Desire

by Louise Bagshawe

  It was the kind of copy that changed a magazine, even a publishing house. You’re a sucker, he thought, and rang Rich Frank at home.

  ‘What the fuck, Sam, I’m sitting down to dinner.’

  ‘Tell your wife it’s important.’ He ran through the story, hearing his boss’s breathing shorten. He could almost see him salivating over the details.

  ‘Holy shit. That’s fucking great.’ Frank’s voice turned anxious. ‘But we don’t go to press till next week.’

  ‘Screw that, Rich, the whole world will have it by then. Put out a special edition.’

  ‘Yeah! Great idea. I will. I’ll put out a special edition.’ Rich chuckled with sheer glee. ‘They’re gonna call me a legend after this.’

  ‘Call you a legend? How about me?’

  ‘You too. Plus you get a million bucks. That was the deal.’

  ‘I’m changing the deal,’ Sam said.

  Silence. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not holding you up for more cash. I just want it faster. I’m hot behind this girl, and I’m going to catch her, and I’m not taking a lousy twenty-five K a week for stories that are making the publishers tens of millions. You raise the instalments. I want two fifty a story.’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a week? You want a thousand per cent raise?’

  ‘What’s this “a week” shit? I’m not mopping floors in the office, Rich. It’s a quarter mil a story, and with stories like these, it’s a fucking bargain. You know it and I know it. Besides, I’ll have caught her in another fortnight. She’s not bad, but she’s not smart enough to outrun me.’

  ‘What if it takes longer?’

  ‘When we reach a mil, you get the rest of the stories for free.’

  ‘I only have your word on that, Sam.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He could hear Rich chewing his lip at the other end of the line, making little sucking sounds of annoyance. The money was the only thing he had over Sam’s head. On the other hand, only Sam could deliver him the story.

  ‘We both know you don’t have a choice,’ Sam said, just to stick the knife in a little more. ‘Come on, let’s get going with this.’

  ‘It’s evening over here.’

  ‘You got twenty-four-hour banking. I’m on my way back to the hotel. When the money’s in my account, email me. You’ll get the story by return, exclusive interviews, pictures, the entire thing. It’s my best yet, Rich.’

  ‘OK. You extortionate fuck.’

  ‘It’s not extortion. It’s a goddamn bargain. And you better speak nice to me, or I will raise the price. Later, Rich.’

  He hung up, chuckling to himself.

  Rome. It was perfection. An ancient city, full of ghosts. The tumbled ruins of the Forum, the markets and the temples; pillars and remnants thrust up everywhere through the ground, mixing with ornate Baroque architecture and crumbling Victorian palazzos, while the storefronts that punctuated them were glossy black stone, chic and expensive. The sun warmed everything, three thousand years of history, a place where the slate was never wiped clean but one layer was simply piled on top of another. It was hot, and it was busy. The traffic surged around the city. Cars and motorinos were illegally parked everywhere. There was graffiti and abandoned dogs, a lot of money, a lot of dirt, so much beauty that it was hard to appreciate it all. Statues and paintings that would have formed a centrepiece to any other city in northern Europe, let alone the States, barely got a second glance here. Rome sucked Lisa in and did not care. She had the comforting sense that in this city, with its million stories, its world-conquering heroes, the place of Empire, the Church and luxurious dissipation, she was a footnote. Rome and the Romans did not play by modern rules. The pace of life was slow, sunk in sunlight and good red wine, and the grasp of law was pretty lax. It was a city for thieves, a city for fugitives. In that way, she fitted right in.

  Lisa was here now, in Rome. The city would do, temporarily. But only a few days into her new role, girl on the run, she hated it already. She wanted a way out. Somebody had killed her husband, and stolen her life. And she was not prepared to curl up and die.

  Her hair was still wet, but she tied it back and slipped on her black coat and sunglasses. In a tourist city nobody would look twice at her, at least not in the sense of criminal apprehension. There was the more basic problem of the Italian male, though. It was hard right now to think of herself as a woman, a pretty girl. Her fear was so all-consuming. But those Roman boys just liked the figure, the curves, a pretty face. A girl on her own, she was subjected to catcalls and whistles. They brushed against her and felt up her ass. It was almost like being public property. And if the men hollered loudly enough, the women might pay attention too.

