Desire

by Louise Bagshawe

  ‘Bruises might have faded by now.’

  ‘Take my word for it, just for the sake of the argument. How would that happen?’ Lisa took a sip from the tumbler of the tap water in front of her. She did not want to have too much wine; the telling of this story was putting her in a teetotal mood.

  ‘Forget that for now,’ Murray said. ‘What else made you think you were innocent?’

  ‘The blackout. At first I just accepted it. But as the day wore on I wondered why the hangover was that bad. I mean, I was drunk, but I’ve had more many times and nothing worse to show for it than a headache. Not like that day. Total memory loss, pounding head, couldn’t keep anything down. I think they drugged me. I don’t think I could have killed a cockroach, let alone a grown man.’

  ‘So you could argue all this in court.’

  ‘Right. And I’d really get a fair trial. I went on the run and I tied up Alice Kennedy in a cupboard.’ Lisa’s eyes teared up.

  ‘Tell me about that.’

  ‘I already did. I needed a passport and I had to make sure she didn’t raise the alarm. I hated doing it to her. I was going to call when I landed - I did call.’

  ‘It’ll look very bad for you in a trial. She was frightened and hurt, and she wet herself.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Lisa said. A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘It was that or die. Stay in Hong Kong, get caught, get shipped back to Thailand. What would you have done, Sam? Alice will survive. I wouldn’t have.’

  ‘Did you think of trying to buy a passport on the black market?’

  She shook her head. ‘Look, when you start running for your life, you see things very clearly. I knew I had limited time. The longer I was in Hong Kong, the more likely I was to be caught and killed. Get out fast, or get caught. And die.’ She gulped more water. ‘You think I was wrong?’

  ‘I think you were exactly right.’ Sam’s expression was strange, and she twisted a little on her seat, under his gaze. ‘I think I would have done the same. I also think you truly believe you didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Josh was strong. He wouldn’t have let me do it to him without fighting back.’

  ‘Then what do you think happened?’ Sam Murray asked her.

  It was the moment she’d been waiting for; she understood in a flash of insight.

  ‘That’s your job,’ she said, leaning forward, into his space.

  ‘My job?’

  ‘Yes. It’s your story, Sam. That’s what you’re getting paid for. I called you because you found out about Janet Parks’s passport, you figured out my connection to Alice, you understood where I’d go and what I’d do. So if you can do all that while the police are still standing around, then you can work out why he was killed and why they want me dead.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘You can save me. You’re the only one who knows I’m not that chick they write about. That girl in the magazines, Lisa Costello the bitch. She’s made up. She’s fiction. Perhaps you wrote some of that fiction.’

  She could see in his face that he had.

  ‘I’m not a detective.’

  ‘You’re here, Sam. Where are the police?’

  He looked away from her, and she saw a shadow pass over his face. He was wrestling with himself.

  ‘You’re worried about the million. Maybe they won’t pay it to you if you help me.’

  ‘Try maybe I’ll go to jail.’ He looked back at her, his dark eyes unreadable. ‘I hardly know you, Lisa. You can’t even say for sure you’re innocent. You don’t remember. So why should I take that risk? Why should I give everything up?’

  She leaned back and took one last sip of her wine. She’d got him; somehow she knew she had got him.

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘Because it’s an adventure.’ She smiled, just a little, and watched the response in Sam’s eyes. ‘And because you want to.’

  He didn’t reply. She stood up, and he made no attempt to join her.

  ‘I’ll email you with another cell number soon,’ she said. ‘If you’re ready to help, let me know. If not, you won’t see me again. Goodbye, Sam Murray.’

  And before he could answer, she’d turned on her heel and walked out.

  My God, Sam thought. He flung money on the table and shoved his way out of the restaurant. She’d gone, though, of course. He would not find her again this evening.

