The Rise, page 33
‘We only do that for very special clients, so yes, you’re right. What’s the boy wonder done now?’
‘I heard that,’ Zander shouted in, laughing. ‘You know I have a gun?’
Hollie pulled it back to business. ‘Listen, we have a tail and I’m texting you a licence plate. Red convertible. Female driver. Just want to make sure it’s nothing sinister. We’re about fifteen minutes out of Venice. Can you call me back?’
‘No problem. Don’t turn off Lincoln until you hear from me.’
‘Already done. This ain’t my first rodeo. But then, the chip in my ass told you that.’
It took him less than five.
‘Rental. Female. Sarah McKenzie. Mean anything to either of you?’
Hollie nodded. ‘Yep, British journalist. Been trying to get face time with Zander for a few weeks. Why the hell is she here? Bit of a drastic leap for an interview.’
‘Want me to send over some guys to watch the building?’
‘Nah, it’s fine. One chick on her own. I can take her. With or without the boy wonder.’
John laughed. ‘I don’t doubt it. Call me back if you change your mind. You know where I am.’
Hollie hung up. ‘OK, let’s wait till we hit Lincoln, give her the benefit of the doubt for a while. If she hasn’t backed off by then, I’ll call the cops and ask them to intercept her. They can’t charge her with anything, but it’ll keep her out of the way for a while. At least long enough to get you home and out of sight. I should get danger money for this shit.’
Hollie swept round onto her knees and watched as the red convertible continued to follow. The privacy glass meant the journo chick wouldn’t see that they’d spotted her. Good. Better that way.
The car lurched to the side as Leandro turned it onto Lincoln and Hollie tapped in the private number for the Venice Police Department. Most local PD stations had them now, strictly for high-profile risks only. Wouldn’t do for a deranged stalker to take out a celebrity in the neighbourhood. Wouldn’t be good for business.
Four minutes.
Come on, lady, disappear. Two minutes.
Last chance, doll.
Hollie’s finger was about to press connect when she saw their pursuer lift a cell phone to her ear. Chat. Smile. Chat.
Must be a guy, Hollie decided.
Another smile, another chat, then… Yes!
The red car signalled right, slowed down and then did a U-turn, heading back up the way it had come. If that chick ever got bored with the newspaper industry, there would be a job for her in stunts.
52
‘I KNEW YOU WERE WAITING’ – ARETHA FRANKLIN AND GEORGE MICHAEL
‘I hear congratulations are in order,’ Sarah said, when she answered his call, before he’d even had a chance to kick off with ‘hello’. ‘Shouldn’t you be busy renewing your vows around now?’
So she’d watched his stint on The Elaine Show. Davie was suddenly too exhausted to even go with a shred of pretence.
‘On the record or off?’
‘Off.’
‘OK, so perhaps everything isn’t exactly as it seems. Look, what are you doing tonight?’
‘Oh, you know. Just driving. Stalking Ryan Gosling through the streets of Santa Monica. I think I’ll ask him to marry me here. Lovely setting.’
She was crazy. In a good way. In a way that made him want her here right now.
‘Sounds like a plan. Look, if you don’t mind letting Mr Gosling down, let’s do the interview tonight.’
‘Really?’ She sounded surprised, with just an edge of wariness.
‘Yeah. OK, let me think. Head to the Parker Hotel down on Ocean Avenue. I’ll send a chopper.’
Pause.
‘As in a bike with unusually large handlebars?’
‘Cute. But no. The Parker has a helipad. The chopper will be there within the hour.’
It took one phone call to his private concierge to arrange, and only when he’d hung up did he pause to wonder what the fuck he was doing and why.
For seventy-five minutes and fifty seconds he had no idea why he’d done it. For the last ten seconds, as she strutted up the gangway, eyes squinting to see him in the semi-darkness, he knew exactly why.
He wanted to impress her. Distract her. Keep her onside. Know her better.
Sending a helicopter to bring her on a ten minute flight from Santa Monica to Newport Beach had seemed like a good way to do that.
