had just witnessed. It was as if his own throat had been cut too.

  Any air of tragic silence was shattered as Nicolas Belvoir, a look of layered terror matted across his face, came into the room. In his hand, shaking with horror at the sight of Sophia dead upon the floor and terror at his own potential fate, he carried a gun. It was one that he always kept in the hallway drawer. It went with the territory of being a millionaire business owner in a rich part of town. If you were a potential target then you needed to be prepared and Nicolas was.

  Not that he had ever been called upon to use it before, and in his head he wasn’t sure if he could.

  As he walked into the room he could see Andy directly opposite him. He pointed the gun in his direction. Jack, still in shock at what he had done, was standing to one side, partly hidden from Nicolas’s direct line of vision.

  Images of jail flashed across Jack’s mind. He’d go down for life for sure. He was still young, still had so many plans ahead of him. He couldn’t risk going to prison. A lifetime behind bars was no life at all. He hadn’t meant to kill the woman, had he? He’d just panicked. He wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, was he? The body on the floor said otherwise. There was no way he was throwing his life away on a stupid mistake. He and Andy would have to come out of this alive and blameless. They were a team. He couldn’t let his own cretinous moment of idiocy send them both behind bars.

  Before Nicolas had a chance to see him, Jack charged full pelt into him, knocking him to the floor and causing the weapon to fall from his hands. Nicolas was a big man but his build and age were no competition for the young, sinewy prowess of Jack.

  Jack grabbed the gun and in the time it took for Nicolas to let out a whimper of pain and fear as he looked up at Jack, the young villain had placed the barrel of the gun to the side of the millionaire’s head and pulled the trigger. A red spray of death jetted across the floor. It was the life of the man or his own life lost to decades at Her Majesty’s pleasure. To Jack, there was no contest, despite the pandemonium raging through his own head.

  Andy placed his hands to his head, his breathing heavy and fast at the shock of Jack’s actions. ‘This is not good, Jack.’ The words were unnecessary given the scene that lay in front of him.

  Jack tried to take control of the situation. ‘We need to make it look like a suicide. He went crazy, slit her throat and then shot himself. He used his own gun, man, that’s our get-out clause.’

  ‘Are you fucking mental?’ Andy’s voice trembled with fear as he spoke.

  ‘We can do this, Andy, come on. We are not going to prison. They’ll bang us up for life. Is that what you want? No parties, no women, no nights out. I am not going down for this and neither are you.’

  It was left to Jack to try and cover up the fact that they had ever been at the house. The mansion was large enough for none of the neighbours to have heard the shots.

  He set to work, telling Andy what to do as well. They replaced everything they had intended to steal, leaving it exactly where they had found it. Objects back on tables, jewellery back on the dressing table, cash left in drawers. They were both wearing gloves so there were no telltale fingerprints.

  Jack found a baseball bat near the front door. Maybe another preventative against unwanted intruders. They’d smashed the alarm. How could they make it look like Nicolas Belvoir had done that himself? Jack’s only thought was to destroy a few other things as well, to make it look like they’d struggled. Grabbing the bat, he marched into the sitting room and smashed one of the tables.

  He threw the vase that was sitting upon it across the room in the direction of Sophia’s dead body. It shattered into a dozen pieces.

  Andy came back into the sitting room, having replaced all of the items they’d intended to steal. ‘Let’s get out of here now, Jack.’

  ‘Not yet, something’s not right. They would have struggled. If he wanted her dead they would have struggled.’

  An idea flashed through his mind. ‘Help me.’

  Jack explained what they needed to do. It seemed barbaric but a part of it made sense to Andy. Grabbing Nicolas’s body, they moved it towards Sophia’s and, careful not to let the blood that was still hot and sticky on the side of Nicolas’s head drip in meaty blobs onto the floor, they pressed Nicolas’s hands against her skin. They pressed his fingertips as hard as they could. On her arms, on her face, anywhere. The pool of blood underneath her neck undulated slightly as her body moved. Most of it had now sunk into the deep carpet of the sitting room.

  Satisfied that his prints would now be more than evident, they carefully moved Nicolas’s body back to where he’d died, matching the positioning of the spray of blood with the cavernous bullet wound on the side of his head.

  ‘Now, let’s leave, Jack. We’ve done all we can.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s split.’
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br />   Just as they were leaving the house, Jack turned on his heels. ‘You get out of here, Andy. I’ll see you back at the flat. There’s one last thing I need to do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just go.’ Jack’s voice was stern. ‘It’s best if we leave separately.’

  As Andy disappeared out of sight, Jack walked back into the house. He picked up the gun from alongside Nicolas’s body and walked over to Sophia. He fired another shot into her chest.

  It was that particular shot that had haunted him every day since. Something had told him to do it, that it would make the whole suicide scenario more believable. Make Nicolas more crazed. He’d slit his girlfriend’s throat and then fired a shot into her chest to make sure she was dead. To make sure that he had achieved what he wanted before turning the gun on himself.

  Even though he had already killed twice that evening, it was that final shot into the corpse of Sophia Bellamy that still replayed in his mind for years to come. He could still see the jolt of her lifeless body as the bullet tore into her.

  He placed the gun back beside Nicolas and ran, closing the door behind him. He ran as fast as his legs could take him. Andy had taken the car as instructed. Jack just needed to run. To run away from the scene, run away from his own actions, to run away from the possibility of his life being wasted inside a cold, dark prison cell.

  Somehow they managed to get away with it. Somehow the police believed that Nicolas Belvoir had decided to kill his girlfriend and then himself. Friends testified that Nicolas was of an artistic temperament. His temper was fiery and famed among his inner circle. His actions surprised nobody. Shocked, yes, but didn’t surprise. Maybe they should have seen it coming. Exes testified that indeed he had a violent streak and had raised his hands to them before.

  The gods had smiled on Jack and Andy. Had Nicolas Belvoir been meek and mild then maybe nobody, police included, would have believed that he had turned on Sophia.