The Blue Guide

by Carrie Williams

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Cocktails, room service, spa treatments: Alicia Shaw is a girl who just can’t say no to the little perks of being a private tour guide in London. Whether it’s the Hollywood producer with whom she romps in the private screening room of one of London’s most luxurious hotels, or the Australian pilot whose exhibitionist fantasies reach a new height on the London Eye, Alicia finds that flirtation – and more – is part of the territory.

  But when internationally renowned flamenco dancer and heartthrob Paco Manchega, and his lovely young wife Carlotta, take her on as their guide, Alicia begins to wonder if she has bitten off more than she can chew. As the couple unleash curious appetites in Alicia, taking her to places more darkly beautiful than she has ever known, she begins to suspect she is being used as the pawn in some strange marital game.

  About the Author

  Manchester-based writer Carrie Williams travels widely as a reviewer of hotels, restaurants and bars. She began writing for Black Lace’s Wicked Words short story collections before progressing to novels.

  She is the author of Chilli Heat, The Apprentice and The Blue Guide.

  The Blue Guide

  Carrie Williams

  To Nuala Devel

  muse and partner in crime

  1

  THE TELEPHONE BY my bed rings, shrill against the muffled traffic sounds from the street below. I open one eye to check the time on the LED display, then roll away with a groan. Nine o’clock is far too early to be hauling myself out of bed on a Monday morning after working all weekend. Especially when I haven’t been feeling my usual breezy self these last few months.

  Sleep is already trying to suck me back down into its seductive depths when the answering machine kicks into life.

  ‘Hello,’ I hear myself say. ‘This is Alicia Shaw, professional tour guide. For more information about my individually tailored tours of London, either leave your name and number after the tone, or email me via my website, www.theblueguide.com.’

  I smile wryly in my half-sleep, still proud of my little joke. Not so long ago, I was entitled to sport a Blue Badge, the mark of a guide approved by the official tourist body. Then I got struck off. My new designation is a form of revenge, as well as a way of poking fun at myself, at some of the little adventures I’ve had of late.

  The beep on the machine startles me out of my reverie, as does the brisk voice that follows it.

  ‘Hello Alicia, this is Fenella Hamilton-Jones of Papaya Performing Artistes. I’m calling on behalf of one of my clients, who’s been recommended your services. The trouble is, it’s very short notice – he’s arriving this afternoon, and would want to meet you for dinner to discuss an itinerary for the next couple of weeks. That said, I’ve been looking at your website, and I can safely say that Paco would be more than happy to double your rates if you could clear the decks for him.’

  I sit up in bed, staring at the answerphone. Only yesterday I read in the weekend glossies that heartthrob flamenco dancer Paco Manchega is coming to town for a series of shows. It can’t be a coincidence. And now he wants to pay me exorbitant amounts of money to show him around town. My gloomy thoughts are cast away, at least for the moment, and it’s all I can do to stop myself punching the air in jubilation.

  I don’t waste a minute in returning Fenella’s call and confirming the booking and arrangements for the evening’s meeting. Then I pad into the kitchen in my dressing gown and whizz myself an energising smoothie in the blender before sitting down at the breakfast bar, opening my diary, and working my way through appointments I need to cancel.

  By four o’clock, I’ve taken a taxi to Harvey Nics and had a cut and colour, a manicure and pedicure, and a facial. I wouldn’t normally indulge myself like this, but Paco Manchega is one of the world’s most gorgeous men. Not that I fancy my chances. But it wouldn’t feel right being in his presence with a hair out of place, or the merest suggestion of a zit. Letting my credit card take the strain in anticipation of the almost obscenely huge cheque that Fenella’s putting in the mail today, I check my watch and see that I have a couple of hours to spare. Good. That gives me time for a cocktail or two at Claridge’s Bar.