However, his alarms bells were screaming. Connection or not, this woman was the most dangerous that he’d ever met. In one night she’d managed to get into his house, learn his secrets and manipulate him into another meeting. Up until a couple of hours ago, he’d been intending to blow her off, or keep her waiting so long that she gave up. Or perhaps feed her a manufactured story in the hope that she’d skip back to Scotland, pleased with being sprinkled with stardust in Tinseltown.
Even to him, he sounded like a dick. When had that happened? When had he gone to sleep a decent, normal, eager-to-please kid and woken up a complete tosser?
Now, as she strolled towards him in a white scoop-neck T-shirt that was falling off one shoulder, a pair of white capri pants and silver flip-flops, he realized that it would be so easy not to care about her story or her motivations. He’d have to be guarded. Watch what he said. But maybe it was time for a bit of reality, and if that meant playing with fire, so be it. He’d already been well and truly burned.
‘Good evening,’ he greeted her, suddenly aware that he was still dressed like he was going to a wedding. Probably time to pull on some jeans. He held out a hand to support her as she jumped into the boat.
‘Hi. Am I gatecrashing your second honeymoon?’
He laughed. ‘I deserved that. But no. My wife has gone to… Actually, I don’t know where she’s gone. Lift your top.’
‘What?’
‘Lift your top.’
Her hands went onto her hips and her chin rose in defiance, while her tone kept it light, almost daring. Wow, she was a mass of contradictions.
‘Sorry, but I need to know someone way better than this before nudity becomes part of the relationship.’
‘Cute. I just want to check there’s no tape. Leave your phone on the table there too.’
He could see that she was considering this before complying.
‘It’s that or nothing – up to you.’
‘You don’t trust me?’
‘Absolutely not.’
She shrugged, threw her phone on the table and pulled her top over her head to reveal a white sports bra.
‘Satisfied?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Grab a seat,’ he told her. ‘There’s champagne on ice. Brought it for my wife. Turns out she wasn’t in the mood. Who knew?’
‘I’m more of a beer kinda girl,’ she replied. ‘Sorry. No class.’
Davie reached into the cooler behind him, pulled out a Bud and handed it over, thinking that refusing $500-a-bottle champagne was the classiest thing he’d ever heard. He took a beer for himself too, then jumped off deck, untied the mooring rope and jumped back on, then pressed the button to retract the anchor. Engine burring, he slowly reversed the boat away from the slip, turned and headed forwards with more confidence in his boating abilities than he had in his personal judgement skills. He had been sailing since he’d landed in LA. One of the things about growing up on a housing estate in a densely populated city is that it gives you a craving for the countryside or the shore. He'd chosen the latter.
‘Is it OK to go out in this at night?’ she asked, looking just a little disconcerted.
‘Sure. Criminals do it all the time. That way, no one sees them dump the bodies.’
‘You’re a riot,’ she said, a smile playing on her lips, no trace of fear now.
They drank beer and made small talk for an hour as he navigated out of the harbour into the Pacific, then turned north, following the coastline.
Eventually, just north of Santa Monica, he dropped anchor and headed for the sunlounger next to her. He sat on the edge of it, facing her as he spoke.
‘Can I be honest?’
‘Uh-oh. That’s never a good sign,’ she said, her grin utterly disarming.
Man, she was good.
‘I don’t know what you want from me,’ he said. ‘So I’d like you to tell me. And if I believe you, I’ll help you.’
Even as he said it, he was holding his breath. She couldn’t know. No one did. This had to be all innocently motivated – she was writing a completely frivolous piece and she’d just used it to get a freebie holiday.
‘I want to know what it was like, back then,’ she started hesitantly. ‘I want to know about your life growing up in Glasgow. About what made you come here, what shaped you. I want to know about your family.’
They both knew that she wasn’t telling the whole truth yet, but it was a start. OK, he could do this. Talk. Just talk. Give her enough. Stop when it got to the bit that could never be shared.
