Kitabı oku: «Wild Hunger»

CHAPTER ONE

GERARD FINDLAY was watching his fax machine roll out another irritated message from his news editor when he heard the screaming.

The noise took him back nearly three months, to the moments that haunted his sleep every night. He began to shake, waiting for the machine-gun fire, the deafening thud of rockets landing on their target, the smell of burning, the clouds of brick dust rising in the air, then his mind cleared and he remembered where he was, realised what he was hearing.

The noise came from the house next door and he was safe in London.

‘Those girls! Those damned girls!’ he said through his teeth, angrily aware of the perspiration trickling down his back. ‘One day I’ll wring their necks!’

From the day, six months ago, that he’d moved into a little mews cottage a stone’s throw from Chelsea Bridge he had been driven mad by the girls who lived next door. They were either having a party, playing loud pop music or yelling at each other from room to room. He had banged on the wall, gone next door to complain, and got nowhere. In the end, he had complained to the agent who had rented him his cottage.

‘One of them is the owner’s stepdaughter,’ the agent wryly told him. ‘The redhead.’

‘Oh, her,’ Gerard had said, remembering a girl who walked like a dancer, tall, slender, amazingly graceful, with a mop of vivid red hair and green eyes that reminded him of the slanting stare of an angry cat.

The agent had grinned at him. ‘Easy on the eye, isn’t she? Mind you, so is her friend, with the long black hair. They’re both models, you know.’

Incredulously, he had said, ‘You mean there are only two of them? There always seems to be a whole mob in the place!’

The agent had laughed indulgently. ‘You know what young people are like! Partying day and night. Look, I’ll report your complaint, but I can’t promise anything will come of it.’

Gerard had no idea how the landlord had taken his complaint. He had been unexpectedly dispatched next day, with a camera team, to cover a civil war in what had once been a peaceful little country, when the team who had been out there for some time showed signs of battle fatigue. It was unwise to leave them under strain of that kind for too long; their reports always deteriorated. Gerard himself had felt the strain before long, although he had only been in the war zone for a matter of weeks.

When he’d got back home from the hospital he’d noticed that the only tenant of the tiny cottage next door was now the owner’s stepdaughter, the redhead who moved as if she danced every step she took. Every time they saw each other, coming or going, she ignored him in a very pointed, icy fashion.

It was obvious that she knew he had complained to the agent about her and her friend, and she resented it. Had her stepfather blamed the other girl, the dark-haired one? And asked her to leave? Gerard felt guilty about that; he had rather liked the dark girl. When he’d first moved in, she had come round with sandwiches and a pot of good coffee while his removal firm was shifting furniture around. The removal men had been wide-eyed and fascinated. When she had gone they had wolfwhistled and said, ‘You lucky man, you! We’ll move in with you, with neighbours like that. Did you see her legs? Wow.’

Gerard might have been more interested, himself, if he hadn’t just quarrelled with a girl he had been dating for months. He had discovered that while he was abroad for weeks Judy usually dated other men, and Gerard resented it.

‘You mean you never stray while you’re away?’ Judy had been cynically incredulous and when he’d insisted that he didn’t she just wouldn’t believe him. It had been the end of the affair. He had been badly hurt, jealous every time he imagined her with another man. It had left Gerard too sore to want to get involved with anyone else just yet.

The dark girl had invited him to one of their parties, the following weekend, but he had been busy and had forgotten all about it. The next time they bumped into each other coming or going from the mews she had softly reproached him. He had made his excuses, and she had relented gracefully. ‘Well, I forgive you this time! Look, we’re having another party next Saturday—try and come this time!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m just off to Brazil,’ he had said, smiling wryly back.

‘For TV?’ she had asked, admitting tacitly that she knew who he was—and Gerard had stiffened up. Were they inviting him because he was a celebrity, his face on TV every night, in the news? Gerard didn’t enjoy celebrity. He was a reporter, not an entertainer. He hated it when people were friendly to him simply because his face came into their homes every night. When he’d worked on a newspaper he had never got that sort of reaction. Newspaper reporters were anonymous, faceless people, on the whole. Nobody recognised you; when they found out what you did they were usually indifferent, unless they had an axe to grind about some report you had filed on them or their relatives.