  Over the driest of martinis, my thoughts return, in spite of myself, to Daniel Lubowski, and a dark mood threatens to descend on me again. It must be five months since I first heard the movie producer’s gravelly West Coast drawl on my message machine, enquiring about the possibility of a bespoke tour of London film locations. As I listened to him speak, I pictured a tall lean man oozing with the self-confidence that comes with money and worldly success. In his fifties, I decided, he was handsome and boyish-faced enough to have let his hair go a distinguished grey, à la Richard Gere. He was the kind of guy who teamed an Armani jacket with vintage Levi’s.

  I called him right back, and quickly established that though he was making great shakes in Hollywood, he was actually a connoisseur of 1960s and 70s British films, and wanted something a little more offbeat than the usual Bridget Jones in Borough Market or James Bond in Mayfair tours. He talked fondly about Alfred Hitchcock, James Fox and Dirk Bogarde in The Servant, Michael Caine and others, and we agreed that I would devise a few mini-tours that he would be able to slot into his busy schedule of meetings.

  After we’d talked fees and timings, I hung up and logged onto the internet. A couple of hours’ surfing gave me plenty of material with which to sit down and plot a handful of possible tours with the help of an A to Z.

  Daniel flew in a few days later, and lived up to my every expectation, except that the jeans were Juicy Couture, he was in his early forties, and he was far, far sexier than Richard Gere. He had that same roguish twinkle in his eye, but there was less cocksureness about him, less swagger.

  He’d asked me to book dinner somewhere ‘hot’, so that we might get to know each other a little before the first tour, as well as to fine tune the details together, and I’d managed to pull a few strings and secure a table at The Wolseley, which had just opened on Piccadilly. It didn’t get much classier than that. Daniel approved – the decor (Japanese lacquer screens, original art deco features, marble floors) was stylish, the food faultless, and the company illustrious: we spotted Hugh Grant snuggling up to Jemima Khan, as well as Gwyneth Paltrow, with whom, it turned out, Daniel was on nodding terms.

  We got on from the word go; Daniel was charming without being smarmy, and full of pithy anecdotes about his life in Los Angeles, without being boastful. The wine (an unspeakably delicious Pouilly Fuissé) flowed freely, and before long we’d moved on to more intimate matters. In my defence, it was Daniel who started it.

  ‘So Ally,’ he’d said, leaning in to me over the table, fixing me with those cobalt-blue eyes that reflected the light from the chandeliers. ‘You don’t mind if I call you that?’

  I shook my head, trying not to let my cheeks colour. All of a sudden I’d come over all starstruck.

  ‘What do you get up to when you’re not a tour guide?’ he continued.

  ‘Well, work doesn’t leave me much time for myself,’ I said rather evasively, all too aware of how empty and grey my life would seem to someone who mixed with Hollywood’s elite. ‘I always seem to be so busy – r
esearching, devising new walks, keeping up with the latest openings and new attractions, exploring London from different angles.’

  I tried to decipher his expression, but his face was momentarily obscured by his hand as he lit a cigarette. I shook my head as he offered me one.

  ‘And you?’ I ventured.

  ‘Nah, I don’t have a boyfriend right now either,’ he said, exhaling a plume of smoke. His face was deeply serious.

  Damn it, I thought as we finished our coffees and Daniel settled the bill. How could I have misread him so badly? Not only had I not clocked on that he was gay, but I’d even, for a moment, been deluded enough to imagine that he was flirting with me. Suddenly I was in a hurry to get home. Confirming that I’d collect him from his hotel at two o’clock the next day, I bade him goodnight, stepped out into the throng and neon glare of Piccadilly, and took the tube home.

  2

  I WAS ARMED with my usual clipboard, covered with pages of notes of names, addresses and dates that I wasn’t likely to remember off the top of my head. I’d also printed off some photographs and film stills from the internet. We were in Covent Garden, where Hitchcock had shot much of Frenzy in 1972, in and around what was then London’s main wholesale fruit and veg market. We’d decided to start with that because it was the nearest to Daniel’s hotel on Aldwych.

  I’d hired the movie the night before, never having seen it, and been shocked by its sheer viciousness, by the cold offhand way in which the brutal murders of a succession of women are portrayed. I wasn’t surprised, when subsequently reading up on it, to discover that it had been the only Hitchcock film to garner an X-certificate, probably because it was his first one to feature nude scenes.

