Hooked Up: Book 3 (30 page)

How about a Paris Pink, silk taffeta baby doll, bordered with pleated tulle & organza & grosgrain ruffles and grosgrain ribbon sash?

Wreath (Hair) and tiny basket of baby ivy and pink roses.

I repeated the message to Amy and Daisy. Amy squealed with delight and got back to her bed, jumping. Daisy rocked about, oblivious in her drunken stupor. I called Alexandre yet again. Nothing. I mumbled to myself . . .

“What the hell is going on?”

J
AMES AND I stood there glaring at each other. Then we both, simultaneously, looked down at Laura. There she was at the bottom of the staircase, a pool of blood around her head. The stairs were wooden, all except for the bottom step, which was made of old granite.

“She must have careened down the stairs like a sled,” I suggested. “Her feet forward and her body slanted backwards, bashing it on the bottom step.”
Jesus, it sounds as if I know too much.

James cast his glance at one dainty-heeled slipper on Laura’s left foot and then looked about to find its pair. It was lying a few feet away. He bent down and touched her pale cheek, and I thought, “Fuck it’s
him
;
he
did it.” Laura looked all tarted-up; makeup, a sexy, skimpy little outfit—for my benefit? James obviously thought so, and by the look on his face he suspected that his wife and I were having an affair.
He killed her out of jealousy and rage
, I thought.

I locked my eyes with his.

James didn’t reply. He bent down for the third time to feel her pulse, but there was no doubt she was dead. Laura was wearing a crimson, silk satin robe, with a sexy negligee underneath. One pretty heeled slipper—the Fredericks of Hollywood kind—was on one foot. The other had obviously skidded across the floor with the fall. She looked all dressed up with a sly touch of rouge on her cheeks and mascara enhancing her almond-shaped blue eyes, which were wide open in shock, staring up at the ceiling like shiny marbles. She knew I was coming over; was this her one last effort to seduce me?

I surveyed the gruesome scene. It was hard to see where the silk ended and where the blood began; except the blood resembled gloss paint. I’d seen death before, on many occasions, but not like this. Laura’s exit had been a glamorous one. Stairs again, I thought. Was that Laura’s fate, all along? Maybe she had been destined to die that time. Maybe that was just a dress rehearsal for this.

“You fucking cunt,” spat James. “You sneaky fucking bastard.” Spittle sprayed as he spoke. He laid his palm across her heart. “You killed my wife!”

I raised my hands in the air, as if making a surrendering gesture. “James, no! What are you saying? That’s crazy. I
just
got here at the same time you were coming through the front door. I swear. This is just as much a surprise for me as it is for you.”

James looked up at me; a sneer set on his angular face. His blond hair was a little longer than usual, and he looked less like a banker and more like a regular guy who mowed the lawn on Sundays. Except, I knew James wasn’t the lawn-mowing type and the grass out back had been abandoned. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a dark green cashmere sweater. Usually, he wore expensive suits. Not today. But he still had that upper class air about him: his clipped accent, his Eton education—a man who’d been used to money and privilege his entire life.

James traced his finger along Laura’s once-determined jaw. “What I don’t understand is . . . why.
Why,
Alexandre? Did you try to kill her last time, too? When she had that supposed ‘accident’ and she ended up in a bloody wheelchair? I mean, it’s obvious she fell down the stairs. One push, that’s all it must have taken. You fucking bastard.”

A surge of fury gathered in the pit of my stomach. I thought of the evidence in the safety deposit box. Laura dead was all I fucking needed right now. I must have had ‘killer’ written all over my face, because I could not deny the onslaught of fatalistic fantasies I’d had in the run-up to Laura’s death. I do think I willed it to happen. I really do. The power of imagination is awesome. And when I say ‘awesome’ I mean it in the true sense of the word.

“Okay, James . . . this is . . . just great. You accusing
me
of murder? How about I accuse
you
? Where the fuck have you been for the last couple of months? Eh? Suddenly appearing like this. Maybe you
knew
I was coming over. Laura knew. I called her. Maybe it was really bloody convenient for you to bump her off and then blame me.”

“I’m going to call the police,” James spluttered, his eyes wet with emotion.

Blood was pounding in my ears. I didn’t know what to do. The evidence. Laura’s note stowed with her lawyer, revealing everything if she ever had an accident. What a fucking mess.

