Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense (11 page)

twenty-two

I watched the sky
change from gold to pink to indigo. I'd finished off one bottle and opened another and felt stone cold sober.
Victim
, the most hideous word in the dictionary. I'd looked it up once.
Living creature sacrificed to a deity; person or thing injured or destroyed in seeking to attain an object.
Well, I wasn't destroyed way back then and I wasn't going to be destroyed now. Not by life. Not by him.

I tried to process what the police said. There were so many don'ts and must do's, so many rules in a game alien to me, a contest where the goals were not clear. It felt as if my life had suddenly changed and that made me sad. I realised how much I'd taken normal freedoms for granted.

Pouring the fresh glass of wine back into the bottle, I made coffee. Part of my job was to remember what was said in front of me even if it made little sense at the time. Grant's observation about Devon stuck in my mind. He'd described the lack of incidents there as
interesting
. I assumed he meant that Stannard hadn't yet worked out where I disappeared to at weekends. Perhaps it was only a matter of time. Or was Grant inferring something else? Was it possible that my two worlds were not as compartmentalised as I believed?

I took a shower, washed my hair vigorously, lavished my skin with lotions, and painted my toenails a defiant scarlet. I didn't phone Chris. After the spat that morning I decided to leave it. Dutifully, I returned Alexa's call and was relieved when it went straight to voicemail. I left a pleasant message hoping that she was feeling better. The call from Simon came through on the landline as I was climbing into bed. I picked it up as soon as I heard his voice and told him about the car and the subsequent visit from the police.

“What were the cops like?”

“Like cops.”

“Were they sympathetic?”

“As much as they could be, if that's what you mean. Told me all the same stuff, gave me the third degree, offered good advice.”

“They're taking it seriously?”

“Sort of, although they don't appear to think Stannard a contender.”

Simon said nothing, which I thought strange. “Why the call?” I said.

“I've found out about our man.”

“That was quick.”

“Easier than you'd believe; Stannard is in my current line of work.”

“He's an estate agent?”

“Property developer. By all accounts, he's quite a sharp operator. Must be doing all right as he drives around in a Maserati. He specialises in old houses, does them up, full architectural spec, and sells them for a profit. He's got offices in Imperial Square, all very respectable.”

I let out a breath. “That's close. Where does he live?”

“Wellington Square.”

One of the most expensive areas in town, I notched.

Simon cleared his throat. “There's something else you should know.” I sensed he was leading up to the punch line.

“Go on.”

“There's no easy way to put this. The fight Stannard got himself involved in.”

“What about it?”

“It resulted in a serious facial defect.”

A sour taste bubbled up from the back of my throat and spread into my mouth. I didn't speak. I couldn't.

“Are you still there, Kim?”

“How serious?” I murmured.

“Right side of his face is fine.”

“Left side?” I absently touched my skin, feeling the jagged ridge of scar tissue.

“The surgeon apparently cocked up during reconstructive surgery. He cut through a facial nerve. Stannard successfully sued the arse off him.”

I didn't know what to say that wasn't blindingly obvious.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm swell,” I snorted.

“Shall I come round?”

“There's no need. Looks like Mr. Creepy really has a deal with me.”

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. Try and get some sleep. Anything else I can do, let me know.”

There were three occasions that I could remember when I'd been advised to get some sleep. After Guy's fatal road accident, the night my father died, and the time I'd tracked down my mother and received a miserable audience. Each had been moments of high emotional drama. Sleep had evaded me then as it did now.

As I'd feared, my disfigurement was the connection.

I touched my face, felt the smooth, uninjured skin, then traced the line of raised scar tissue, the secret area where my hair refused to grow but was cleverly concealed by an excellent haircut. I ran a finger along where the lobe of my left ear should have been, hidden by day with a large
clip-on
earring. The physical trauma—the nightmare of changed dressings and skin grafts—remained deep in the past, buried. The emotional scars had closed over in a way I didn't quite understand. Friends suggested my father's sturdy influence. Others said that the
character-building
attributes of boarding school had stood me in good stead. I agreed with neither because only I could know that certain wounds never heal, that, by nature, I would always be drawn to the dark side.

