Break Point: BookShots (3 page)

‘So maybe I’ll see you soon,’ she said.

‘Maybe you will.’

TWO DAYS LATER
, Chris Foster was lying face-down in a small white room, pain etched across his face. His jaw clenched as the woman in the nurse’s uniform pulled at his arm, twisting and manipulating his bones and muscles.

‘You’re supposed to be a tough guy,’ she said.

Foster smiled and grunted all at once. It was true that in the force he had gained a reputation for toughness, but this five-foot-nothing woman in her white cotton top and combats had a medical file that told her exactly where to hurt him.

‘Seriously, is it too much?’

Her voice was gentle, girlish almost, and her fingers felt soft and cool on his skin.

‘It’s fine,’ he told her.

‘It’ll be worth it tomorrow.’

He gritted his teeth. Eventually her soft fingers found an area worthy of investigation, and she firmed her fingers up and pushed blistering heat into him, like twisting a knife between his bones.

In the three years she had been treating him, Foster had noticed it was rare for her to ask him about the pain. He presumed it was to preserve his dignity.

They were almost done when Foster’s phone rang in his jacket pocket.

‘Take it, if you need to,’ the nurse said, and she slipped her hand inside his jacket and passed the phone to him.

‘Thanks,’ Foster said, looking at an unfamiliar international number on the screen.

‘Hello?’

Foster heard Kirsten Keller’s voice on the other end of the line. He made an apologetic gesture to the physio and said, ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve had another letter,’ she said. ‘It arrived in the post today.’

Foster could hear traffic noises in the background.

‘Why are you outside? Are you on your own?’

Keller paused. Paris rumbled on behind her.

‘Tom Abbot is with me,’ she said eventually, as if she’d made up her mind to trust him. ‘I wanted some privacy for us to talk. My coach thinks you’re a bad idea. She thinks we should ignore the threats and concentrate on my game.’

‘Easy for her to say.’

‘Exactly. Another video came, too.’

‘On a memory stick?’

‘Yes. I’m scared, Chris.’

‘The same type?’

‘Yes. How am I supposed just to ignore this shit and focus on my game?’

‘Do what you want to do,’ Foster said.

‘You’re the boss.’

‘Tell that to Coach Rosario,’ Keller said bitterly.

‘Maybe you should.’

The physio handed Foster a glass of cold water. He gave her a thumbs up and another apologetic look, and she left the room to give him some privacy.

‘Tell me about the video,’ Foster said when she had gone. ‘What’s on it?’

Keller’s voice twisted, half in fear and half in anger.

‘Me,’ she said. ‘He was behind me, filming me on his phone.’

Foster thought about it.

‘Easy to do these days,’ he reasoned. ‘Most people would just assume he was texting. Or checking his mail.’

The line scratched and muffled and the traffic noise became faint. Foster guessed Keller had the receiver under her chin while she spun around, checking nobody was behind her.

‘He had a knife hidden inside his jacket, Chris. He kept panning the camera from me to the knife and back again. Taunting me.’

‘Take a breath,’ Foster said. ‘A big one.’

He heard her do it.

‘Can you get Tom Abbot to rip the video off the memory stick and mail it to me?’

She composed herself.

‘Sure. It scares the hell out of me to know he was right there and I had no idea.’

Still the traffic rumbled on behind her. Foster checked his watch. Rush hour. A busy Paris street. She was safe enough, for now.

‘If you’re calling to ask for my help, I can protect you.’

‘Yes, I’m calling for your help,’ Keller said.

‘Well then, you’ve got it.’

KIRSTEN KELLER AND
her small personal team arrived into Heathrow Airport early on Thursday morning. She knew the ungodly hour wouldn’t stop the sharks from circling, but at least she had the satisfaction of knowing they’d had to haul themselves out of bed in the dark.

Keller and Rosario spilled off the Airbus A320 along with every other passenger. ‘This is our best chance of avoiding the paparazzi ambush,’ Keller said.

‘Says who?’ Rosario asked.

‘Says Chris.’

Rosario said nothing. She was still smouldering in general about the decision to hire a bodyguard, and fuming in particular about the fact that Keller had chosen Foster. They waited for an eternity by the carousel, eventually grabbing their cases and racket bags in frosty silence.

‘You know what?’ Keller said as she pulled the case onto an aluminium trolley. ‘I listen to everything you tell me on the court. Everything. But this is not tennis. It’s my life. It’s my decision. And I’ve made it, so you need to get on board.’

