Take My Breath Away (21 page)

‘You think so?’ Roxanne let out a little groan. She wasn’t sure what she believed any more. Perhaps Chloe was right, and before Nic Gabriel had showed up, everything in the garden was lovely.

‘It can be. He’s the one obstacle in our way, I’m telling you. The only one.’

Roxanne clenched her fists, summoning up her resolve. ‘Forget it, okay?

‘He’s poison! Why don’t you face up to it? You saw what he did to bloody Crippen, who’s been pushing up daisies for the past ninety years.’ Chloe choked back a sob. ‘He acts like Prince Charming, but the truth is, he’s cruel. He’ll bleed you dry, if you let him. He’ll do it so he can satisfy his curiosity, that’s the ugliest part of it. If he makes another fortune, that’s a bonus. After he’s done, he’ll move on, leaving you for dead. Is that what you want? Is it what you really want?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘You can bank on it.’

‘Don’t forget,’ Roxanne said, ‘I have a little experience of men who want to use me.’

‘Exactly! That’s precisely why…’

Roxanne held up a hand as she interrupted. ‘Leave this to me.’

Chloe stared at her. ‘So, you’ll…’

‘Let’s not talk any more about it,’ Roxanne said. She realised now. This was her business. Chloe would never be able to deal with it. She meant well, but she
mustn’t be allowed to blunder in. In destroying Nic Gabriel, she would also destroy herself. Only one person was responsible for this mess, only one person could bring it to an end.

‘The less we say, the better, huh? Listen, it’s all down to me. I’ll do what needs to be done, I promise.’ She felt her knees trembling as she saw the horror in Chloe’s eyes. ‘I’ve saved myself before, remember.’

‘I’m a simple man,’ Mickey Aldwych said and took another puff at his cigar. Even for a twenty-first century media tycoon, it was an outrageous lie. He was a frog-like fellow poured into an Bruce Oldfield suit, a prominent supporter of good causes who made a fortune from sado-masochistic porn, a caring father of five whose energetic flings with blonde weather forecasters and game show presenters kept gossip columns in business. His opening gambit had been to offer to commission an article about Crippen’s erotic inner life for a sum larger than most mid-list authors received for a hundred thousand word novel. ‘I’m loyal too. I liked Jazz Delahaye and that’s why I kept her on for so long. Despite everything. That it should end like this is an utter tragedy. A terrible accident.’

‘An accident?’ Nic repeated softly.

Not accident, not even really suicide, but murder. Murder by someone who was desperate. Someone who would not give up. Someone who couldn’t give up.

‘Yes, yes, of course. A cry for attention gone wrong…’ Mickey frowned. ‘I’m sure Jazz would never mean to harm herself.’

‘She worked for you for a long time, I gather.’

‘I realised when I first took her on that she was a good editor. A clever lady, and rather gorgeous too.’ Mickey chuckled, as if reminiscing about a long-ago conquest. ‘In her early years with us, she never put a foot wrong. Her authors loved her, the…’

Nic waved at the photographs. ‘Authors like Will Janus?’

‘Sure, sure. Before he became a household name, naturally. He made generous acknowledgment of Jazz’s contribution. But she lost it. I gave her plenty of rope, but…’ – it occurred to him just in time that he’d chosen an unfortuate metaphor – ‘even I had to admit that she couldn’t hack it any longer. She missed glaring errors in manuscripts, turned down book proposals which other people gobbled up and made a killing on. Our legal publishing division started losing money hand over fist. Frankly, that’s quite an achievement. Any half-decent book about the law ought to make a return. What are law firms’ library budgets for?’

‘I gather she suffered from bipolar disorder.’

‘Of course, I made allowances. She had time off, but it didn’t help. Our funds aren’t limitless, Mr Gabriel.’ Mickey contemplated his Rolex sorrowfully. ‘I had to do something.’

‘So you put her on a freelance contract?’

‘Only way she could remain on the payroll. She’d become a luxury we could no longer afford. I thought things could only get better. So did Jazz.’

‘Did they?’

Mickey Aldwych’s flabby jaw slackened in mock astonishment. ‘Surely, Mr Gabriel, you’ve learned the eternal truth. When people say things can only get better, that’s precisely the time they really take a turn for the worse.’

‘So what did you do about it?’

‘For a long time, nothing. That’s the trouble with me, Mr Gabriel. I’m an old softie at heart.’ He brushed his eye with his thumb. He might have been wiping a tear or getting rid of a piece of grit. ‘Besides, I’d stemmed the drain on cashflow. I was paying Jazz less and she wasn’t complaining, so I let things ride. We
lost our best legal writers, people like dear old Will Janus, but our business focus had changed. I was devoting my energies to erotic torture and fur fetishism. In an exclusively literary context, of course.’