I did my best. I played a part. I managed to fool myself in the same way that I fooled others. Sometimes, I even forgot my losses and my perpetual mourning for a life not of my choosing. I was the first to admit that nobody likes a person who wears grief like a second skin. It's wearing and boring and tedious. Smiley is best so smiley is what I did. Mostly it worked. My only certainty was that, in a society where a disproportionate value was weighted upon looks, I'd managed to overcome prejudice and find my own niche. Stannard wasn't so lucky.

In spite of what Stannard was doing, part of me felt pity. What had happened to him was catastrophic. I could understand his need to reach out, but he didn't want my help. He wanted a connection. He saw me as a soul mate. It all made perfect sense. And yet …

I leant back on the white fluffy pillows. It didn't entirely gel. The Stannard of my imagination was a social misfit, a loner and sad inadequate, not some intelligent
clever-dick
property magnate with oodles of money. And another thing—how in his busy schedule did he find time for his stalking activities?

The flat seemed a mass of noise in the silence. Pipes creaked. Air vents opened and closed. Fridges and machinery on standby hummed. I craned for the sound of incursion—the scrape of a key in a lock, the spring of shoes on carpet, the bump against an unfamiliar piece of furniture. At seven in the morning, a dog outside yapped, the boiler inside roared into life, charging up the hot water system. I twisted and turned. Some time later I must have dozed off, Grant's last words preying on my mind:
victim
.

twenty-three

Heather Foley had been
trying to sell her house for months. She realised it might not be that easy. A six-bedroom pile in need of considerable refurbishment was not to everyone's taste, but she hoped that someone with vision would come along and snap it up. It would make a fine family home, or charming bed-and-breakfast, and the location was superb, an eager-faced estate agent told her one dark day in January.

Recently, there had been vague mutterings of another possible price reduction, the thought terrifying her almost as much as the prospect of spending another winter there. The leaky expanse of roof needed replacing, the fuel bills were astronomical, and mushrooms were taking root in one of the damp bedrooms. She'd tried to keep on top of the garden but, in spite of her best intentions, the lawns resembled savannah and the beds choked with weeds. She'd watched a plethora of property programmes and picked up that the secret of successful selling was to depersonalise one's home, get rid of the clutter and every vestige of personality. She'd given it a go. Apart from doing nothing to improve her prospects, she felt peculiar showing viewers around rooms with only the odd chair propped against the wall. She'd stripped the house to such an extent it felt like a museum without exhibits. To make up for the absence of home comforts, she found herself talking too freely, explaining her life story, desperation seeping through her every pore. She was sure prospective buyers had taken flight because of her mad ramblings and every month that passed without even a sniff of a reasonable offer represented another chunk of money down the drain. Her money. Her reward for years of servitude to a man who'd left her for a woman a year younger than their daughter.

She looked at her tired,
puffy-eyed
reflection in the dressing room mirror and wondered how and when age had crept up on her and distorted her looks. The trim figure had lost the plot from the waist down. Her thighs were of particular disgust to her. Mottled with cellulite, they made a chafing noise when she walked. Her hair was still quite good thanks to regular haircuts and tasteful tints, but her face, oh my God, she thought. Too many foreign holidays had scored indelible lines upon her skin and coarsened the texture. Worse, her features simply did not look as though they were in the right place any more. Most had migrated south. Her chin had lengthened while her lips had thinned. And where was the fine bone structure, the taut jawline? The shadows underneath her eyes made her look as if she had a kidney complaint.

She put the flat of her hands to her temple, yanking the skin up to where it used to be. Much, much better, she thought. She even felt like her old self again, a woman who was fun and dependable and confident. So that was the solution. Her face needed fixing. To her mind, it was no different to having a cap put on a wonky tooth, or taking antidepressants in a crisis. With the sale of the house, she'd have plenty of money to splash out on her new image. The technology was there so why shouldn't she avail herself of it? She'd read about the wonders of Botox, dermabrasion, laser treatment, fat injection, and acid peels, but apart from thinking she needed something more radical, she didn't want to go through excruciating pain if it wasn't going to yield
first-class
results. It was no use tinkering. Only a full
face-lift
could give her back her youth.