James pushed a few strands of Laura’s hair from her face. “Laura wouldn’t just fall down her own stairs in her own house now, would she?”

“It is possible, she had those heeled slippers on.”

“How the fuck did you get in, anyway?”

“Through the back, from the garden,” I replied. “I still have your garage keys.”

“That’s right . . . your Aston Martin.” James shook his head. “I forgot.”

Oh Christ. Now I would have to admit that no, my Aston Martin wasn’t there anymore. I had no excuse, whatsoever, for coming through the back. I looked really guilty now. Oh fuck. I’d have to tell the truth; James would soon find out. “Actually, I moved my car a while ago. I knocked on the front door but there was no answer, and Laura didn’t pick up the phone. She was expecting me. So I came through the back.”

“Nice excuse, Alex. Tell that to Scotland bloody Yard.” James took out his cell and dialed 999. I watched him steadily. My heart was pounding like an out of beat drum but trying to stop James was suicide. Fuck. This was it. I saw my life flash before me. I’d heard that happened to people when they drowned; and now both the beautiful and hideous, like snapshots, flew through my mind. My father jabbing me in the butt with a broken bottle. My sister’s screams. Riding on the back of a bicycle with my dad, me smiling and happy—we were going on a picnic, in the sun. An IED exploding and blowing off my best friend’s head, only missing me because I’d gone to take a leak around the corner. Pearl’s face when I last kissed her when we were dancing. Pearl having an orgasm, her body juddering in ecstasy . . .

James’s voice sounded distant, even though he was right next to me. James was giving the cops his address. “Yes, that’s right, some type of accident, but she’s definitely dead. I’m here with her ex-boyfriend. Yes, I’m her husband.”

Oh God, that sounded just peachy: the ex. The ex, who just happened to be the object of Laura’s crazy desires. James disconnected the call. I knelt down beside Laura. Why did I feel so little compassion? She was dead, after all. Flesh and blood. I’d loved her once. Tears prickled my eyes but they weren’t for Laura, they were for Pearl. And me. What the fuck was going to happen now? I wanted to get out of there and run, but that would have made me look as guilty as sin.

I got up from my haunches and leaned against the wall to steady myself. “Where have you been, James? I’ve been calling and leaving messages.”

“I know.”

“Then why the fuck didn’t you get back to me?”

James sat down on the bottom step, which was still smeared with Laura’s blood. He didn’t seem to notice. The image was surreal. James sitting by his dead wife, looking vaguely sad, yet with an almost imperceptible gleam of relief flickering in his eyes. I couldn’t read him. Had James killed Laura?

“I was in the Priory,” James answered solemnly.

The Priory—the British equivalent to the Betty Ford Clinic.
Rehab for celebrities who took too many drugs, stuffed their faces with too many cakes. Deals were made there, it was a pretty “hip” place to end up. Some people exaggerated their problems just so they could say they’d been to the Priory. Sounded cool to some.

“I didn’t know you had a problem.”

James looked down at the corpse and buried his face in his hands. “Nor did I. Well, I did, but I was in total denial.”

“What was your drug of choice?”

James swallowed nervously. “How do you know it was drugs?”

“I figured. You’ve never been an excessive drinker.”

“Smack.”

“Heroin? Really? You could have fooled me. How did you get to work every day? How did you make all that money?”

James didn’t flinch when he answered, “Well, most of my money went up my arm.”

That made sense. I’d only ever seen James wear long sleeved shirts, handmade in Jermyn Street. He wasn’t a T-shirt kind of guy.

James went on, eager to share. I noticed that people fresh out of treatment were always keen to tell their story. “I was a very controlled junkie. I had the budget for the high-grade shit, you know. But things started spiraling out of control. I lost some money on the stock exchange; the taxmen were after me. I needed to clean up my act so I went AWOL. My suitcase is still in the hall. I literally, just got back five minutes ago. And I found
you
here. And Laura dead.” His eyes pierced mine.

“So, had you spoken to Laura?” A loaded question. What I really wanted to know was,
how much do you know?

“Of course. She told me she wanted to get back with you, and that you were still in love with her.”

Oh fuck!
“And you believed her?”