‘That’s right.’ Irritated, he added, ‘By the way, can you and your friend keep the noise down in the evenings? I have to get to bed early and you seem to be up half the night playing rock music. It’s giving me a headache.’

She had looked at him sweetly. ‘Sure.’

They hadn’t, of course. In fact, he had a strong impression that they had turned up the volume after that, and they had stopped inviting him to their parties. If Gerard banged on the wall the volume went up even higher. If he went round to remonstrate with them the redhead looked at him as if he were a slug which was eating her lettuce.

A sudden hammering on his own front door made him jump. For a moment he couldn’t move, paralysed by shock. Oh, pull yourself together! he told himself contemptuously. This isn’t the Civil War; you’re back home again, in London, safe. Aren’t you the lucky one? What if you were still there?

His doorbell was ringing, loudly and persistently; someone had their finger pressed down on it. ‘Hello?’ someone called through the letter-box. ‘Oh, please be in, please…help me!’

Gerard made it to the door, pulled it open, his black brows jerking together in a scowl which made the girl outside back away instinctively for a second.

Gerard was a formidable sight: a big man, lean and sinewy, muscular but light on his feet when he had to move fast. He was a squash player, swam every day, when he had time he worked out at the gym near his newspaper office and quite often walked a good deal of the way to work, unless he was in a tearing hurry.

‘I’m—I’m sorry to bother you,’ stammered the girl on his doorstep.

‘You’re the girl who moved out!’ he said, recognising her.

‘Sara Ounissi,’ she said, nodding, but she was too upset for polite chat. ‘Please, I need your help,’ she added pleadingly. Her accent was foreign, although her English was very good. The name sounded Arabic. She had told him her name before—he was sure it hadn’t been Ounissi, though.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, resisting when she tried to pull him out of his home by the hand. He suspected a fight between the two girls and didn’t want to get involved.

‘I have to get into the cottage; she won’t let me in, but I know she’s there—I heard her moaning. I’m afraid she’ll die this time.’

‘Die?’ he repeated, taken aback. What had the two girls been fighting over? A man? This one looked so gentle: slightly built, although like her friend she was tall, with elegantly long-fingered hands and slender feet, hair the colour of jet, smooth skin, with a soft, golden sheen, her great, dark eyes like a doe’s, liquid and sweet.

‘Please come; don’t waste time asking questions,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to answer, but she won’t.’

‘Maybe she isn’t in?’

‘Oh, yes, she is in there; I tell you I have heard her.’

‘You’ve quarrelled with her?’

‘No, no, you don’t understand…she’s very upset. She lost her TV contract this morning, a big advertising campaign, for Rexel, the cosmetics firm. Keira has been their “face” for the past year; you must have seen her on TV, putting on their makeup?’

His mouth twisted. ‘I rarely have time to watch TV.’ For the past three years he had been out of the country more often than he had been in it, and when he was at home the only programmes he watched were news and current affairs programmes.

‘But you are on TV every night!’ The dark eyes reproached him, accused him of hypocrisy, double standards. ‘TV is your business!’

‘Only the news!’ People increasingly confused news and entertainment, and it annoyed Gerard. He and his colleagues spilt their blood getting the news back to this country from war-torn parts of the world, and people watched as if it were all another adventure film, the blood just make-up. ‘And if I do catch a programme I never watch the advertisements,’ he said impatiently. ‘While they’re on I get myself a drink.’

The dark girl shrugged. ‘Well, Rexel is a big cosmetics firm and the contract was worth a lot of money. Her contract was up for renewal this week-and without warning they dropped her.’