‘OK, but here’s the deal. I’ll decide later what’s on the record and off.’
She thought about that for a moment and he could see that she realized there was no option. Better to have something to build on than nothing at all.
‘Deal,’ she agreed.
‘Where do you want to start?’ he asked, unbuttoning his shirt. He tossed it to one side and pulled on a sweatshirt. The temperature had dropped now. Low fifties. He pulled a thick fur blanket out from underneath the seat panel and handed it over to her.
She gazed at the sky for a few moments, thinking. Then, ‘Tell me about your first proper girlfriend.’
Straight to the heart. Bullseye with the first arrow.
‘I was sixteen.’
‘Late developer.’
‘I was.’
‘OK, so tell me about the first time you fell in love.’
‘Ah, same girl.’
‘Really?’
What did it matter now? He could move the goalposts later. Right now, he just wanted to talk.
‘There’s only ever been one.’
‘What, you mean before your wife?’
‘No,’ he answered honestly. ‘I’ve only been in love once and it wasn’t with my wife. It was before. Someone else.’
‘How long were you together?’
He thought about that for a moment. ‘About six years.’
‘What went wrong?’
He shrugged. ‘Things. Stuff. People.’
Gently, clearly being careful not to say or do anything that would stop this revelation ball from rolling, she pressed on.
‘And where is she now?’
There was a pause. A long pause. He couldn’t say it. In twenty years he’d never looked back, never brought it up or discussed it. It was like the door had been closed and nothing could open it again.
But now, he wanted to. It was time. Reality, his mum had said.
He needed some reality.
‘She’s over there somewhere,’ he said, pointing north towards the lights of Malibu. ‘The only person I’ve ever loved is Mirren McLean.’
53
SILENCE
GLASGOW, 1989
Mirren could smell the booze as soon as he spoke.
‘Well, look at Little Miss Swot. Head in the books like some smart wee cow that thinks she’s too good for the rest of us.’
Mirren kept her head down. No smart-arse retort. No eye contact. Nothing to provoke him. If she’d learned one thing from having Jono Leith as such a malevolent presence in their home for all these years, it was that challenging him never ended well. The odd slap. The push. The blistering verbal abuse. After the tea incident last year, he’d never tried anything else sexually inappropriate, but she always felt threatened. Vulnerable.
If she spent the rest of her life working on it, she still wouldn’t have time to count all the ways she despised him.
Or all the ways she despised her mother.
How could Marilyn live like that? Life dedicated to a vile prick, one whose wife lived just a few houses away? It had been bad enough when Jono just came here a couple of nights a week and she had to listen to them banging all night, but now he’d moved in full-time it was so much worse. She just wished Billy McColl had killed the bastard instead of the other way round.
But no. He was here, and his egotistical shite had ascended to a whole new level. How could her mother find this man attractive? He’d long recovered from the beating Billy McColl had given him the year before – teeth replaced, bones mended, hair had grown back – but he was still, in Mirren’s opinion, an ugly bastard. Her mother didn’t think so, though. Just like his wife and countless others, Marilyn had fallen for the smarmy chat, the big man swagger and the promises of a glorious life ahead with him. She deluded herself because she believed he was their lottery ticket out of poverty here, and she’d clutched it until her knuckles were white. Now he was spinning her a line about buying them a big fuck-off house in Milngavie and treating her to a BMW. It was all pish. Would never happen. In the posh suburbs, Jono Leith would be shit on their shoe, someone treated with contempt for being the scum that he was. Here, however, just like that other bad bastard, Manny Murphy, he was looked up to, feared, and even – among the smack-addled imbeciles – respected and admired.