  Daniel was dressed casually, in an eggshell-blue Ralph Lauren shirt and some DKNY jeans that fit his firm buttocks snugly. Still stinging from my misunderstanding of the previous evening, I tried to focus my mind on the tour and not on the contents of his trousers.

  We started in the market itself, where, I told Daniel, Hitchcock’s father had once sold produce. We compared stills from the film to the present prettified building with its touristy shops and cafés. Then we wandered into Henrietta Street, where I pointed out number three, a building that had once belonged to a writer called Clemence Dane, whose novel had inspired Hitchcock’s early film Murder. The ground floor was currently occupied by a book distributor’s office; above that was the window of the bachelor pad of the ‘necktie murderer’ in Frenzy, Bob Rusk. Daniel immediately identified it as the location of an astonishing scene in which the camera follows the killer as he leads a fresh victim up the stairs to his flat, then pulls back into the market itself, as if recoiling from the sight.

  It was easy money, really. All Daniel needed me to do was show him the present-day locations, and he put the rest together from his intimate knowledge of the film. I must admit, I was impressed – he seemed to know every line of dialogue, every camera angle that had been used. We had lots of fun holding up my printouts of old photos against the buildings and spotting in which ways they’d changed and how they had stayed the same, and Daniel spoke so passionately about Frenzy that I told him that although I’d found it, in many ways, repellent on first viewing, I intended watching it again that night in the light of what I’d seen and what he’d told me.

  ‘Then why not come back to my hotel and watch it with me?’ he suggested. ‘They have a private screening room we could use if it’s free. I have a DVD of the film with me.’

  We were sitting outside the Nell of Old Drury on Catherine Street, in which the man who will become the prime suspect, Richard Blaney, listens in on some city gents discussing the sex killings with obvious relish. The late April sunshine warmed us as we enjoyed a couple of beers.

  Daniel raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you have other plans for the evening?’ he said.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t about to tell him that even if I had had plans, I’d cancel them without a second thought. I’d got over my humiliation of the night before and was actually now just enjoying myself in a very straightforward way. Daniel, I had realised, was just an extraordinarily interesting – and nice – guy.

  We walked back to his hotel. He’d called ahead, and a couple of margaritas and a trayful of canapés were waiting for us in the little cinema. I whistled as we walked in: the 30-odd seats were clad in soft baby-blue leather, and each had its own small table for a cocktail glass.

  ‘Cool, isn’t it?’ said Daniel, handing me a margarita and clinking his glass gently against mine.

  ‘It’s seriously swanky,’ I said, looking around.

  Daniel eased himself into a seat on the front row, and I followed suit. Then he signalled the projectionist to start the DVD and we sat watching in the darkness, exchanging the odd observation and getting as excited as little kids whenever we recognized a locale that we’d visited that day. A couple more cocktails arrived, seemingly unbidden, adding to our good humour. Finally, just as the end credits were rolling and I was contemplating whether to splash out on a taxi home, and wondering whether there was anything in my fridge or whether I ought to stop off for a takeout pizza, I realised with a shiver of utter, and unutterable, pleasure that Daniel’s hand was on my thigh.

  I must have let out an involuntary gasp, for he retracted it slightly and said in an almost plaintive voice: ‘Sorry, does that bother you?’

  ‘No,’ I moaned. ‘God, no.’ And to reinforce my point I grabbed his hand and placed it back on my thigh, only a little higher this time.

  As he turned in his seat and nuzzled his face in my neck, I murmured, ‘It’s just that I thought you were gay.’

  Daniel sat up, a bemused expression on his face. ‘What the hell gave you that idea?’ he said.

  ‘Last night,’ I reminded him. ‘When you told me you don’t have a boyfriend at the moment.’

  He chuckled, bringing his face back to my neck and nibbling at me – a move guaranteed to have me in paroxysms of delight in minutes. His lips grazed the tender flesh of my earlobe as he whispered, ‘I said I don’t have a boyfriend. Not now, not ever. I was pulling your leg, as I think you Brits say.’