  So Lisa dressed down. She let her hair stay damp, she eschewed make-up, she hid behind sunglasses and a coat. You could minimise it, at the very least. Combine that with a fast walk and fewer of them noticed her. There were easier, blonder targets, the students in their little khaki shorts and backpacks, the straps framing tits in push-up bras and tight T-shirts. She enjoyed the sense of being able to disappear.

  But she could not disappear for ever. She had to get hold of Murray.

  She walked up Via Panisperna towards Santa Maria Maggiore, past the drunks and the prostitutes and more young boys buzzing her with their motorini. At the top of the hill she turned into a side street off the basilica. There she found it, a little shop selling phones. She haggled with the owner in English and French; at least with the euro she couldn’t be cheated. They had a pay-as-you-go phone, quite a nice one, with a screen and Internet and a little camera. She bought it for seventy euros and loaded it up with a hundred; drug dealer special, she knew, and they didn’t ask her any questions.

  Outside, in the sun, she fired it up on the battery and got online. The connection was slow, but it was at least live. Sam Murray - USA Weekly. That part was easy. Lots of celebrity fluff. Some unflattering stuff about her, nicer about Josh. Not difficult to see why he’d been picked for the wedding.

  There was an email button on the website, next to his name. She typed ‘From Lisa Costello’. Then thought about it; he probably got a hundred of these. Whackos and fans and other attention junkies. She added, ‘Likes to smoke and talk in the bushes.’

  Then she wrote in the body of the email: ‘Alice Kennedy. Rome. Mobile’ and added her number.

  After that, she walked around the city a little, heading over to the Spanish Steps. If these mobiles could be traced, she didn’t want to be anywhere near her digs. If she was right, Sam would call.

  She had no idea what she’d say. But it felt like the only option she had left.

  She bought a slice of pizza and an ice cream from a street vendor, and sat on the steps around the back of the church, away from the panhandlers and the tourists taking photos. The food was good. Too good. She was hungry, true, but she was also learning to appreciate things again, to taste them and enjoy them, instead of letting everything slide by. A personal chef could numb your senses. Now the most basic things tasted exceptional to her.

  It was a balmy night in Italy and nobody bothered her. She was jet-lagged, and the evening felt like morning to her body. She was wide awake now, full of energy. When she was done with the food, she stood up and walked in a circle for a few blocks, keeping moving in case somebody noticed her. You could walk for ever in Rome; it was a friendly city for pedestrians.

  She headed, vaguely, down the hill, but away from her hotel. When she was outside the church of the Gesù, closed now to gawkers and worshippers, the phone buzzed in her pocket.

  It was him.

  At the hotel Sam swam another forty laps, to give Rich time to get back to him. The motion calmed him, and he was feeling better anyway. It had been good work, seriously good, to put it together like that, crawl inside her head and find the girl she’d harmed.

  He was feeling upbeat for the first time in maybe a year. Craig had offered him some grudging respect. And
he’d shaken his boss down for money, real money this time. Maybe he could pull off a double here, catch this woman and get rich doing it. The FBI would love him and so would his bank manager.

  He was going to do this, dammit. He was going to get that second chance. Stop living out of a suitcase, go someplace good, put roots down. Part of him wanted to apply to the FBI again, but he was too old. He’d need to do something utterly different. Maybe he’d go back to Texas and buy a ranch. Living in America, but far from the shallow crap of LA. He thought maybe he could make a go of that, outside in the sun. Grow crops, not cattle.

  Plenty of other choices too.

  He checked his office email. There were several messages. One word from Craig; it said ‘Ciampiano’. So, she’d gone to Italy; clever little girl, they wouldn’t extradite her to Thailand without a cast-iron guarantee that the death penalty was off the table. Rich was next. The money was there. He called his bank; it was, it was actually sitting there, total available cash, three hundred thirteen thousand dollars.