‘That’s tough luck. I suppose she’ll miss the money? But aren’t her family wealthy? She won’t starve, surely? It can’t be a matter of life and death—’

Sara Ounissi interrupted fiercely, ‘That isn’t the point.’ She made a frustrated gesture with those long, delicate hands. ‘Keira takes rejections hard; they can trigger a violent mood swing. Her agent rang me to warn me she was devastated about suddenly being dropped by Rexel. Benny was my agent too; that’s why he rang me—I used to model. Fashion mostly—for magazines.’ She gave him an instinctive, faintly flirtatious look through her long, dark lashes. ‘Maybe you noticed me in one some time? But I gave it up when I got married last month. My husband doesn’t want me to go on modelling.’

Gerard’s brows rose; the women he worked with wouldn’t take kindly to being told to give up work by their husbands. ‘And you don’t mind that?’

She gave him a cool, dignified glance which resented the question. ‘His lifestyle will mean that I have a great deal to do at home; I wouldn’t have time to model as well. We travel a good deal; he has homes in Switzerland, the Gulf and Sussex. Luckily that was where I was this week. It took me ages to get up to London, and now she won’t let me in. I’ve been banging and calling for ages. I must get into the cottage—I suppose your key wouldn’t fit her front door?’

‘I hope not,’ Gerard said curtly. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want her letting herself in here whenever I’m away.’

The dark girl made an angry, spitting noise. ‘Oh, for the love of heaven! Don’t you get it? This is an emergency!’

He considered her, frowning. ‘What are you afraid of? Losing a job may be a bad blow, but it won’t make her suicidal unless she’s neurotic.’

‘You don’t understand. Keira…has a problem…’

Gerard’s mouth twisted contemptuously. ‘I see. Drugs.’ His tone was scathing now. ‘You’re afraid she’s taken an overdose?’

‘No!’ the girl said explosively. ‘She’s ill; she has bulimia…Now do you see?’

He looked blank. ‘Bulimia? That isn’t life-threatening. It’s just the opposite of anorexia, isn’t it?’

‘I thought you were a journalist?’ It was Sara’s turn to be scornful. ‘You should know about bulimia; it can be just as serious as anorexia. She eats and eats, and then deliberately makes herself sick. Eventually that can cause internal bleeding; she could be unconscious in there, could have choked to death. Since I moved out I haven’t been able to keep an eye on her; I don’t know what’s been going on.’ The girl stared at him, her face angry and desperate. ‘Look, if you won’t help, can I use your phone to call the police? There isn’t time to argue with you. I have to get to her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gerard said. ‘OK, then, why don’t we ring the owner? Isn’t he her stepfather?’

Sara’s face tightened. Gerard got the feeling she didn’t like the owner of the cottage. ‘He’s in Tangier.’

‘Hasn’t she got any other family?’

‘Not in this country.’

‘Oh. Well, we could ring the agent and ask if he has a key.’

The dark girl’s face lit up. ‘I should have thought of that! He’s just around the corner. I’ll go right away.’

‘Hang on, we should ring first—I’ll find his number.’ Gerard went back into his own cottage, with the dark girl on his heels, looked up the number, rang the agent’s office and spoke to his secretary.

‘He’s out at present. We do have a key, of course. Did you say Sara was there? Could she come here to pick it up?’

The dark-haired girl had been listening. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, and was gone, running.

He told the secretary she was coming and rang off. The fax machine was chattering again; he let the latest screed from his editor drop into the tray awaiting it, glanced at it, sighing. It was another refusal to send him abroad on a story. ‘Come into the office. I need to talk to you,’ it ended.

Gerard screwed it up and threw it across the room, then went out into the cobbled mews.

A hundred years ago horses had been stabled in these little gabled buildings which had been built at the back of gardens belonging to the big Victorian houses lining the streets on either side of the alley. After the Second World War the stables had all been converted into dwellings. They were highly sought after; painted in bright colours, each one had a window-box for a garden. Gerard’s house had a scarlet-enamelled front door with a brass lion’s head knocker. The brick walls had been painted cream, and he had planted geraniums in the window-box.

It was a warm afternoon in early summer. The mews was drowsy with heat, the scent of flowers and trees in the gardens behind. Most of the other occupants of the tiny cottages were at work; there were no families here—the houses weren’t suitable. Tenants were either single or couples without children.