  There was a cab for hire at the end of the alley, but he ignored it. It was a balmy night in Rome, good for walking, and he needed to clear his head. He tried talking to himself - you must be nuts, Sam Murray, you’re actually going to blow a new life, a million dollars - but none of it did him any good. He had to help her. He didn’t have a choice.

  Lisa Costello had him, like a trout on a line. He knew it. So did she. He walked through the city, breathing in the beauty of the old buildings. The air was gritty with traffic fumes and the smell from restaurants, the buzz of the tourists and the young Romani. If he had a million dollars, he could live here full time. Buy a nice apartment with a view of the Forum or the Vatican. He would have total freedom, a new life. And all he had to do was catch an international fugitive. He could rationalise it - he wouldn’t be putting the girl in jail; that wouldn’t be his fault. It would be a trial, a jury of her peers. Some of the best celebrity lawyers in America would fly to Europe and represent her pro bono, just for the publicity. So she’d get her day in court, get to say everything she’d just told him.

  Two problems. And as he looked around the city in the early twilight, he knew there was no way he was going to solve them. One, she would never get a fair trial. They would try the girl in his magazine, the girl who didn’t exist, the gold-digging bitch Americans loved to hate. That was who a lawyer would paint and that was who a jury would be primed to see. Lisa Costello would go down to some hole for the rest of her life. And two, she didn’t do it.

  God damn it to hell. He wished he’d never gotten that email from her. He wished he’d never met up with her. Now he was stuck. The money would dry up, without stories from the trail, and Craig would be after his ass, would slap him with a warrant and a charge. And he probably couldn’t do anything to help her anyway. She’d run from the scene and assaulted her friend, viciously enough.

  This was really going to suck.

  And yet he was going to do it anyway.

  Her email came in around fifty minutes later. No preamble this time, just a number. He dialled it immediately, and she answered on the first ring.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  She drew her breath in sharply.

  ‘I’m giving up things to do this. You understand.’

  ‘Yes. I can’t thank you enough . . .’

  He brushed that aside. He didn’t want tears, or professions of gratitude. He just wanted to get it solved. ‘We do this my way, Lisa. You tell me anything I ask. If you hold anything back, I’m out of here. If you argue with me or fight me, I’m out of here. And then I start after you again. Understand?’

  ‘Yes. Perfectly.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘By the Colosseum,’ she said.

  ‘Wait there. I’m going to hire a car. It may take me an hour or so. Do you have stuff? Clothes, money?’

  ‘A little of both.’

  ‘Then go get them. I’ll call again when I’m ready to pick you up.’

  He took a cab to a rental place just outside the city walls and paid for a nondescript Fiat on the company account. Right now, everything was kosher, it was all in his own name, paid for by the magazine; there was no need to scrimp or hide. He had a bad feeling, though, that he couldn’t shake. Like maybe this was not going to last very long. Maybe he’d be on the run soon enough, interfering with a witness, abetting after the fact. That wasn’t a capital crime, so he could be extradited, and what fun some piss-ant district attorney would have slamming Lisa Costello’s accomplice in jail for twenty-five years. Christ, he’d rather kill himself.

  Maybe there was another way out. Maybe he could just help her to get a new ident
ity, then she could be free. Publish some faked stories about the hunt, get the FBI to forget the case . . .

  But it wouldn’t fly. She was too high-profile. Josh Steen’s murder had ensured that.

  Whatever, he would think about that later. He called her cell again, and she told him where to pick her up, on a little street away from the Colosseum, Via Panisperna. She was waiting for him with a little rucksack, like a tourist. He put it in the back, with his own small case, and they drove off, towards the ring road out of town.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’

  ‘Good. I hate driving in Europe. Don’t say anything. ’

  She was very beautiful, he thought, even without her long hair, even bottle-tanned and brunette. Not like a model; he’d written enough stories about how she was no model. But the intelligence, the bravery, the sheer desperate courage of her, all wrapped up in that slim frame; she was stunning, and he tried to concentrate on the road.