  Sam felt rich. He’d have some champagne to celebrate. Maybe he’d go out and buy some condoms, get a hooker. He wanted a woman, bad. It had been weeks.

  Then again, maybe not. This was the Far East; who knew where those girls had been, if they were trafficked or what. The high-class chicks he banged in LA were models and actresses and sometimes bored college girls with their own trust funds. It was easy to lose the guilt that way.

  He needed to find Lisa Costello, so he could go home and get laid.

  There was a message from his building super about his spare set of keys, and bills emailed from his cell phone company and fitness club. And one more, From Lisa Costello . . .

  Very funny, Rich - some joker. Unless the readers could access his email from the articles. Was that possible? He’d need to change the settings if it was.

  He moved his thumb across to click it open anyway. Just in case.

  The full heading said From Lisa Costello. Likes to smoke and talk in the bushes.

  Holy fucking shit. It was her.

  He was glad he hadn’t got to the wine yet. He would have dropped it.

  How the hell . . . ? Sam was hunting Lisa, not the other way round; how the hell did she find him? USA Weekly wasn’t even published in Europe. She couldn’t have found his byline on a newsstand. Did she have time to scour the Internet looking for stories about herself?

  He flashed on their short conversation. Had she thought he was a kindred spirit? That he would help her?

  Alice Kennedy, it said. Rome. And a number.

  Alice had called Lisa, told her about Sam? That was galactically improbable. His heart thumped, and adrenaline sweat broke out on his palms and forehead. No way was he giving Craig this little snippet, not yet. If they knew she had a cell phone, they would simply GPS it and pick her up.

  Sam would find her first. And that day was closer than he’d ever thought possible. A quarter mil for the story - and half a mil for being the guy to close the case. There might be a book in it too after that, maybe even a movie. Perhaps he’d write the script.

  Sam stared down at the email for a few moments. He wanted to get his thoughts together before he called. What was her deal, sending this? Why mention Alice and Rome?

  Because she wants you to believe it’s her, came back the answer, same as the email title; made you look, made you open it. She’s sending a signal . . .

  Which meant she somehow knew that Sam had found Alice. Otherwise it would be meaningless.

  Sam forced himself to slow down. Reason his way through. How could Lisa possibly know he’d tracked Alice down?

  There were only two answers. One, that Alice had called Lisa. He knew that would not be the case. Two, that Lisa had called Cathay Pacific to notify them that Alice was locked up in that closet, and they had told her.

  He breathed out. Lisa’s character was coming through to him, clearer now, like she was emerging out of a mist.

  His pretty young quarry wasn’t as evil as she seemed; she’d landed in Rome and called Cathay to tell them where Alice was, and they had responded that Sam Murray had found her already.

  Lisa Costello had never intended to let her friend die. She just wanted to get the hell out of south-east Asia. And she’d needed to buy time, because . . . because the flight to safety, to Europe, took so long.

  All this indicated a quickness on her feet that was deeply impressive. She’d worked out that it wasn’t enough to steal a second passport; she needed a day’s delay, and so she’d gotten her old school pal to lose the maid for an extra day, before she attacked her and dumped her in that closet. Otherwise, armed police would have arrested her on the plane before she set foot on Italian soil and she would have been brought straight back to Kowloon.

  She’d called Cathay Pacific. She’d told them about Alice Kennedy. If she had actually let her friend die, or even suffer for forty-eight hours rather than twenty-four, she could have got much further away. Hell, she could have killed Alice, and nobody except him would ever have put the pieces together.

  Sam was irrationally pleased by this. Lisa was not the monster she appeared. He knew it. Had she killed Josh Steen? She said she hadn’t. If she hadn’t done this for Alice, hadn’t called her husband’s airline, Sam would have been convinced she was a murderer. But the sliver of doubt remained, lingering.

  He rang the number she’d put in the email. His heart was thumping. Was hers? he wondered.

  ‘Who is this?’

  Christ. It was her, it was Lisa. Hearing her voice, live, was a shock.

