The St. Tropez Lonely Hearts Club (19 page)

In an effort to cheer herself up after the robbery, Lara had decided they absolutely must attend a charity gala at the Sporting Club in Monaco. ‘Shirley Bassey’s singing,’ she snapped. ‘We’ll take the helicopter!’

‘I hate helicopters,’ he whined.

‘Fuck you,’ she retorted. She was still in a foul mood – jealous of Fabrizio’s apparent interest in Carlotta, distraught about her missing jewels and furious about the photo of her that had appeared in the papers.

Fabrizio, in full black-tie regalia, sat nervously in a tiny, chartered helicopter with Lara, who wore a skimpy purple dress. Lara, who had been drinking all day, took out a silver flask for another swig of Grey Goose.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit early?’ he enquired.

‘Don’t you think you should shut the fuck up?’ she spat back.

‘I think you should cool it with the drinking,
cara
.’ Fabrizio tried his soothing voice and held out his hand. ‘It’s not good for you. Give me the flask, darling.’

Ignoring him, Lara pulled the flask away then stared down at the glorious Mediterranean glistening in the late afternoon sun. Tiny speedboats sped across the waves and children frolicked at the water’s edge, but she barely recognised anything as her Botoxed lips sucked at her flask like an infant at its mother’s breast.

Fabrizio sighed and turned to look out of the window. This was becoming too much of a chore. Did he really have to marry this drunken, jealous shrew? Was all the money in the world worth the ignominy, insults and abuse he had been putting up with for nearly two years? He had crept away earlier to call Maximus to tell him he couldn’t and wouldn’t close the deal to marry Lara, but Maximus had been adamant.

‘You owe me,
ragazzo
, and you owe those two little bastards you carelessly sired. If you renege, you know what will happen to you.’

Fabrizio shuddered. He certainly did know. Maximus had powerful connections, not only on the Côte d’Azur but also with some of the crime bosses in Sicily. Two of his handsome young studs had disappeared without trace four years ago. Their bodies were never recovered, but the rumours of what had happened to them were too horrific to dwell on.

He was also worried that time was running out and the producer of
The X Factor
Kazakhstan had not returned his calls, and the record deal he was hoping for had suddenly fallen through.

The producer, Derek Flukle, was an infamous and much-disliked English spiv. He called himself a manager and a ‘star builder’ but he was known to be the biggest sleaze-bag and crook in showbiz. At sixty-plus, having successfully bilked several singers and actresses out of vast amounts of money by crooked scams, he had turned his meagre talent to managing a Kazakhstani pop star. When that failed he managed, by lying through his teeth, to get a job as line producer on
The X Factor
Kazakhstan. He was not a man to be trusted and had no scruples about trampling people under his feet.

Fabrizio didn’t really trust him, but he had to go along with his false promises of stardom, hoping against hope that something would come of it. He had met Derek and his fat ugly wife at a B-list celebrity party in London the previous year. Derek had chatted him up, telling him he had great potential and that he would love to represent him.

‘I’ve got a contact list as long as my arm,’ he boasted. ‘I know everyone from Andrew Lloyd Webber to Beyoncé. You sign with me and I’ll make you a star as big as Enrique Iglesias,’ he added with a viperish grin.

Without telling Lara or Max, the guileless Fabrizio had agreed and paid Derek 20 per cent of all his income, despite the fact that he had come up with exactly nothing for him. When he complained, Derek threatened him with a lawsuit and finally persuaded Fabrizio that it would be in his best interests to keep quiet and take the potential gig on
The X Factor
in Kazakhstan. Fabrizio, disgusted but powerless against Derek and his slimy West End law firm, gullibly agreed.

When he casually checked Derek’s credentials one day with Maximus, who actually did know everyone, Maximus scoffed. ‘Oh,
Dio mio
– that
puto
is a total swindler. He conned the English singer Helen Bookham out of a fortune when he managed her, and I heard he grabbed another 20 per cent from Joan Collins for some clothing deal that he had nothing to do with.’

‘How did he manage that?’

‘Who knows? He bullies people into paying him. I wish I had his balls,’ he laughed.

‘Life’s a bitch,’ Fabrizio thought as he looked mournfully out of the helicopter window, ‘and I’m lumbered with two of them – Derek Flukle and Lara Meyer.’

There was one silver lining, though. The producers of the French
Dancing with the Stars
had come to watch him in rehearsal with Betty yesterday and they seemed quite impressed. All he had to do now was get into the final twelve. After that all he had to do was win it. He sighed, that could be a big hurdle, but he was going to give it his best shot.

Lara greedily drained the last dregs from her flask, then asked the pilot if he had any vodka.

The American pilot laughed. ‘Sorry, ma’am, it’s a short trip and we don’t carry supplies on board, especially booze.’ He snorted with laughter again, then said something incomprehensible into his mouthpiece.

This infuriated Lara, who snapped, ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me, young man. I’m paying a lot of money for this ride.’

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ the pilot became even more sarcastic, ‘but you’re not paying me, I’m just the airline’s hired help.’