  What would the public think? For a second he let himself consider her objectively. Yes, she was not plastic, not a TV presenter with smooth features and glossy hair. But the beauty she possessed was real, earthy. She had the kind of looks that stirred men, deep in their groins, not the bland beauty that sold fashion magazines. Her thick, full lips, sparkling eyes, rounded apple cheeks, the narrow waist and flaring hips; she was curves, she was lush. That kind of flesh didn’t photograph well. But male eyes peeled the clothes from it. Lisa Costello was made for the bedroom, not the catwalk . . .

  No way, Sam, no way. If he was going to solve this, he couldn’t think with his dick. That was the surest way to blow everything. Start fucking the suspect. That was if she wanted to, and he doubted she would. He didn’t have money like Josh Steen. Steen would have laughed at a million dollars, but Sam didn’t even have that. He had three hundred thousand dollars and an overpriced apartment in the Hollywood Hills that had lost half its value but kept up its taxes.

  ‘So where are we going?’ Lisa asked. She turned her head away from him, and it was a blessing not to feel those dark eyes on his skin.

  ‘Out of Rome. They know you’re here.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘I told the FBI, and Alice Kennedy and Cathay will have informed the police. Air France will have handed the manifest to Interpol. They’ll be looking for you, looking hard.’

  She swallowed. ‘I felt safe in Rome.’

  ‘You were kind of safe, for a little while. The longer you stay in one place, the less the returns. People start looking for you. You were right about that, to leave Hong Kong.’

  ‘So I’m always on the run?’

  ‘Unless we can figure out a murderer. Or you want to turn yourself in.’

  ‘That would be no,’ she said, and tilted her chin up bravely. ‘Running sucks, but prison . . . forget it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get out of prison,’ he said, turning the wheel. Now they were heading north on the autostrada, the A24 to Florence, away from the city. ‘You’re famous, and that means that when you come up for parole, politicians get votes by talking tough and throwing away your key. You’d be an old woman.’

  ‘I’m not doing it. I’ll run, I’ll steal. People do that,’ Lisa said, but her voice was trembling. ‘People go on the lam and they disappear and they don’t get caught.’

  ‘Not usually such famous ones.’

  ‘First time for everything,’ she said, defiant.

  Sam liked her. A lot.

  ‘So if not Rome, where?’ she asked.

  ‘Eventually, Liechtenstein.’

  She turned her dark head back to look at him. ‘Liechtenstein? Why?’

  ‘I have a feeling we may need secure banking. Numbered accounts. I know a guy there. And it has a culture of secrecy, loves to keep people out. Tiny state, relies on bank money from a lot of shady people, so they don’t love the police.’

  ‘I guess that makes sense. It’s a long drive for you.’

  ‘The safest place you can be right now is in a car, on the road. Nobody’s going to see you, you don’t interact with anyone. Toll-booth guards see thousands of faces every day; for them it all goes by in a blur. They’re probably the least observant people you can find.’

  ‘You have this all figured out. Have you done it before?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve tracked people. And part of that is to work out how they’re thinking, what they’ll do.’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘Just like you.’

  They were well clear of the city now, driving up the long, wide road that would take them to Florence and the north. The grey asphalt was bleak under the hot sun. He was glad of the air-conditioning.

  ‘We’ll stop on the way for lunch and so forth. And I can book us into a motel. Has to be cheap, though, the kind of place that doesn’t need passports. I’m going to pretend you’re a hooker, so act like it.’

  Lisa laughed, then saw his face. ‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘No. They need a believable reason that you don’t carry ID. But it won’t be for hours yet.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK.’

  ‘We got nothing else to do,’ Sam said. ‘Why don’t you tell me about Josh?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything. Don’t worry if you think I’ve heard it before. The story that’s out there probably isn’t your story. How you met, what made him pick up on you. Tell me what he was like. Was he perverted in bed?’

  Her face froze. Her head whipped around, and she stared at him.