They wheeled their small mountain of kit through Customs, Keller pacing a few steps ahead of Rosario and wondering how her coach would react to her firm words. She took a breath before stepping through the doors and out into the real world.

The sharks were waiting, and they closed in around Keller before the security doors slid shut. Rosario pulled up close and both women used their luggage trollies like a makeshift snowplough, bulldozing their way through the intimidating crowd. Shutters snapped and flashlights strobed all around them, and gradually the reporters boxed them in and slowed them down.

Welcome to England.

‘Are you looking forward to Wimbledon, Miss Keller?’ one of them shouted. ‘Do you think we’ll see you in the final?’

She ignored the question and kept walking, and from every direction hungry photographers shouted, ‘Kirsten, over here.’

She turned her head towards the loudest voice and caught a glimpse of a balding man in his late forties, who seemed to be made entirely of sweat and stubble and malevolence. His eyes glinted as he realised Keller was looking his way.

‘What happened in Paris, Kirsten?’ The bald guy’s cockney accent came ringing through. ‘Did you bottle it in Paris?’

The floodgates opened.

‘Did you have a bet on Basilia?’ another one shouted. ‘Did the bookies pay out?’

‘Are you pregnant?’

Keller knew that
Tennis Ace Denies Pregnancy Rumour
would probably sell even more copies than
Tennis Ace is Pregnant
, so she kept her mouth shut, her eyes forward and kept bulldozing the reporters slowly out of the way, not running, but walking, and dying inside a little bit with every step. The onslaught of questions continued. The flashbulbs subsided momentarily and she could make out the sweating bald guy again. He looked gleeful, pumped up and breathless.

‘Are you on drugs, Miss Keller? Did you get the wrong dose?’

He opened his mouth to ask a follow-up question, but before he got a chance his face screwed up in pain and confusion. His head was thrown forward and he cried out in pain. Someone had thumped him hard on the back of the head and he toppled over on the floor in front of Keller and Rosario. It could have been anyone in the middle of the crush. A dirty trick played on a dirty trickster. Kirsten Keller’s heart bled for him. Not.

She knew better than to stop her momentum, so she pushed the trolley hard into the bald guy’s shins until his prone body spun out of the way. She didn’t feel especially bad about it. In the gap vacated by the bald man, Chris Foster emerged. He wore his smart jacket and an impossibly crisp white shirt. He looked utterly unflustered. His face was inscrutable and Keller could not be sure if he had been responsible for the reporter falling to the floor. Not until his eyes locked with hers, at least. The twinkle in his eye made her smile, which made the camera flashes go crazy all over again. Then suddenly he was beside her and she noticed his frame properly for the first time. He was taller than she was, which was not true of all of the men she had known in her life. He was broad-shouldered; not muscle-bound, but stretching his suit in all the right places. He reached out an arm firmly enough to encourage the Gentlemen of the Press to back off.

Keller breathed for the first time in a minute.

Rosario looked as if she’d have been happier to be torn limb from limb by the paparazzi than be saved by Foster. Which he noticed, and registered, and stored for later. At that moment Maria Rosario was not his biggest concern. He was sharp-focused on every cameraman within twenty yards of Kirsten Keller and wondering if any of them had a knife in their pocket.

CHRIS FOSTER FELT
the warm moulded plastic on his back as he settled into a green chair at the side of Kirsten Keller’s practice court. The sky above them was a deep azure-blue and there wasn’t a cloud for a hundred miles. The breeze had dropped, and Foster could feel the sun on the back of his neck as he watched Keller going through her routines on the manicured grass. She was wearing her sponsor’s burgundy dress, fiery orange and yellow around the skirt so that when she moved it looked like fire was licking at her belly.

She worked on her serve, slamming ball after ball to the far end of the court. The smash of her racket pierced the still summer air with such ferocity that it reminded Foster of his own practice sessions on the firing range. Bullets, again and again – her intensity never dropping and her concentration unwavering. She was the opposite of the frightened woman he had guided through Heathrow. On the court she was in control, commanding and powerful.

As each ball exploded off her racket she let out a gasp or a grunt. She seemed to have no control over it. None of the players called it cheating exactly, but from what Foster had read in the newspapers over the past few days, Keller certainly hadn’t made any friends in the locker room over it.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Abbot, checking that Keller had settled in.

‘She’s fine,’ Foster said, scanning the other side of the court. ‘She can play tennis, that’s for sure.’