The boom of his laughter shook the oak panelling. Nic said, ‘So you were happy to keep her on, even though she still wasn’t performing?’

Mickey sighed, a quick gust of regret. ‘Nothing is forever, Mr Gabriel, you know that as well as I do. I won’t re-write history simply because the poor girl’s dead. Even if I did, you would soon find out the truth anyway.’

He chortled for a few moments at his own candour before continuing. ‘Fact of the matter is, the market has changed. Electronic publishing, virtual communication systems. One needs to focus nowadays. It must be true, even the stupidest business analysts keep saying the same thing. So I decided that it made sense to dispose of our legal list. The main challenge was finding a buyer. Fortunately, Will and his people helped out. His firm has acted for me for years. They put me in touch with a prospective purchaser.’

Nic stifled a groan. So easy now to see it coming. ‘Ali Khan?’

‘My goodness me, you are well informed.’ Mickey frowned, but then a calculating light came into his small eyes. ‘Expect an announcement within twenty-four hours. It’s not big news, admittedly. There’s an obvious synergy between our businesses.’

‘So what was going to happen to Jazz?’

Mickey clicked his tongue. ‘There are always casualties when a firm moves on, Mr Gabriel. Thrust has plenty of in-house resources at Tottenham Court Road. They didn’t need an incompetent freelance to
help them run a tiny legal list. I’d been consulting Creed about redundancy.’

‘Who was advising you?’

‘Ben Yarrow, as it happens. Ugly little chap, but mustard as a lawyer. I asked Jazz to come in to see the two of us last week, said I’d briefed Ben that I wanted to be generous. He would be sorting out the details of the severance package. Making it tax-efficient, that sort of thing.’

‘How did she take it?’

‘How do you expect?’ Mickey pursed his lips. ‘She made a number of comments that were entirely unwarranted. Not to mention unwise. I’m a good friend, Mr Gabriel. Personal loyalty is my Achilles heel – but I can be pushed too far.’

His voice had dropped and for a few seconds his chubby pink cheeks lost their colour. ‘However, for Jazz, I was prepared to make allowances. We went back a long way together. For old times’ sake, I wanted us to part as friends. I told her I’d ignore what she’d said. She was due to come back to Creed with her answer by noon yesterday. Of course, she never made it to the deadline.’

‘What did Jazz say?’

Mickey flapped a hand. ‘Oh, stuff about some conspiracy against her. Wild allegations about Creed. Nothing specific, it was all pretty hysterical. I told her to shut up before she embarrassed herself any more in front of poor Ben Yarrow. I must say, he took it well. He realised she was a sick woman, but as soon as he expressed his sympathy, she began to rant at him. All very sad.’

‘So you didn’t pay any attention to what she had to say?’

‘Of course not. It was nothing but tosh. I tell you, she didn’t even expect me to take any notice. She said as much. I hate to say so, but it’s even crossed my mind that what happened to poor Jazz was no bad thing. She didn’t have much left to live for. Perhaps her death was a blessing in disguise.’

Some disguise, Nic thought as he wandered amongst the gravestones at Highgate that afternoon. He leaned against a cherub-heavy tombstone. The cemetery was amongst his favourite places in the city, one of the few parts of London where he felt almost at home. He’d rather not dwell on what that said about him, but he liked wandering alone through the labyrinth of curving paths, pausing in peaceful corners in the shade, reading eulogies to the dear departed.

He hadn’t believed in God since the day he’d seen his mother’s broken body, but he understood why people needed something to cling to. Something stronger than logic and man-made laws. Like his own belief that his father was not a murderer. Every day it was there, at the back of his mind, the gnawing awareness that everyone else had thought the case cut and dried. People liked there to be a reason for things, to have them explained. To them, the myth of the Questing Beast would make no sense at all. With Dylan, as with the others, the story seemed so simple. Amy Vinton was a tragic avenger, exacting belated justice on the man responsible for the death of her sister. Sure, but the last few pages of the script were missing.

Advocacy. He was certain now, this was all about advocacy. People talked about the science of advocacy, the technique of persuasion, but that was in itself a kind of advocate’s devilry. Teach-yourself books told
tyros how to do it, but they came no closer to revealing the secrets than texts about necromancy or any other black art. Face it, Dylan was right. Litigation is like sex. The best advocates are as sensitive to mood and timing as infinitely skilled lovers. The closing speech pulls everything together, brings the case to a climax. At last the truth is laid bare. Or, at least, as much of the truth as the advocate wants the court to believe.

Too many people dead before their time. He realised that he’d started clenching and unclenching his fist. He was no longer calm. Too many people sacrificed. Dylan Rees and Amy Vinton. Matthew Creed and Bradley Hutton. Jazz Delahaye and even Darrell Bergen. Their deaths angered him, but they also made him shiver, even in the heat. He didn’t want to join them, and become, like his mother, one of the dead-too-soon.