  In one fluid movement, he pushed my skirt up around my hips, parted my legs and hooked them over the arms of my seat, then lowered himself to his knees. Pulling the lacy fabric of my knickers aside, he brought his face to me.

  ‘God, you’re wet,’ he exclaimed. ‘And you smell – mmm – just great.’

  I swooned back, closed my eyes and gave myself up to the feel of Daniel’s expert mouth on me, listening to my skin squeaking against the leather as I writhed with pleasure. His tongue flicked at my clitoris, teasing me, and then roamed the little folds and creases of my lips as if trying to locate a mother of pearl within its shell.

  ‘I could eat you all night,’ he said when he finally came up for air. In the dim light I could see the lower half of his face glistening with my fluids. Suddenly self-conscious, I sat up.

  As if reading my thoughts, Daniel whispered, ‘How about if we go somewhere more private?’

  I nodded and, after I’d straightened up my clothes, we took the lift. A couple got in at the ground floor, and I was more than a little relieved not to have to make inane conversation with Daniel, as I was sure I would have done. At the top floor we followed the couple out, then Daniel led me through the corridors to his suite. Swiping his card, he held the door open and ushered me into the hallway. I walked down it towards a large sitting room filled with sleek sofas, vases of orchids and tasteful artworks. Through a door to my left I glimpsed a huge bed invitingly covered with white linen.

  The mood had lost its edge on the silent journey up from the screening room, and I think both of us were feeling a little shy about setting things in motion again. Reaching into the mini-bar and uncorking a bottle of white wine, Daniel suggested that, since we hadn’t eaten, we order in room service. I agreed, suddenly aware that I was ravenous.

  By the time our food arrived half an hour later, we had polished off the
Pinot Grigio and were naked on the sofa, in what’s commonly referred to as a sixty-niner. Daniel’s cock was pale and smooth, and felt cool as a pebble in my mouth. And I just loved the obvious enjoyment he was getting from my pussy. We’d totally forgotten about the food, in fact, when the rap on the door came.

  Daniel hotfooted it into the bathroom and came out in his fluffy bathrobe, throwing me a similar one and waiting until I’d slipped it on before opening the door. The waiter rumbled in with a trolley laden with crisp napkins, glittering cutlery and white porcelain plates covered with silver dishes.

  ‘Where would you like it, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘In the dome room, I think,’ Daniel said, turning to me. ‘This is really something.’

  The waiter advanced through the sitting room at a stately pace, halting before a set of double doors that I’d scarcely noticed up to that point. Opening them with somewhat of a flourish, he stood back and I saw beyond them a sumptuous circular room, the centrepiece of which was a gleaming round table.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ I said.

  Daniel smiled indulgently. ‘This used to be a newspaper HQ,’ he said, ‘and this was the boardroom.’ He stepped inside and pulled back one of the chairs. ‘Come in and take a seat,’ he said as the waiter laid our places on the table.

  When the latter retreated, Daniel signed his bill and handed the man a generous tip. Then he turned back to me, poured me a glass of wine from a fresh bottle set in an ice bucket, and, before I had chance to protest, slipped my bathrobe off my shoulders. It fell around me on the chair, leaving me naked at the table.

  Bursting out laughing at my shout of surprise, Daniel took his off too, then leaned forwards, swept me up in his arms and laid me out on the table, as if I were part of the meal. Now I was laughing too.

  Resting my head back against the table, I looked up at the painted inner dome of the ceiling and thought of all the high-falutin’ meetings that must have taken place here over the years. Daniel, meanwhile, had got to work on the starter: he was busy dismantling a neat little dish of tiger prawns and arranging a number of them in a line down from my breasts to the top of my pussy. Bringing his mouth to me, he wound his tongue around and between the glossy crustacea. Then he cupped my ribs with his hands and, crouched over me, took the prawns into his mouth, one by one, clearly savouring the satinesque skin of them before biting into the meaty flesh.