Forced to put her programme of rejuvenation on the back burner, her hopes for the future mired by the lack of interest in the only bit of capital she had, she hadn't bothered to sound out her friends. Anyway, she lacked courage. A ghoulish fascination for scalpel slaves and the latest procedures might take up hours of animated discussion over a cup of morning coffee, but it wasn't the sort of thing women talked about from a personal perspective. It wasn't smart. They'd much rather explain their looks in terms of good genes, the latest craze for Pilates, or vitamins. And there was the other barrier to cross. Should she have the bravado to reveal her secret desire, she'd be given the
Yo
u look fine as you are
line because, when it came to the crunch, no woman wanted a friend to look in better shape than she.

She reached for an advertisement she'd clipped from a magazine and read it again.

EMPOWER YOURSELF BY LOOKING YOUNGER

Thinking about cosmetic surgery? Then be reassured by one of our highly qualified representatives in the comfort of your own home free of charge. At The Parks clinic we have accredited plastic surgeons to carry out a wide range of cosmetic procedures to the highest standard. Beauty is only a phone call away. For an initial appointment …

(Financing available)

Her face creased into a smile. Her heart quivered with the small luxury of excitement.

At last she was in with a chance. She'd received the most interesting phone call that morning from Damian Fairweather, her estate agent. Mr. Stannard, a local property developer, wanted to view her house the following morning. He'd already done a
drive-by
, Fairweather said, and had fallen in love with it, but there was a slight difficulty.

“I appreciate that it's short notice but
no-one
from the firm is free to accompany the viewing.”

Heather assured him it wasn't a problem.

Fairweather cleared his throat. “I feel that I should warn you that Mr. Stannard was in an accident some years ago. He has a slightly unusual appearance.”

So what, she thought? She didn't care if he looked like Quasimodo as long as he bought the house. “It's not a problem, Mr. Fairweather.”

“Good, good,” he said with open relief. “I simply thought it fair to give you a
heads-up
. We regularly do business with him and I'm sure his interest is genuine.”

For the first time in a while Heather Foley's heart surged with hope.

twenty-four

“What's your favourite film?”
Chris said.

“
Godfather II
,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Because Michael Corleone's story …”

“The tale of a good guy corrupted by his family …”

“Could happen to any one of us,” I smiled. “And yours?”

“1950s French movie
Les Diabolique
. Don't bother with the remake, which was grim.”

I'd nodded at the time, feigning knowledge in a pathetic bid to impress him. Truth was, I was mesmerised by Chris. Later, I'd checked out the film. It was a nasty little tale of a vicious man, his wife, and a mistress. Essentially, the mistress and wife conspire against him, except there is a sting—the wife is secretly in league with her husband—and together, they frighten the mistress, who has a heart defect, to death. A trio of unhinged people, I'd concluded.

“Kim, are you up to speed?” Jim said.

I blinked. “Absolutely,” I said, squashing the memory.

Having arrived
bog-eyed
for work, I'd spent the first hour slumped
gratefully in a staff meeting while Jim held forth about schedules, treatments, and budgets. As soon as he'd finished I made a silent exit. Jim had other ideas. He marched straight into my office without knocking.

“About yesterday.”

Fuck. “Cathy told you?”

“The police.”

I attempted a smile but couldn't manage it. It all came out in a jumble. Stannard the stalker; Stannard not the stalker.

“The poor guy had botched surgery.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realised that Stannard had manipulated my emotions.

“Poor guy?” Jim sneered. “He's not the Elephant Man.”

This time, I did smile. Jim's frankness cheered me. I felt nothing but affection for him.

“Don't you see, whatever the man's agenda, guilty or innocent, he's playing on your sympathies, manipulating your good intentions?”

I looked at him squarely. “His surgeon botched his reconstruction.” I'd had an excellent plastic surgeon. My father had seen to that.

Jim didn't say anything for a moment. I could almost hear the electrical activity whirring behind his forehead.

“Setting aside Mr. S., I'll see what I can dig up about …” He hesitated, choosing his words with care. “The sort of person we're dealing with, from a psychological perspective.”

“A loner, obsessive, delusional,” I said. “Anything else you can bring to the trauma table, let me know.”

Jim arched an amused eyebrow, opened his mouth to speak, and clearly thought better of it.

“I've let Cathy know my schedules at Bayshill and vice versa,” I said, businesslike.

“Good. We'll do our best to screen things from this end. Whatever else, for God's sake, Kim, try not to dwell on it. If you need my help in any way, or if you're finding work difficult, let me know. You've got a holiday due soon, haven't you?”

