Chameleon - A City of London Thriller (34 page)

Dee dragged
the man’s arms away from his face but it was too dark to see who he
was. He resisted.

“
Stop rubbing
the stuff into your eyes, you stupid sod,” she shouted.

She pulled his
arms behind his back and tied them together with her scarf,
wrapping the ends around his ankles for good measure. Trussed up
like a turkey, she was saving him from himself as much as
restraining him.

The torch
arrived, and Bobby pointed it into the man’s face as Dee opened the
water bottles and squirted the contents of each into her
assailant’s eyes. He yelled and screamed but he could not resist.
Dee held his head up and, opening one eye at a time, she squirted
water in, rinsing out the bleach. When she was happy that both eyes
were thoroughly rinsed, she took her own handkerchief and one from
Bobby. Folding them carefully, she placed one over each
eye.

Katie came to
Dee’s side and saw the man’s blistering red face for the first
time. She shrieked his name in shocked surprise.

“
Rob
Donkin!”

***

By the time
the paramedics had arrived and squirted a gooey salve into the
young man’s eyes, he was in shock. He wasn’t moving but he was
still groaning. The paramedic took a syringe, tapped it and
injected Donkin’s left arm. Donkin noticeably relaxed, and the
paramedic removed his restraints, holding the scarf out for Dee to
take. He looked at her coat.

“
You’re
covered in it as well,” he noted. “Do you need me to take a
look?”

“
No, it’s
only on my clothes. I’ll be fine. Just get him to hospital before
the stupid little sod loses his eyesight.”

Back in Green
Earth offices, Dee discarded all of her outer clothing and washed
any signs of bleach from her skin. Katie came in with some Green
Earth branded clothing and some Tea Tree balm, which she tenderly
applied to the red patches on Dee’s skin. Once Dee was fully
dressed she examined the damage more closely. She had a couple of
red patches on her ear and on her neck, and she could expect to
lose some hair colour, but generally she was fine.

Dee looked
over to thank Katie for her help and saw tears in the younger
woman’s eyes.

“
I didn’t see
anyone in that alleyway, Dee; I would have walked right into that.
I don’t know how I would have coped if you had been hurt protecting
me.”

Katie then
rushed into Dee’s arms, pushing the older woman back against the
countertop.

“
That what
you pay me for, Katie,” Dee reminded her soothingly, as she hugged
her young friend and kissed the top of her head.

***

An hour later
in the hotel suite the two women were relaxing in their pyjamas and
robes when they heard a brisk knock, followed by a muffled voice
from the other side of the door.

“
Dee, it’s DC
Knox. We met last year.”

Dee checked
the TV monitor that showed who was outside the door, just to be
sure. She smiled as she saw Detective Constable Knox of the
Metropolitan Police, whose round friendly countenance Dee recalled
with warmth. She invited him in, and they spent a few minutes
reminiscing in the hallway about the case in 2009 where they
met.

Eventually the
two old friends came into the lounge area and Dee introduced Katie
Norman. Katie’s hair was brushed out, her face was make-up free and
natural, but the thirty year old DC was still besotted with the
star. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“
I can’t
believe I’m meeting you face to face,” he spluttered, losing any
cool or ‘street cred’ he might have imagined he
possessed.

“
I’m always
happy to meet one of Dee’s former boyfriends,” she teased. Knox
flushed and spluttered again before Dee rebuked the young starlet
with a single word. “Katie.”

DC Knott
composed himself and explained that Donkin had managed to get hold
of some commercial strength bleach which contained around thirty to
forty per cent concentrate, whereas domestic bleach contained only
around five to fifteen per cent concentrate when compared to the
whole volume of the container. It seemed the enraged publicity
seeker had then poured the solution into a plastic water cannon
designed for children’s water fights in swimming pools. It became
clear that Dee’s kick must have sent the nozzle back in Donkin’s
direction, dousing him with a face full of bleach. To make matters
worse, the plastic container had cracked as well, pouring the
remaining contents all over the would-be assailant.

Donkin had
well and truly been “hoist by his own petard”, in the words of the
Detective Constable, who continued; “You may have saved him from
blindness with your quick action, Dee, but the medics say it’s too
early to tell. His eyes are badly burned.”

Katie came
over and sat beside Dee, holding her hand. Neither woman would have
wished this on Rob Donkin, but they both knew that the idiot could
have blinded them both had Dee not reacted as she did. They both
concluded that there was little or no chance that, having filled
their eyes with aggressive bleach, Donkin would have stayed around
to rinse out their eyes with clean water. He was a coward at heart,
and they rightly assumed he would have run away.

In the next
forty five minutes DC Knox took down their statements, acknowledged
that they were free to fly to the USA as planned, and then stood to
leave, hugging Dee and telling her that he was delighted that her
gunshot injuries from the previous year had healed so
well.

“
Don’t I get
a hug too?” Katie demanded.

DC Knox didn’t
wait for a second invitation, and Katie winked at Dee over his
shoulder as Dee simply shook her head and smiled.

Chapter
4
8

Port
Everglades, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, Friday 8am.

The cruise had
been fun, and Gil had even managed to grab a couple of hours’
sleep, but in a few hours she had crossed that narrow channel of
the Atlantic Ocean separating the Bahamas from the USA. The Port
Everglades Cruise Terminal was a far cry from the terminal in
Nassau; to begin with it was filled with cruise ships four times
larger than her own. The brilliantly white ships bore different
cruise line logos, the most prominent being Royal Caribbean, and
were ultra modern in their design. Gil walked down the gangplank
onto the concrete jetty a couple of hundred dollars lighter than
when she embarked. She was no gambler. In a few moments she reached
the terminal building and, for the first time ever, she was
standing in the ‘US Passports Only’ queue.