Another bullet smashed through the air.

Another grunt.

Foster smiled.

‘Did you get the video?’ Abbot asked.

‘Yep.’

‘What do you make of it?’

Foster’s eyes swept the court again.

‘Anyone who films himself with a hunting knife behind someone’s back is the real deal.’

‘Think he’ll show up?’ Abbot asked.

‘I’m sure he will. He started with letters and movies. Now it’s movies with knives. And he’s getting closer.’

‘Do you need anything?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Call me when you do.’

‘You know I will.’

Foster hung up and put his phone back in his jacket pocket.

He stretched out and waited for Maria Rosario to say something. He had sensed her on his shoulder for the past thirty seconds, half watching her player, half listening to his call.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, without bothering to say hello.

‘I’m watching my client,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t you be coaching her?’

‘I’ll coach her when I’m ready,’ Rosario said, as Foster twisted in his seat to face her.

‘And I’ll watch her when I like,’ he said, ‘which at the moment is every minute of the day. So at least now we both know where we stand.’

‘It’s my job to make sure she wins this tournament,’ Rosario said. ‘You’re a distraction. She doesn’t need men staring at her from the side of the court. She needs focus. She needs to be in a bubble. You’re bursting it.’

‘She’s not going to win anything with a knife in her back,’ Foster said, shaking his head and turning back to the court.

The finer points of Rosario and Foster’s argument had to be put on hold because suddenly Kirsten Keller was walking over to meet them.

‘Everything okay?’ she asked in a voice that made it clear she knew perfectly well everything was not okay. ‘You two getting along?’

‘Like a house on fire,’ Foster said.

Rosario glared at him for a moment and then walked onto the court to pack away Keller’s kit.

‘I’d like to tell you she’s a pussycat underneath it all,’ Keller said, watching Rosario go.

‘But you can’t?’

‘Nope,’ Keller smiled. ‘She’s hard as nails, vindictive, aggressive and unreasonable. And she never backs down about anything. That’s why I hired her.’

Keller threw herself into the seat next to Foster. She was entirely comfortable in her own skin and seemed not to notice the warm flesh of her tanned thighs pressing against Foster’s forearm as she sat close to him.

‘So, is this how it’s going to work? You just turn up and watch me wherever I go?’

Foster shrugged.

‘If that’s what you want, sure.’

‘Of course it’s what I want. Don’t worry about Rosario. Like you said, I’m the boss. And I want you on board. So do you need anything?’

Foster leaned forward and pulled a black plastic watch from his jacket pocket.

‘I need you to wear this.’

Keller took it from him and turned it over in her hands.

‘Wow,’ she said sarcastically, ‘this looks like the height of fashion.’

‘It’s called a StrayStar. It’s got a built-in GPS tracker, and a panic button. If anything happens and I’m not with you, press the button and I’ll find you. I won’t be far away.’

Keller slipped it on.

‘Anything else?’

‘Not much,’ Foster said. ‘Just a couple of ground rules. Wear the watch. Stay around people you know. Don’t get caught on your own, if you can help it. And don’t trust anyone until we work out what’s going on. Can you live with that?’

‘Absolutely. If that’s what it takes.’

‘Have you had any thoughts about who might want to threaten you?’ Foster asked. ‘Sometimes people have a gut feeling, so if anything or anyone comes to mind, don’t keep it to yourself.’

‘I’ve thought about it over and over, but I’ve no idea who would do this. If anything comes to me, though, you’ll be the first person I tell.’

Keller stood up and headed off to the locker room to shower. Foster smiled and shook his head as he watched her walk away. On her own. Breaking one of his rules already.

PEOPLE LIKE KELLER
rarely liked a guy in a suit telling them what to do. Even though that was exactly what she had hired Foster for. He wondered how well the tennis star would take to his rules over the coming days. It was too hot to stay in the sun, so he used the fifteen minutes while Keller took a shower to get familiar with the layout of the place. Just in case. Foster was a
just in case
sort of guy. Wimbledon was roughly the shape of a teardrop, nestled between a couple of tree-lined avenues that curved around Centre Court, a boxy green fortress of a place, with ivy climbing up the sides and the world’s most expensive front lawn in the middle. In its shadow was No. 1 Court, a royal green doughnut built of similar proportions. The two stadia were surrounded by a further seventeen Championship courts and twenty-two practice courts, including the one Keller had recently vacated.