It all made Mirren sick. But it wouldn’t be for much longer. There was another life out there for her. She wasn’t naive enough to think that she could go live in a garret somewhere and pen the next classic, but she had dreams and a vague plan. Work, live somewhere safe, write in her spare time. Maybe a novel. Maybe the short stories she’d been writing for years. It didn’t matter. The very process of putting the words down on paper were a release, an escape from reality. It soothed her. Comforted her. When she wrote about Davie, it made their love real. Indelible. When she wrote about her fears and pain, it allowed her to put it in a box, to release it from her soul. When she wrote about Jono Leith, it allowed her to imagine all the ways she wanted to slowly, tortuously eviscerate him.
‘Not speaking to Uncle Jono?’
Shit, he was still there. Mirren didn’t look up. There was no point. It didn’t matter what she said – it would be wrong. Her body stiffened as it waited for the blow. Last week, the slap to the back of her head had been so hard her face had bounced off the table, causing her nose to bleed like a river.
When Marilyn appeared and saw the damage, she was almost apologetic to her man. ‘Oh, she’s always getting those nosebleeds,’ she told Jono. ‘Watch you don’t get blood on that new shirt, ma honey. Mirren, put your head back and make sure you clean that up when it stops.’
With that she’d disappeared out to the local pub, hand in hand with her grinning lover.
Mirren had wanted to vomit. The same sensation she was getting now as she realized that he wasn’t leaving her alone.
He swaggered across the kitchen, his repulsive leer twisting his features to a whole new level of ugly. With creeping anxiety, she felt his fingers go into her hair, twisting strands of her curls tighter and tighter until… he yanked back her head, forcing her to look up at his sneering face.
‘Too good for me, are you? Too fucking prissy. You know what you need?’
The implication was clear, so all bets were off. It was one thing keeping quiet to avoid provoking him, but he was not going to lay a finger on her without her fighting back with everything she had.
‘Don’t you fucking dare touch me!’ she spat, her right hand flailing upwards, trying to catch the face that was just out of reach. Her left hand reached around, tried to grab the hand that was holding the back of her head like a vice. Unwittingly, she’d left no protection for the front of her body. He took the opportunity, ripping the top of her T-shirt as he pushed his hand down inside it, under the cotton fabric of her bra, and grabbed her breast.
The realization of what he was doing made Mirren’s whole body rear and buckle, sending her chair skidding out from under her and the table flying across the room as she kicked out.
She roared with physical pain and mental anguish as she fell, Jono still holding his grip on her hair. Flailing, punching out, twisting every bit of her body… but none of it helped. He was too heavy for her, his force too strong.
He was on top of her now, straddling her, pinning her hips to the floor. Chunks of her hair were ripped out as he pulled his hand round and changed his grip, his hand over her mouth, stopping her from screaming any more, while forcing her to look at him, to watch his face as he…
Oh God, no. No.
His fingers were fumbling with his belt, then his button. Then his zip came down. Then he was pushing down the waistband of her leggings.
No! She wasn’t going to let him. He couldn’t…
Inside her head, there was a roar as she felt him pushing inside her. Oh no. No. No.
Still punching, still trying to buck him off her and all it was doing was making him smile more until…
He was laughing now. Laughing as he raped her.
Mirren died inside. Nothing left.
Nothing.
When he finally infected her with every seed of his evil, her body flopped, defeated, as her soul shut down, desperate to protect itself from the horror.
There was nothing left to feel. Her body was numb, her brain blank, her heart broken.
Nothing left.
Just a shell. A violated, broken shell.
Lying in a pool of sweat, blood and his toxic semen, Mirren begged her body to respond to her, to get up, to fight back, even now. It was too late to stop the pain, but there was still time to make him pay. If only she could move, rise above him, scream, shout, kill. But he was still there, on top of her, smug satisfaction all over his red, sweating face.
‘Not too fucking good for us now, are you? And don’t go running that smart mouth off to your mother. I’ll tell her you begged me. Daft cow will believe it.’
‘Will she, Jono?’ The whisper was laden with sadness.
Mirren twisted her head and saw her mother standing there like a tragic figure in her baby-doll nightie, black mascara tears streaming down her face. The distraction gave Mirren the split second that she needed to push him off her, to jump to her feet, sprint to the door.