  ‘It’s Sam Murray. Who else has the number?’

  ‘Only you. I just bought this phone. I’m going to throw it away when we’re done talking.’

  Like he thought, not stupid.

  ‘I just got your email. Nobody’s seen it but me.’

  ‘You found Alice? She’s OK?’

  ‘She’s not your biggest fan, Lisa.’

  ‘I called her husband’s airline and they told me.’ Right again. He congratulated himself on that deduction. ‘I had to do it,’ she said, and he thought he heard the start of tears. It was a very clear line, like she was standing in the next room. Technology was incredible. ‘They could have killed me if I’d stayed, shipped me back to Thailand and put me in a show trial.’

  ‘I found your note. You say you didn’t do it.’

  ‘I did not kill Josh.’

  He took a breath. ‘Are you sure about that? You were drunk and looking to get drunker.’

  She breathed in sharply. She was embarrassed by that.

  ‘Maybe you killed him and you can’t remember; did you consider that possibility?’

  ‘What else do you think I’ve thought of, spending hours in the air? Lots of time to think, Sam Murray. I didn’t kill him because I couldn’t have killed him.’

  He didn’t say anything. Often the best thing was to let them talk, and then they hanged themselves. But Lisa was too smart for that trick. She waited for him to speak.

  ‘Why did you call me?’

  ‘Cathay said a journalist had contacted them, I said who was she, and they said a man, Sam Murray. And then I remembered you.’

  A small jolt of pleasure when she said those words. He had found Lisa to be an exceptionally attractive woman.

  ‘You called me because of one conversation?’

  ‘I called you, Mr Murray, because you found Alice. That meant a lot of things, you get it? You tracked me to Hong Kong, meaning you found what passport I took, and you figured out I needed another, and that there was only one contact I could get it from. You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.’

  He was surprised. He wanted to laugh. Lisa was his mirror, right now, sitting there working out what he’d done, and what that signified - the same techniques he was applying to her. They were watching each other in this dance of hunter and hunted, and for a second it was hard to tell who was who.

  ‘Doesn’t that scare you?’

  She laughed a little, bitterly.<
br />
  ‘I’m past scared. I’m past exhausted. I’m stuck in Europe with my money running out and no future and I didn’t kill Josh. And I think maybe you can help me. If you’re the only one clever enough to find me this far, maybe I can tell you things about Josh, and you can work out who killed him and why they framed me.’

  ‘Did he have lots of enemies?’

  ‘Hundreds, I’m sure. I don’t even know most of them.’ She paused. ‘Have you been talking to the police?’

  He wouldn’t say FBI; that would spook her.

  ‘Yes.’ Who knew what she knew? It was better not to lie.

  ‘I want you to stop.’

  ‘I can’t do that. It would make me a suspect too. Interfering in a police investigation.’

  ‘You’re a journalist. You want the story. And I am the story.’ Another deep breath. ‘I’ll meet you in St Peter’s Square, tomorrow, five o’clock in the evening. You promise me that for one meeting you won’t bring police. I want your word of honour.’

  His word of honour! How English, how old-fashioned. Yet Sam couldn’t help it; he was charmed by her, charmed by the concept, flattered that she thought he had honour and would be bound by it.

  ‘Very well. Only one meeting. Why St Peter’s?’

  He thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it, to confirm his opinion of her yet again.

  ‘Because it’s Vatican City, not Italy, so if you’re a lying scumbag and you do bring the police, they won’t be able to arrest me.’

  Sam lay back on the bed and smiled at the ceiling. Lisa didn’t disappoint. Whatever else happened, she had guts. And brains.

  ‘You’re a gambler,’ he said. ‘I understand that pretty well. I’ll be there.’

  She hung up.

  He dressed quickly, packing his stuff into the small overnight case he’d bought on the streets. He filled out an express check-out card, and was in a car and headed for the airport within ten minutes. During the ride, he cracked the window, and let the hot, muggy air of Hong Kong brush over his face, breathing in the fetid scent of the city that lay underneath everything else, all the neon and the skyscrapers and the noise.