Playing Dead (6 page)

Professional pride won. Saul fished out the photos and the neatly typed information; he handed them to Cara. And as Cara looked at them in growing disbelief, slowly her face emptied of colour, her hands tightening on the sheets of paper and the damning photos until her long, beautifully manicured nails dug in.

‘But . . .’ Cara glanced up at him. ‘What
is
this? You said he was seeing someone called Frances Ducane . . .’

Saul nodded. ‘That’s him. That’s Frances Ducane.’

‘But . . . for God’s sake! I thought you meant a
woman
.’

‘No. A man. I’m sorry if you misunderstood, Mrs Mancini. That’s Frances Ducane. His dad was a big Hollywood star; then there was a scandal and . . .’ His voice trailed away.

Cara was silent, staring at the pictures of her husband betraying her with a man. Finally, she said: ‘You can go.’

‘I’ll send the bill on,’ he said.

She said nothing. She was still staring at what he’d shown her: her husband of only a year, kissing a handsome young actor. Not even a woman. Her husband was cheating on her with a
man
called Frances Ducane, son of the more famous Rick.

Chapter 10

1950

Mud sticks. Oh, so true. Rick knew it. The first thing he’d done when he’d found Viv’s body was to phone the studio, tell them. They would know what to do; they would help him.

Only, they didn’t. He couldn’t get hold of anyone.

As he was going apeshit trying to figure out what to do, Frances came into the lounge and said, ‘I phoned.’

Rick stopped his anxious pacing and stared at the boy. ‘. . . You what?’

‘The ambulance. I phoned.’

Oh
shit.

He could see it all caving in on him. Could see it all hitting the fan.

He phoned the only one he could truly count on. He phoned LaLa.

‘Rick? What the fuck? It’s four o’clock in the morning.’

‘LaLa. You’ve got to help me. Viv’s dead.’

‘She’s
what?
’

Rick was standing in the hall. ‘She’s dead,’ he said again. LaLa would help. She would know what to do. ‘Looks like she slipped or something getting in the tub. Cut her head open. Either that or one of her drinking cronies whacked her. Either way, she’s dead.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh? Is that all you can say? LaLa, the woman’s
dead . . . Shit a brick . . .
’

The ambulance was pulling up, and the police. Frances opened the door to them.

‘Oh dear. Are the police there?’ asked Lala.

Then the press were crowding into the hallway, flashbulbs were popping in his face.

‘Yeah.
And
the press. Some bastard must have tipped them off.’

LaLa hung up.

‘LaLa? Hello?’ He redialled, but she didn’t answer. Anyway, the police wanted to talk with him . . .

Within days – hellish long days when the press camped outside, trapping him inside his own home with nobody but Frances for company – the studio heads wrote and very politely told him that he should consider his contract terminated, with immediate effect.

He phoned LaLa, but her secretary said she was in a meeting.

The day after the studio heads dumped him, LaLa dumped him too.

The papers came, and he flinched at the headlines.

‘
Secret wife of dashing movie star Rick Ducane in suicide drama
’, they shrieked.

‘
Mystery death of Mrs Rick Ducane
.’

‘
Did he do it?
’ Beneath
that
one, there was a picture of him standing in his hallway, white-faced with shock, holding up a hand to fend off not only the photographers but also disaster. But he couldn’t stop this.

Vivienne had killed him. Killed his career, killed his life.

The police questioned him endlessly, but his alibi was watertight. They hauled in a couple of her drinking buddies and questioned them, too, but nothing stuck. Finally, they seemed to be satisfied that Viv’s death was nothing but a tragic accident.

Within a month he fled back to England with Frances, and he never acted again.

Chapter 11

1971

Once she had recovered from the shock of it – for Christ’s sake, a
man
?
–
and had stood there for several minutes, staring out with sightless eyes at the sunlit sea and wondering how he would
dare
do that to her, Cara went quickly to her father’s study. He was busy of course; Nico, his right-hand man was there, standing beside him as he sat at the big walnut desk, and there were other men with him too. Her father was doing business, but there was no business that could be more urgent than this.