“Three weeks in Devon, starting a week on Saturday.” With Chris. The Chris who I snuggle up to on the sofa, the Chris who likes Led Zeppelin and U2, the Chris who can talk to me for hours about Shakespeare's characters and make them sound like fun.
The Chris who likes strange films with dark story lines
.

“Best make the most of it,” Jim said.

My last patient was a bulimic
forty-year
-old woman with a long history of the disease and, consequently, terrible discoloured teeth. Afterwards, I fled from the Lodge with an unshakeable determination to concentrate on the weekend ahead. And that meant food.

Charlie and Claire were coming to dinner. I'd already devised a menu, the finale a sumptuous confection of Cornish cream and raspberries glazed with a thick layer of sugar—an excuse at last for the purchase of a professional blowtorch. Maybe I'd go the whole hog and buy a couple of other items on my wish list. I suddenly felt the pull of serious culinary retail therapy. A sucker for cooking gizmos, I browsed kitchen shops in the way most blokes walked around massive auto centres. Besides, I was glad to be
doing
. If I kept active and my brain busy, I didn't have to dwell on the other stuff.

With the sun bright overhead, I could feel the tension draining away as I walked along the street. It made me feel like a schoolchild on the last day of term.

After a brief dalliance with a
four-slice
glacier-blue
retro-style
toaster, I homed in on a fabulous set of kitchen knives with
rock-hard
titanium blades. They weren't on my shopping list, and I already had a decent number of knives in both homes, but I found the temptation irresistible. There was something about blades, which I supposed was a bit kinky. I liked the weight and feel of the handles. I admired their versatility. Sleek and unyielding, knives required skill and dexterity. With a knife in your hand, you were invincible. To fully persuade myself of the wisdom of an entirely unnecessary purchase, I imagined the ease with which I'd be able to bone out a piece of meat, slice and pare an
over-ripe
fruit, fillet a sea bass …
defend yourself
, a small voice in my brain interposed.

You could never have too many, I concluded, doggedly hefting the block and taking it to the counter. Next, I turned my attention to a
chrome-plated
blowtorch. According to the blurb on the box, it skinned, seared, toasted, and glazed—a sexy and serious piece of kit. With a flame temperature of 1500 degrees C, it was potentially lethal. It would require a degree of nerve. I'd have to be super careful. Still, it was a steal.

Laden with two heavy carrier bags, I trudged steadily back towards the Promenade, pausing now and then to window shop. Almost past Cavendish House department store and about to cruise down the classy row of designer shops, I felt as if something inside had tightened like a screw. I stopped, caught sight of my own suspicious mirror image, and spun around.

There were hundreds of shoppers in a myriad of colours, attitudes, and moods. But was Stannard among them? Screwing my eyes tight against the sun, I scanned faces—black, white, Asian—my instincts on full alert. Young couples walked hand in hand. A tanned businessman carrying a briefcase brayed loudly into a mobile phone. “Close the deal, for Chrissakes, or we're fucked …” Mothers chastised children. Adolescents cheeked parents. One small girl lay flat on her back in the middle of the pavement, drumming her tiny heels and screaming. Small boys with streetwise faces and pierced ears careered in and out of the crowds on skateboards. An old woman dressed in an oversized man's jacket shouted obscenities at the sky. The place crawled with humanity in all its weird complexity and Stannard was out there somewhere. I
sensed
it.

Alarmed, I crossed over to the other side of the square, picked up pace. A small crowd of Japanese tourists, hanging around outside Waterstones, made it almost impossible to pass. I squirreled my way into their party and, on impulse, hitched a glance over my shoulder, above their heads, and cast a long look back. The place seethed and, among the sea of people, one man stood out from the crowd. Wearing dark glasses, his face was canted permanently to the left. The newspaper he held in his hand, as if to protect his face from the harsh rays of the sun, gave him a slightly lopsided appearance. As he drew close with a purposeful stride, I could see that he was tall, probably over six feet, his body spare and toned. Every inch a businessman, he wore black tailored trousers with sharp creases, a
short-sleeved
ice-blue
linen shirt, and dark silk tie.
Was it him
? I angled my head to get a better view. My palms stuck to the plastic bags as I dumped them and pulled out my phone, my police case number taped on the back in case of emergency.