Gerard climbed on to the windowsill of the ground-floor front room of the cottage next door and peered in at a pretty sitting-room, furnished in spring-like pale green and white. It was empty, and immaculate.

He hoped he wasn’t being made a fool—Sara Ounissi might have got the whole thing out of proportion…On the other hand, what if she hadn’t? What if the redhead was seriously ill?

Just for once he could actually do something, save someone. He had been helpless when he was covering the civil war; he could observe, report what was happening, but do nothing useful. That was one reason for the nightmares he had had ever since he got back. He was ridden with guilt.

He had barely spoken to the redhead—what had Sara Ounissi called her? Keira, he thought—unusual name; it suited her.

He had noticed her, though; who could help it? That lovely face, the mane of wild red hair, the grace of her body made her unforgettable.

He jumped down, banged on her front door. ‘Keira? Keira, are you there? Open the door.’

There was no reply, just an echoing silence, but he was beginning to have a weird feeling, a gut instinct that there really was something wrong. His instincts had been honed by his job. Constantly being around sudden death made you quicker to pick up on danger.

It didn’t always work, of course. Sometimes you got caught out. The villagers he had been with that last night before he was shot were now either dead or homeless. It had been a pretty, white-walled, redroofed little village with apple blossom on the trees in the gardens when he’d first arrived there. He had been enchanted by it, had thought of it as an oasis of peace in the midst of turmoil.

Perhaps the very arrival of him and his camera team had drawn the enemy’s attention to the village. They had only been there a short time before the first shells had hit. Within days it was just a mass of smoking rubble, a hole in the ground, and there had been nothing he could do to stop the destruction, to help the people, except to tell the world what was happening to them, and to do that he had had to risk his own life, and that of his team, by staying with them.

The others had survived intact—the cameraman, the sound man, the young director with them on his first war coverage. Only Gerard had been wounded. He had been got out finally by some British soldiers serving there with the United Nations force, flown back to London by his newspaper, given the best possible treatment. His head wound was healing well. It had been a scalp injury, nothing serious; a bullet had ploughed a path across his head, a bloody parting in his hair. The wound in his leg had left him with a limp, most noticable when he was tired. He had been assured that it would gradually pass off altogether. The injuries to his mind were longer-lasting and made him sensitive to atmosphere.

He was sure he wasn’t imagining the sense of disaster he was getting now.

‘Keira! Open the door or I’m coming in!’ he shouted. The builders who had converted this small cottage had used pretty flimsy materials; he was sure he could kick this door in without trouble.

But he hesitated—maybe he shouldn’t risk a physical assault on the door in his present condition? His leg wasn’t yet fully recovered. He wouldn’t want to undo the work of his doctors.

He could try a little light burglary, though. He had once interviewed a professional criminal who had cheerfully demonstrated his own skill at opening hotel doors with a credit card. Gerard had never yet got around to testing what he had learnt. Now was his chance to do so.

He got out his credit-card wallet, extracted a card; a photograph fell out and he picked it up, frowning down at the image of himself in diving equipment against a background of blue sea and sky. It had been taken on his first visit to the country which, unknown to him, was about to be dragged down into civil war. He had spent several holidays there before the conflict began. Gerard had loved the place, gone diving, lazed in the sun, visited the beauty spots, admired the archaeological sites, drunk the local wine, eaten peasant food, strongly flavoured garlic sausages, fish caught on the day you ate it. He had made friends with local people, picked up something of the language, as he always did wherever he went. He had felt no warning of what was to come so soon afterwards.

It had been a painful shock to go back and find the countryside he remembered as peaceful and sundrenched being torn apart by civil war, the worst of all wars. He had felt so helpless, so useless, faced with such terrible suffering. He couldn’t get over what he had seen; he had had nightmares ever since he got back—had woken up screaming in the hospital ward, fought with his nurses, been half crazy with rage and horror.

That was why he was still on sick leave, although he had been pestering the news editor to put him back in the game. He had been ordered to rest and recover mentally before they sent him abroad again.