This made Lara completely insane and she started screaming obscenities at the pilot. Before Fabrizio could stop her, she began hitting him on his shoulders and back with the latest ‘it’ bag.

‘For God’s sake, lady, are you fuckin’ crazy?’

The desperate pilot tried to keep the chopper on course while Fabrizio attempted to hold Lara down, but she was like a woman possessed. As the pilot made valiant efforts to stop her, she continued to attack him. Then a particularly vicious blow with the Fendi clasp – aimed at his head but which he managed to duck – hit the instrument panel. With a terrifying noise the helicopter started zigzagging across the sky, shaking and turning violently.

‘Mayday! Mayday!’ gasped the hapless pilot as Lara let out a series of deafening screams. ‘Mayday! We’re going down!’

Carlotta couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in the vast bed, haunted by horrible dreams. She had never been able to forget the last time Nicanor had tried to make love to her. He had been as brutally violent as ever. Since he had been having regular sex with prostitutes who didn’t mind being tied up, sodomised and raped with objects, he had decided to do the same thing with his wife. To Carlotta’s horror he had woken her up in the middle of the night so stoned he could barely talk. He had bound her to the bedposts with his silk cravat and forced a hideous hard object inside her with such force that it ruptured her. Blood soaked the sheets and an ambulance was called. Carlotta, whimpering in agony, was escorted to the local hospital. It was announced that the Contessa had suffered a miscarriage of a longed-for baby boy – which was a lie – and then the truth emerged: that she would never be able to have children again.

Along with the strong mistral winds that shook the shuttered windows until they shuddered and made the palm trees bend almost to the ground, this was the image that woke Carlotta. The horrible whistling noise of the wind terrified her even more. She sat up in bed to turn the bedside light on but nothing happened. Thick darkness enveloped her and she started to shiver. She fumbled for the flashlight she kept in the bedside drawer but it wasn’t there; then she remembered she had taken it to the kitchen the day before for a fresh battery and had left it here. She scrabbled around in the drawer until shaking fingers found a book of matches and she managed to light a small candle. She picked up the landline but it too was dead.

Carlotta felt cold with fear. The whistling noise of the mistral seemed to have die down but it was replaced by another sound – was it moaning? Was it breathing?

The hairs on the back of her neck bristled. She was alone in the house, having given Lilliane and Denis time off to celebrate their daughter’s wedding in San Raphael.

She felt her way carefully to the bedroom door, which by habit she always kept locked. Holding the candle close to the door handle she saw with horror that it was slowly turning. Someone was in her house; someone had come up the stairs; someone had obviously cut the phone line and the electricity.

‘Who’s there?’ she whispered, her voice a terrified croak.

There was no answer, only heavy breathing, almost as though whoever was outside had some sort of asthmatic problem.

‘I-I’ve called the police,’ she lied. ‘They’ll be here in a minute.’

The mistral suddenly resumed with a loud whoosh and the shutters began rattling again. Was it her imagination, or was that a low-pitched laugh she heard outside her door? Then the handle shook violently, and with a shriek of fear she saw that the key in the lock started coming loose.

‘Oh, God – oh, my God, please go away!’ she screamed so loud that her breath blew out the candle. Now she was in total darkness.

But the darkness allowed her to see the tiny light of her mobile phone where she had left it on the bed. She remembered that the battery was low, but maybe there was enough juice to call someone – but who? The mobile face said three a.m. Who could she call? Who was on her speed-dial who could help? Maximus had gone to Paris for a few days and she hadn’t bothered to enter the numbers of most of the people she had met in the past few weeks . . . except for Nick’s. He’d been on a short assignment but he’d rung to tell her he’d be back some time that evening.

Nick, Nick, please be at home
, she pleaded in a tsunami of terror as she fumbled in her unlock code, messing it up twice.

Her eyes had become accustomed to the gloom so she rammed a heavy chair up under the moving door handle and twisted the key in the lock firmly. She heard an angry grunt on the other side of the door, then soft, maniacal laughter.

Desperately Carlotta dialled Nick’s number. The phone rang four times while she prayed that the key would hold, and if not that the chair would keep whoever was on the other side at bay. The voicemail connected with Nick’s pleasant, laid-back voice asking to leave a message.

‘Shit!’ she wailed, as the scraping at the door became more frantic. She hung up and redialled immediately. The phone rang once, twice . . .

‘H-hullo?’ Nick’s voice, thick with sleep, answered the phone.

‘Nick!’ she screamed, ‘help! Someone’s trying to break into my room – they’re in my house!’

A second went by before Nick registered what was going on, then he calmly commanded, ‘Put me on speakerphone and turn up the volume to full!’

She fumbled for the right button and immediately Nick’s firm but reassuring tones filled the room. ‘Whoever you are, I’ve called the police and they are on their way, so leave now.’

The door handle had stopped shaking, so had the key.

‘Can you hear me? Stop now and leave immediately.’ Nick’s voice was strong and assertive but his question was met by stony silence. Even the mistral had died down abruptly, and all Carlotta could hear was her own panicked breathing.