Advocacy. All that talk about the advocate’s art was misleading. It suggested a civilised, gentlemanly skill, reminiscent of all that nostalgic pre-war crap about the advocate as a priest in the Temple of Justice. The temple was more like a mausoleum in this cemetery, where gargoyles leered at images of the saints, where reason, mercy and discretion fought a losing battle against sentiment, prejudice and fear. Persuasion so often took on a sinister guise. When you bent another person to your will, who could say where it might lead? Flattery, blackmail, even murder.

Shaving for the second time that day, he nicked his chin a couple of times. It shocked him to realise why his hands weren’t steady. Within an hour, he would be seeing Roxanne Wake again. It gave him a buzz to think of looking at her, listening to her speak. This
wouldn’t be like the research he’d done for Crippen. Roxanne bore no resemblance to any other lawyer he’d ever known. He was sure that she couldn’t care less about driving a Porsche or ski-ing holidays in Aspen. She had killed, killed brutally and yet seven years later, here she was, alive and well and working under a false name for Will Janus.

Why Creed, of all firms? Had the partners chosen her, or had she chosen them? Soon he would have all the answers he was seeking, but even that was not the reason why his skin was pricking, why it took him longer than usual to button his shirt and straighten his tie. Something drew him to her, a fascination that was partly sexual – might as well admit it, even if only to himself: from the moment he’d seen her in Joel’s room, she’d stirred something deep inside him – and partly the temptation of the dangerous unknown.

Not that she was dangerous any longer, he told himself as he slipped on his shoes. Lightning never struck twice. On the phone she had sounded calm, but that must be an act. He’d seen her fear when it dawned on her that she’d been recognised. He held all the cards. With one word, he could finish her career. She had so much to lose.

He dialled a cab. This evening, for once, he would not trudge along the London streets to his destination. Tonight was special, and yet he had no idea of how it might end. With the two of them in bed together? He imagined her bare arms around him, hugging him to her breasts. The picture he’d conjured up shocked him. He’d never gone in for one-night-stands. More often than not, like Phil, women sought him out rather than the other way around. None of the affairs lasted. This was different. He did not know her at all. Although he
knew what she had done, he could not guess her thoughts. Yet none of that mattered. He could not wait to see her again. In the confessional of his mind, he must acknowledge it. He wanted her for himself.

At last the cab arrived. Traffic was bad and they crawled along the streets leading to the centre. The driver provided a running commentary on the iniquities of those in government who cared nothing for the poor downtrodden overtaxed motorist, allowing jams to build year after year while asleep in the back of their chauffeured limousines. Nic replied in monosyllables. To kill time, he was rehearsing in his head what he might say to her. None of it seemed right. There was sweat on his forehead and his stomach had tied itself in knots.

He’d booked at an Italian restaurant near Trafalgar Square, a place where he sometimes met people he was interviewing for the magazine. He’d decided that Roxanne would hate somewhere trendy and exotic, the sort of place where Grant used to take Cassandra. Because he had set off early, he arrived just on time, despite the gridlock. The street was packed with people sitting at the tables outside the bars and cafes, laughing and drinking. He shared a joke with the maitre d’ and was led to his usual table at the back. It was near the kitchens, but he didn’t mind. He liked the cooking smells and, besides, he and Roxanne would be out of the earshot of fellow diners.

Roxanne was nowhere to be seen. Ten minutes passed. Nic’s spine felt thin and brittle as he kept shifting in his seat to glance over towards the door. He had been so sure she would turn up. He didn’t see what else she could do. She couldn’t take the risk of provoking him. She was at his mercy.

Suddenly he spotted her in the doorway, wearing a halterneck minidress that showed plenty of flesh. She didn’t have a tan, like the other women dining, but now she was there, he could not imagine why anyone would give the others a second glance. To Nic she looked cool, elegant, formidable. A cross between a gazelle and a praying mantis.

Their eyes met at the same moment the maitre d’ touched her arm and asked her to follow him. Nic could not read her expression. He stood up and smiled at her and she made a slight dismissive movement with her shoulders. Something told him that neither of them would ever forget tonight. His heart beat faster. This was the first time he had ever dined with anyone who had taken the life of a fellow human being. To everyone else, she was a pretty young woman, out on a date. He noticed a group of city traders watching her progress as she shimmied between the close-packed tables. She turned heads, did Roxanne Wake.

They didn’t shake hands. She was keeping her distance. He guessed her plan was let him make all the running. He didn’t have a plan, except to keep talking and just see what happened. He felt a pang of remorse. He hated hurting people. Feared it. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, despite what she had done. Or was it, he asked himself with a stab of self-loathing, because of what she had done?