They thought he was off his trolley, of course. Damn them! Didn’t they realise he needed to bury those memories under a heap of others? He needed to be busy, to have things to do to stop himself remembering.

Impatiently Gerard pushed the photo back into his wallet and turned his attention to the front door; he slid his credit card slowly and carefully into position. He heard a click and gently pushed; the door magically slid open.

‘Well, well, aren’t you clever?’ he said to himself, grinning, before he looked around.

The cottage was an exact replica of his own in terms of structure. The front door opened out into a tiny passage at the base of the stairs. Ahead of him he saw a kitchen, to his right the open door of the sitting-room.

‘Keira!’ he called, walking towards the kitchen door. Then he stopped, shaken by what he saw. It had been expensively furnished in high-tech style with every modern gadget and piece of equipment—but at the moment it looked as if it had been raided by vandals. The fridge door hung open, food spilled out on the floor next to it; there was partly eaten food on the table, on the tops of the cabinets, everywhere.

Otherwise, though, the room was empty. The girl must be upstairs. What sort of state was she in? He began to run, taking the stairs two at a time.

She wasn’t in either of the small bedrooms; both were feminine, delicately furnished, immaculate. The excessive neatness of the rooms compared to the disarray in the kitchen sent a shiver down his spine.

The bathroom door was shut. He tentatively turned the handle; the door wasn’t locked, but he didn’t like to walk in—first he tapped on it, called her name again.

‘Keira? This is your next-door neighbour, Gerard Findlay. Are you OK? Your friend Sara is worried about you. Open the door, Keira.’

There was a faint movement inside, then a low, smothered groan. It was enough to make Gerard forget social conventions. He burst into the room, flinched in shock at what he saw. She lay on the floor just inside the door, curled in a foetal position. As he stopped beside her she lifted her head as if it was heavy, turned her wet-lashed green eyes towards him, made a sound, like a terrified kitten.

‘Go away!’

She swallowed visibly; he could see that the convulsive movement hurt, saw her wince. No doubt her throat was raw. She must have been throwing up for a long time. She was as white as paper and her mouth was puffy and looked bruised.

Gerard was essentially a very practical man; his common sense took over.

‘Have you stopped vomiting?’ he quietly asked.

She closed her eyes, sobbed, put a hand to her mouth to stifle the sound, turning her head away from him as if to shut out the sight of him.

‘Go away!’ she gasped. ‘Please…just leave me alone.’

He took no notice. Bending, he lifted her bodily, putting one hand under her knees, another under her back. It was no problem to him—he was a very strong man; his muscles took her weight easily. She was as light as a feather anyway; she seemed to have no bones; he almost believed that if he dropped her she wouldn’t fall, she would float.

‘No,’ she wailed, but he ignored the protest, carrying her through into the bedroom. He lowered her gently on to the bed, sat her on the edge of it, still holding her with one hand while he pulled her thin blue silky tunic dress up over her head with the other.

She tried to fight him off, to stop him. ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped in panic.

He got the dress off, however, and threw it into a corner of the room. Under it she was wearing a one-piece garment, white silk, the top of it held up by fine thin straps over her bare shoulders, the deep white lace frothing over her breasts, matching lace ending at the pale thighs.

‘Bastard,’ she spat out, the green eyes flashing as she saw him looking down at her body curiously. ‘Get your hands off me. I’m not in such a bad way that I can’t stop you raping me.’ Her fingers curled into claws; she had long, pale, pearl-vanished nails which looked lethal. ‘I’ll have your eyes out if you try it!’

‘You must be joking!’ snapped Gerard, suddenly angry with her for what she was doing to herself. ‘You don’t think any man could find you sexy, looking like this?’

Her green eyes widened; she gave him a stricken look.

He grimaced, wishing he hadn’t said that. More gently, he told her, ‘I took your dress off because I thought you’d feel better in something clean.’

She took that on board and flinched as she realised what he meant. ‘Oh, God,’ she groaned, covering her face with her hands. ‘What do I look like? Don’t look at me. Go away; please go away.’