“Well, yes. Why would she lie about that? It’s one of the things that drove me into treatment. She was disgusted by me, and rightly so. I was a fuck-up, a disaster. A junkie. How could I have expected her to live with a man like me? There you were, all sorted out. Making a mint. Good looking. Together. And there was I like a fucking loser, jacking up every day.”

I laid a hand gently on James’s shoulder. After all, we’d been friends before. Sort of. “What she said wasn’t true. I’m in love with Pearl, my fiancée. I have never wanted Laura back. Ever. You have to believe me, James.”

James flinched his shoulder and I took my hand away. “I don’t know what to fucking believe. Here we are, the pair of us, sitting next to a dead woman. My wife. The woman I was in love with. The woman I got clean for. I have a feeling you killed her, but obviously I can’t prove it.”

“James, you don’t seem to be that distraught about Laura lying there dead. I could just as easily suppose
you
killed her.”

He looked up at me, his brows furrowed. “And why the hell would I do that?”

“Jealousy. Rage. Revenge. Or simply to stop her taking you to the cleaners. I don’t know, you could have a million reasons.” I thought of the evidence. Was it possible that it was right here in the house? I was desperate to check it out before the police arrived. I knew how most women’s minds worked; they always kept things of value hidden in their bedrooms. “I’m going upstairs to the bathroom.”

“There’s a bathroom down here, use that.”

“I’d prefer to use the one upstairs.”

“Why? So you can do a quick robbery while you’re at it? Steal Laura’s jewelry?”

“Don’t be absurd, James.”

“Do what you like, the police will be here any second, and you can tell them your bullshit excuses about why you broke into our house.” He sat like a stone, not budging from the bottom step.

I skirted around him and mounted the stairs. At the top, I made a right and followed the corridor all the way to the end. The master bedroom door was open. I entered and scanned my eyes about the room. I’d been to this house on several occasions over the years, and knew my way around. I could hear sirens from two or three vehicles, outside. I looked out of the window, down onto the street. Two police cars and an ambulance had arrived. There was a frantic knock at the front door, and I heard James opening it and talking in muffled tones to the police. The living room was filling up rapidly with more voices and commotion. I didn’t have much time. I looked under the bed—nothing. Laura used to like keeping important things in her closet: letters and personal stuff. I opened the closet door, rummaged through hanging dresses, pants and shirts, and I glimpsed something shiny at the back—was it the titanium hip? No, just a silver sequin jacket.

“What the fuck are you
doing
?” It was James, standing behind me. I spun around. James edged closer, a scowl set on his sharp face as if he was about to lash out.

“Nothing. Sorry,” I replied. I couldn’t think of a more intelligent answer. And James leapt at me, launching his slim body at me like a missile, his right fist flailing in the air, aiming for my face. I ducked and clamped James’s wrists tightly behind his back. Fighting was the last thing I wanted to do.

A policewoman quickly entered the bedroom, and a policeman rushed from behind, barging her out of the way and diving at us locked together. I was still immobilizing James, who was thrashing about like a fish on a hook.

The policeman, and another colleague, also pushing his way through the room, shouted out, “I want you two to come with us down to the police station.”

James shouted out, “This bastard killed my wife! He broke into my house, uninvited. He must have shoved her down the stairs. They were lovers.”

I shook his head and mumbled, “It’s not true.” What a fuck-up. I knew, though, that the best course of action was to remain calm and wait for my attorney. I’d call Sophie and get our legal team onto it. I had never needed a criminal lawyer before, but we had a good one on HookedUp’s payroll, just in case.

I was silent. Released James’s wrists and put my hands up peacefully. Oh shit. I needed his attorney, and fast.

“He basically broke into my house,” offered James, nursing the burns on his wrists and glowering at me.

The policeman, a pale-faced man in his fifties, eyed both of us up and down and said, “Look, there’s a dead woman below, and I don’t have time to play Sherlock Holmes. I want you both down at the station, now, to make a statement and give interviews. I’ll want to take DNA swabs. Meanwhile, the forensic team will tell us if there’s been any foul play.”

“I know my rights!” James yelled. “Either arrest me now, or leave me be. You have no right to force me to come down to the station, let alone take any bloody DNA samples! I’ll give my statement, right here, in my own house, thank you very much.”