“
So, Miss
Miles, you have a US passport and this is the first time you have
used it?”

“
Yes. I read
on the Homeland Security website that US passport holders should
present their US Passports on entry and exit.” Gil had been
expecting a mild inquisition, even though entering the US from the
Bahamas through Fort Lauderdale was an extremely casual experience
compared to entering the US via one of the major
airports.

“
Welcome to
the USA, Miss Miles, and congratulations on achieving dual
nationality. Enjoy your stay.” The border control officer handed
Gil back her new passport and smiled before summoning up the next
passenger.

Gil was in
sunny Florida. The sun was shining but the temperature was in the
low sixties Fahrenheit as it was still early. The average daytime
temperature in January and February was around low seventies. Amply
warm enough after the severe winter she had survived in the
UK.

She had a free
weekend ahead of her before she travelled north to Virginia, and so
she left the ferry terminal, crossed the road and stepped onto a
free air conditioned coach, decorated to resemble a cruise liner.
The decals down the side of the bus read “Disney Cruise Lines”. Gil
was joining numerous other cruise passengers and was heading to
Walt Disney World. As soon as she sat down the video screen lit up,
and Mickey and Minnie Mouse beckoned her to the “Happiest Place on
Earth”.

The coach
doors closed with a hiss and the bus moved off to make the three
and a half hour journey to The Grand Floridian Hotel in Orlando.
Built on the lakeside overlooking Disney’s Magic Kingdom, it was
one of the most exclusive resort hotels in the USA. Gil relaxed
into her reclining seat and smiled to herself. No-one had any idea
where she was, she had millions in her Cayman Island account under
the name of Talgarth Business Services Inc, and she was on her way
to meet her hero, Donald Duck. Life didn’t get any better than
this.

***

It was almost
2pm in the UK when the call came through to Maureen Lassiter. Still
sore from the night’s exertions, she shuffled in her seat to find a
comfortable position. She listened whilst her contact in the
British Embassy confirmed that Gillian Davis had not returned to
her hotel and was not expected to do so. After many threats, bribes
and favours, the attaché had discovered that no-one matching her
name or description had flown from Havana. That information was
useless, as he freely admitted.

“
She could be
planning to stay in Cuba forever as far as we know, and we will
probably never know if she has created a new identity here. She has
so much money she may never surface,” the attaché pointed out on
the phone, which enjoyed better clarity than her internal line
within Thames House.

“
The odds are
that she has left, or will leave soon under an assumed identity,
possibly after changing her appearance. I fully expect the travel
rep to be on the phone soon, reporting her missing. The Cubans are
still uncomfortable about having Westerners circulating freely
around Cuba without supervision,” he added.

Maureen
thanked him for his help, whilst biting her tongue to prevent her
saying what she really thought about their amateurish surveillance
efforts. Barry had already guessed that she had slipped away,
giving the snatch team only the slimmest of chances of apprehending
her in her hotel. He had been angry, frustrated and quite violent
in their lovemaking, before holding Maureen in his arms and falling
asleep. He didn’t see her crying. She liked raw emotion and
unremitting passion, but a lover could go too far and Barry had
crossed Maureen’s invisible line. But what could she do? She loved
him. Things would be better when this episode was behind them and
they were living somewhere serene as husband and wife.

***

The last few
hours of Katie’s time in London were spent in the offices of her
agent, where her publicist and agent were filling her calendar with
film premieres, fashion shows, awards ceremonies and chat shows
around the world, without any consideration of how she would fit in
her degree studies.

As Katie and
her advisers argued in an adjoining office, Dee scanned the web,
looking at the newspaper sites. Rob Donkin had made the front pages
of the tabloids for the second day in a row, usurping riots in
Greece and unhappiness amongst the populations of the Middle
East.

The Daily Post
led with the story of Donkin’s injuries, sustained during his
attack on Katie Norman. Not one paper had thought to mention that
Katie was safely secured inside the building when the attack took
place. They were all looking for the most shocking headline, and
the fiction that the nation’s favourite actress had been terrorised
was much sexier than the truth. The Daily Post excoriated Rob
Donkin, despising the shallowness of his section of society and
decrying the cult of celebrity which enabled unbalanced people to
become celebrities without doing anything. Dee noted that in the
sidebar next to the article there was a string of photos, beside
which were headlines exclaiming; film star photographed by the pool
in LA in a bikini, Pop Star and winner of a TV talent show who has
only one single to her name gets a new tattoo, and finally, sixty
year old soap star who had a fling with toy boy has rampant
cellulite.

Dee briefly
wondered whether the newspaper editors were even vaguely aware of
their blatant hypocrisy, and then decided that they probably were
but that they simply didn’t care, as long as their newspapers sold
in large numbers.

***

The meeting
with Katie’s PA, Jordan Phelps, an Oxford graduate who was paid by
the film company, spilled over into the journey to Heathrow
Airport. As was usual with individuals who travelled through the
VIP terminal, their luggage travelled separately. Dee had returned
to her flat in Greenwich, which seemed so empty without her husband
Josh around, to throw a few things into a suitcase. She could buy
what she didn’t have with her when she got to the US. She could do
with some retail therapy and she was on expenses, after
all.

As Katie and
her young male counterpart settled her calendar, Dee rang Josh, who
was still in Dubai. She had emailed him about the attack, and he
was genuinely scared for her. She knew that he didn’t like her
‘hands on’ role in personal security, even though that was how they
had met, but he would never say so. Josh knew Dee well enough to
know that she could usually take care of herself. In a supreme act
of irony, the airlines had conspired to have Dee fly out from
Heathrow only hours before Josh arrived back. They had been apart
now for too long, but they would have to wait a little longer for
their passionate reconciliation. They had been married for only a
few months, and as far as they were both concerned the honeymoon
period was still in full swing.