He laid her down on the bed and went over to the wall-to-wall fitted wardrobe. He pulled out a warm blue wool dressing-gown and brought it back to her.

She was lying on the bed with closed eyes, curled into the foetal position again as if wishing to retreat back into a time before birth, back to the safety of the womb. The wild red hair spilled over the pillow; her skin was like buttermilk; the small breasts with their dark pink nipples had the budlike look of a very young girl’s. Her bra was clearly padded. But those legs…His eyes followed the graceful length of them down to those thin, highinstepped feet. She was far too thin, but she was hauntingly lovely. A faery child, he thought; not quite of this world.

How old was she? he wondered, guessing her to be not much past twenty. Maybe twenty-one or two? A good ten years younger than himself.

‘You’d better put this on,’ he told her, and her eyes snapped open. She sat up and he held the dressing-gown for her while she weakly pushed her arms into it; Gerard knelt down to tie the wide blue belt around her tiny waist. She was so fragile it made him almost afraid to touch her, and he grew angry again.

‘How can you do such stupid things to yourself?’ he asked her, looking up into her face. ‘You don’t need to diet, you have a beautiful body; why are you trying to destroy it for the sake of vanity?’

‘Vanity?’ She laughed with a rising edge that made him frown. He didn’t think he could cope with female hysteria. ‘You think I like myself?’ she asked him wildly. ‘Don’t tell me I have a beautiful body; I know how fat I am. I have eyes; I can see myself in a mirror.’

He looked his amazement, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. ‘Fat? You aren’t fat! You can’t honestly believe that. If anything, you’re too skinny.’

‘Don’t lie to me! Oh, I know you mean well, but there’s no point in pretending. I’m not a fool.’

‘You may not be a fool but you’re definitely crazy,’ said Gerard grimly. ‘I’m going to ring your doctor, get you some help.’

‘No!’ She gripped his arm with fingers that dug into him. ‘I won’t see him!’ Her voice was hoarse but insistent.

Gerard had no idea what to do in this situation; he didn’t really know what he was dealing with. Sara Ounissi had been so urgent, so scared. And his first reaction when he’d seen Keira had been one of shock and dismay. Yet now he wasn’t sure how serious this was—she was very pale, admittedly, and everything she said disturbed him, yet he didn’t get the feeling that this was a silly girl, a butterfly with nothing much in her head. Her green eyes were far too intelligent, her mouth full and warm, yet determined.

He had better wait for Sara to get back; she would know what to do.

As if picking up his thoughts and echoing them, Keira moistened her bruised mouth with the tip of her tongue and said huskily, ‘You said…Sara was here? Where…?’

‘She went to get a key from the agent; I can’t think what’s taking her so long. Would you like a glass of water? Or is there any medication you take?’

‘Water would be wonderful, please,’ she whispered.

There was a sound of running feet on the stairs at that instant and Sara Ounissi appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She stopped dead, her long black hair tumbled around her white face, and looked at her friend hurriedly.

‘Oh, Keira…are you OK?’

Keira’s white mouth trembled into a faint smile. ‘I’m just fine,’ she said, and tried to get up. A second later she fainted. Gerard was just too late to catch her. She lay face down on the floor while he was still leaping to interrupt her fall.

‘Call her doctor!’ he ordered Sara before he picked Keira up again and put her back on the bed.

Sara didn’t argue. She hurried out without a word. Gerard thought wryly, Her husband must be a very happy man; I hope he knows how lucky he is! Why don’t I ever meet girls like her? Well, I did meet her, of course, and never tried to get to know her. How was I to know she was perfect wife material? But then I wasn’t looking for a wife. I’m still not, in fact.

Marriage was not part of Gerard’s game plan.

He turned back to look at the other girl, his brows dark, his eyes smouldering. He was desperately sorry for her, and yet he was affronted by her too. When he thought of the desperate struggle to survive in spite of everything which he had seen in other places it made him deeply angry to think that this stupid girl, with everything to live for, in a safe, sheltered country, was busy trying to kill herself over silly vanity.