I held up the mobile to check the signal, which was good. He came closer still. I could make out a fine head of hair—dark, thick, and straight. In spite of the sunglasses, the side of his face on display was lightly tanned. He had a strong jawline.

Now, he was only a dozen or so shop fronts away. Tourists scattered. Still he kept moving. As if breaking out of a trance, I glanced anxiously around, getting my bearings. Stay in a public place, the police said. Don't confront him. Walk away. Phone.

He was looking straight at me. That's when he took off his sunglasses and let the newspaper slide.

I caught my breath. Terror slipped its chains.

One eye, including the brow on the left side of his face, sloped disastrously so that the region around his long slim nose was overcrowded. The mouth, which was wide and generous, curved down in a perpetual expression of displeasure, as if he were the victim of a serious stroke. Perversely, the skin was smooth—too smooth, for it looked inert, plastic. There was no evident scarring or puckering, no signs of fire, only blotchiness along the hairline like you see in skin that has been surgically treated. The area below the cheekbone caved in. From his fixed expression, I guessed that all involuntary movement was severely restricted. It was like looking at a death mask except the eyes were too bright. Almost a deep shade of topaz, they burned with an amazing intensity, lighting up his skull.

Twenty paces away and counting, I knew I should turn and run but couldn't. I stood rapt and rooted, like the princess in Sleeping Beauty, knowing the spindle was to be avoided at all costs, that it was dangerous, but unable to prevent disaster. With this man, I felt that same inexplicable fascination. More than that, I shared a strange affinity with him.

“Kim.” There was desperation in his eye.

The spell broke. I plunged my phone into my pocket, gathered up my bags, and took two steps backwards.

“Stay away from me.”

“I simply want …”

“Piss off.” I looked round, tried to catch the eye of a
well-dressed
woman walking past. The woman shook her head minutely and carried on as if I were trying to sign her up for a donation. I turned my gaze to two barefooted young men with dreadlocks. Same response. I was in a public place but nobody wanted to know. Nobody wanted to get involved.

Stannard spread out his hands inches away from me. I registered the plea, yet my heart was like stone, and I turned on my heel. At the sound of my name, I shoved the bag from my right hand into my left, pulled my phone from my pocket, and made a big gesture of putting it to my ear. Smart footsteps behind, I speeded up, the shopping like lead weights, making me list to one side. A blare of car horn and a burst of obscenities, a car speeded past and almost knocked me over. I didn't care. Stealing a feverish glance over my shoulder, I saw Stannard left behind.

Unappeased, I broke into a trot, ran past the imitation of the Trevi fountain, crossing the road at the lights, and let myself be swallowed up by a crowd moving in the opposite direction. Weaving and zigzagging across the pavement, I did my best to break up my outline so that I'd be less obvious to him, and thanked God for shade as I passed a row of parked cars beneath a canopy of trees. The operator picked up my call as The Queens Hotel reared into view. I rattled off the log number and explained the situation. Asked if he was still in pursuit, I looked back. By now I was level with Montpellier Gardens, where people spread out among the flowerbeds, eating sandwiches and sunbathing. I thought my heart would give out at the sight of Stannard only a short distance away, no break in step, no increase in pace, simply a dogged determination to get to me.

“He's still after me,” I bellowed above the sound of a jazz collective playing a seductive version of “Summertime
.”

“
Where are you exactly?” the operator said.

I gave the location. “I'm heading for the Bayshill Clinic.”

“
Can you make it to your destination?”

“I think so. I don't know.”

“We'll send a patrol car. It may take a few minutes.”

Breathlessly, I gabbled a brief description of what I was wearing. I broke into a jog, felt the pull on my muscles. My shopping weighed a ton and I could taste car exhaust and benzene. Sweat bubbled out of me. My chest heaved. A group of youngsters shambled towards me, threatening to slow me down. I cannoned through them, prayed for the police to hurry. Risking another glance back, I stopped short.

He wasn't there.

Rooted, lungs bursting, muscles screaming, heart pounding, I combed the street again, scoping the other side, narrowing my eyes against the fierce glare of afternoon sunshine. He could be in any of a dozen doorways. My breath erupted in short and painful bursts.

I had no time to consider. A patrol car pulled up.

PC Grant stuck his head out of the window. “Want a lift?”