Constantine looked surprised at the interruption, but he quickly read her expression and apologized to the three men who were there with him and asked them to wait outside while Cara spoke to him.

‘Nico, can you go too please?’ Cara said, and flung herself down in a chair.

Nico looked at Constantine. He nodded, and Nico quietly left the room.

‘So what’s so important?’ asked Constantine mildly.

Cara flung the brown envelope containing the photos and the reports onto her father’s desk. Constantine looked at his daughter’s face for a long moment, then picked up the envelope and tipped out the contents. Cara watched him as he looked through them, giving each document and each photograph his full attention. Finally, he put the items back in the envelope and pushed it back into the centre of the desk.

‘I’m sorry, Cara,’ he said.

‘Not as sorry as
I
am, Papa,’ fumed Cara. ‘I knew. I just
knew
he was up to something.’

‘You used an outsider for this?’

‘I used a private detective. I didn’t want all the family and their friends knowing my business.’

Constantine gazed at her levelly. ‘But now you don’t mind, uh?’

‘Only you, Papa. I only want you to know this. I couldn’t stand to be made to look such an idiot.’ Cara stared at him and her eyes filled with tears. ‘He has
insulted
me, made a fool of me.’

‘So now you bring this to me. Why?’

‘
Why?
’ wailed Cara, red-faced with temper, the tears flooding over and running down her cheeks. She looked like a large, angry child – which, he thought, was effectively what she was.

Constantine loved his daughter. He loved
all
his children. But he wasn’t blind to their faults. Since her mother Maria’s death, Cara had taken on the role of only daughter with an almost missionary zeal. She had clung and cuddled close to her father, fawned over him; and maybe, to be fair, he had fawned over her too – rather too much, in fact. Annie Carter had come as an unwelcome shock to Cara, but maybe it was partly his fault that she was so hostile to Annie.

Now she thought . . . what? That he was going to solve her problematical marriage with a magical wave of his hand? He had warned her against Rocco before she rushed into wedlock with the boy. A few background checks had quickly shown that Rocco was lazy, feckless and inclined to fuck around. He’d warned her of this. But Cara, so used to getting her own way, had been obdurate. She wanted to marry Rocco; no one else would do.

Now
she was coming to him for help. He had many, many problems – the Cantuzzi family was trying to muscle in on some of his businesses, and they were going to have to learn the hard way that this was unacceptable behaviour. Always there were concerns.

He was the protector of many Italian families in New York, shielding them from the worst excesses of the American legal system by employing many useful people in the judiciary and the Police Department.

The Barolli organization had a system of payoffs in place, and a large ‘sheet’ or list of officials on a monthly wage, so no friends of the Barollis would ever face the trauma of prosecution.

The whole operation was unbelievably slick; Constantine had over many years made it so, and now it was an empire with him at its head and many layers of power beneath him. His sons had, of course, followed him into the business; Lucco and Alberto were
caporegimes,
or captains, and everyone beneath them was a soldier. He had his legal counsellor, or
consigliere.
It was a smooth, well-oiled system. He gave his orders to Lucco and Alberto, and those orders filtered down and were carried out; rarely did Constantine have to issue a direct order to anyone.

But such a complex business didn’t run itself. There were always problems to be resolved. Added to
that
, he had a gorgeous pregnant wife, and no time to spare for rescuing a silly situation that should never have arisen in the first place.

‘He’s insulted me. He deserves to
die
for it,’ said Cara.

Constantine sat back in his chair and stared at her.

‘The Mancini family are old friends to us,’ he pointed out. ‘Rocco is their youngest boy and he’s been spoiled. He wasn’t a good choice for you. As I told you, when you decided to marry him.’

‘I want you to do something to him, Papa,’ said Cara, sobbing now, nearly incoherent with rage. ‘I want you to hurt him. Break his legs.
Do
something.’