  ‘Don’t give me that, Lisa. What did I tell you? We do this my way or not at all. A guy was murdered. The two usual explanations are money and sex.’

  ‘He was normal.’ She was blushing, dammit. How long had it been since he’d seen a girl blush? ‘He was fine.’

  ‘Then what? You weren’t a likely couple. I want to know about the romance, when it got serious. People who didn’t like it, I mean other than the press. I know his family hated you.’

  ‘They wanted the money. I think they’d have hated any wife.’

  ‘Maybe. And anything you knew about his business. Partners, investors.’

  She shrugged. ‘I wasn’t interested in Hollywood. That’s one of the things he liked about me, that I didn’t try to get cast in his movie in some bit part, or get my name put on a film as a producer. He talked about it, but that stuff washed over me.’

  ‘You’re gonna have to try to remember. Have to.’

  ‘OK.’

  Night was deepening now. The headlights of the cars flashed past them. He was driving, and nobody knew where they were, and he had a little time.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ he said. ‘Start.’

  Chapter Six

  Lisa was twenty-two when she arrived in America, fresh off the plane with a bit of money from her mother, no degree and no papers. Going to the States was the best thing she’d ever done, she confided to Sam. She’d dreamed about it for years, the sunshine, the fast cars, the tanned men and glossy American girls with artificially white teeth. It seemed so much better than her small, dreary town in Kent. She had no brothers and sisters, and she was a bookworm who liked to read, a bit of a loner. Her favourite stories took her out of her unhappy teen years. They had big gold or silver letters on the covers, and they were set in New York or LA, sometimes Chicago. She chose LA because it was always sunny there, whereas the New York winters were brutal.

  She picked up a paper at a bookstore on Sunset Boulevard and found an apartment right away. It was off the Strip, cramped but clean, with a young couple trying to make ends meet by letting out a room. She gave them two months in advance and they never asked to see her papers. She tried to make herself a great tenant by being invisible; never playing music, staying in her room, and being extra quiet if she had to come in late at night. That worked well enough.

  She had a great time the first month. She spent some of her savings on a beat-up car she found on the Internet, no expensive rental agreements or trouble with
her passport, and drove everywhere, to the beach, to the canyons, to rock gigs and comedy stand-up nights in the cheapest bars she could find. There were new kids to hang out with almost nightly. Plenty of English twenty-somethings, illegals like her, most of them trying to get an acting gig. She tried too for a bit, but half-heartedly. She never wanted to be an actor. Lisa treated LA like an alternative university; she planned to have fun for a year or so, work a cheap job, figure out what she wanted to do in life.

  The diner was great. They were advertising for staff, word of mouth, meaning it was illegal, but you kept your tips, ate for free, and there was some money in your pocket. Lisa was a catch for them because she wasn’t Mexican, and the patrons just loved that cute little English accent. She was also experienced, having served food in a pub back home one summer. She worked hard, got there early, never took time off to drink or do blow, and the customers liked her and tipped her pretty well. The owner didn’t do promotions as such, but he palmed her a few extra bills and assigned her to the better tables. Hollywood types sometimes came in when they were craving a greasy burger and fries or wanted to get away from the fancy restaurants their colleagues went to, where they might be overheard. Lisa served them cheerfully. After a couple more months, she was making very nice money. Men asked her on dates; she went, but none of them worked out. Sam asked why, and Lisa shrugged and said she was choosy.

  That long summer and fall had been one of the best of her life. She partied, she ran on the beach, she hung out with friends, kissed a few boys. It was freedom, it was intoxicating. The sun shone all the time, and after wet, cold England, she felt as though she were wrapped in a cashmere blanket all the time, like the earth itself was looking after her.

  She thought about a career. Definitely not Hollywood; the auditions she’d been on convinced her she had no future. She wasn’t an actress and she also wasn’t beautiful enough . . .

  When she got to that point, Sam stopped her.

  ‘Not beautiful enough?’

  ‘Right. Look at me.’