Constantine shook his head slowly as he looked at her. ‘You’re missing the point here. I told you. The Mancinis are friends of ours. We have reciprocal arrangements going all over town, all over the
country.
And you expect me to wound, maybe kill their youngest boy?’

‘If you love me, you’ll do it,’ hurled Cara.

Constantine leaned forward. His blue eyes held hers in a hard, laser-like gaze.

‘You know I love you. That isn’t in question here. What
is
in question is your choice of husband and what’s to be done about him if he’s looking elsewhere for his enjoyment.’

Cara jumped to her feet, overturning the chair. ‘Well you are
obviously
going to do nothing,’ she spat out.

Constantine sighed and leaned back. ‘I’ll talk to his father. Maybe between us we can come to some sort of arrangement.’

‘So you think all this is
my
fault?’ shouted Cara.

‘You made a bad marriage.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens.’

‘You don’t understand
anything
,’ she complained. ‘You’re too wrapped up in your new little cosy domestic setup. You don’t care about the fact that your daughter is being humiliated, that all my friends will laugh at me.’

Constantine rose to his feet in one swift movement. The look on his face shut her up in an instant. She’d gone too far; she knew it.

‘I understand
this.
My domestic arrangements are my business,’ he said coldly. ‘And if your friends laugh, then d’you really think they’re friends at all? And I also understand that only a
fool
shits on his own doorstep. Do you? The Mancinis are good people and I will
not
be damaging their youngest son to gratify your injured pride.’

Trembling, Cara nodded. She brushed angrily at her tears and glared at him. Why couldn’t he see that she had every right to be affronted? But she knew she’d hit a nerve; he was so totally absorbed with that English whore and her brat that he was neglecting his own family, his
true
family.

She felt that no one was on her side now, that
everyone
was more appreciated, more valued, than she was. Lucco was getting married to a girl of his father’s choosing and so he was, for once, very much in favour. Alberto was
always
in favour – that went without saying. And now – and this was the worst thing of all – the English bitch was going to present Constantine with a brand-new child. And as for Cara . . . well, she used to be the apple of her father’s eye. And then along had come Annie Carter, and all that had changed overnight.

God, how she hated that bitch.

And right now, how she hated
him
, her father.

Whatever he said, she was going to get her revenge on Rocco, one way or another. If her father refused to punish the bastard,
she would
. She was going to find a way to do it. She thought of Rocco and his fag lover, and vowed that Frances Ducane was going to
pay
for this. She wasn’t Constantine Barolli’s daughter for nothing.

Chapter 12

1960

‘What you need, my boy, is an arsenal,’ Rick Ducane told his son over and over again.

Frances was thirteen when it first occurred to him that his father was . . . well, more than a little screwy. He missed his mother. He couldn’t talk to his father about anything.

When they’d come back to England, Rick had become a bitter recluse. He’d bought a house called Whereys, an old red-brick Victorian pile with a big cluster of barley-twist chimney pots soaring high above its gabled roof. It was impossible to heat – Frances always felt cold there – and it was deep in the Kent countryside, miles from anywhere. Secretly, to himself, Frances called the house Where-The-Fuck, Kent.

He could still remember that wild night when his mother had been drunk, reeling, strange men drinking on the sofa, cavorting naked with her in and out of the bedrooms in the house; and then the next thing, Dad was home and there were police and ambulance men and press swarming over the place like ants.

That was the last time he ever saw his mother. Now, all he had in the world was dear old Dad, and Frances strongly suspected that Dad was Looney Tunes. Had a screw loose. Was barking mad.

That worried him.

And this thing his dad had about weaponry. He’d built up a vast collection of arms. A bayonet knife that – he never tired of telling Frances – he’d taken off a dead Nazi during the war.

‘Rigor mortis had set in,’ said Rick. ‘Had to break the bastard’s fingers to get it off him.’

Nice
, thought Frances.

There was also a Prussian officer’s dress sword. And guns, he was a maniac for guns.

‘People will try to hurt you in life, people will pull you down,’ he told Frances.