Darling Sweetheart (32 page)

She sniffled. ‘Annalise Palatine, film star, and look at the state of me.’ Proctor laughed, and she gave a weak smile.

‘As long as you’re not doing that freaky voice.’

She tugged Froggy from inside her coat. ‘Whassup, fall-guy? Did you miss me?’

‘Me and my big mouth…’

‘Why are you helping us?’ Froggy demanded. ‘What’s in it for you?’

‘I am not,’ Proctor stared ahead, ‘having a conversation with a stuffed frog. You want to talk to me, you put that daft thing away.’

‘Bug-face,’ Froggy turned to Annalise, ‘tell this Scottish git that I don’t trust him. But you do look kinda crazy without any clothes. Tell him to take you home.’

‘This,’ Proctor snorted, ‘is ridiculous. A soft toy using a
human to communicate…’

Annalise patted Froggy on the head. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Proctor–’

‘Ben. It’s Ben. And keep using your normal voice, it’s much nicer.’

‘I’m sorry, but we’ve had a very eventful day and Froggy is a bit hyper. If you could take us to Greenwich, we’d be much obliged.’

‘Greenwich?’

‘Where I live.’

‘You realise that your home is the first place they’re gonnae come lookin’ for ya?’

‘It’s either that or take me shopping in the nude.’

‘That’s a very tempting offer, but Greenwich it is.’

Proctor wandered from the open-plan living room into the kitchen area and checked the fridge.

‘Great,’ he muttered, when confronted by a single jar of sun-dried tomatoes that sat, like a magistrate, alone on the centre shelf. ‘She never eats, either.’ He continued his inspection of Annalise’s home, taking in the stark walls and empty shelves. ‘I just love the way the décor reflects the depths of your personality,’ he called out, but there was no answer. Instead, he heard the staircase creak. ‘Bloody hell…’

She stopped halfway down, arms spread for effect. Her long, brown hair flowed freely about her shoulders. She wore Roselaine’s shabby dress, but now with a white, high-necked blouse underneath it, a pair of white woollen tights, black knee-length boots and a black velveteen cape. But the bit that worried Proctor was the brown leather belt buckled around her waist with the soft toy sticking out of it. He slow-clapped, and she curtsied.

‘Very tasteful,’ he nodded in mock-approval, ‘although it might stand out a little when you leave the asylum grounds.’

‘What would you know about clothes?’ Froggy sneered. ‘You’re from a country where men wear skirts!’

He opened his mouth to reply, but then stopped and raised a hand. In the distance, came the cry of sirens.

‘Now, who do you suppose that could be? Listen, if I’m going to get arrested here, I need to know what’s going on. Why does Emerson want to sedate you in the nude, for Chrissakes?’

She didn’t answer but descended the stairs, tucking what looked like a passport then a credit card down the bodice of Roselaine’s dress. Proctor shook his head. He watched from the window as a wailing police car stopped in the street outside, followed by a black people-carrier. Three police officers jumped from the first, four of Emerson’s bodyguards from the second.

‘Here come the Keystone Cops. I hope you’re ready for this…’

Again, she didn’t answer. He turned around and saw that the rear patio door lay open.

‘Hey!’ He ran out just in time to see her disappear into a gap in the hedge at the bottom of her garden. He dived in after her and nearly fell over a middle-aged couple stretched on loungers on the neighbouring lawn. They spluttered and sat upright; Proctor mumbled an apology then dashed after Annalise around the side of their house and into the next street. He had to trot to keep up with her walking pace. Wordlessly, she strode downhill then cut through Greenwich Park until they emerged opposite the Royal Naval College. Apparently oblivious to the looks she was attracting, she pressed on across a pedestrian area, most of which had been cordoned off by builders. It was where the
Cutty Sark
had once stood. Proctor stopped to draw breath; Annalise walked on towards the river.

‘Hey!’ he called after her. ‘Wait!’

But she disappeared into a small circular building topped by a dome, so he followed her inside, to where a spiral staircase descended into darkness.

‘So, Mr Emerson, this Proctor fellow – he’s Caucasian male, strong Scottish accent, early to mid-thirties, approximately your height and build, only thinner in the face and–’

‘Greasy-haired and slitty-eyed,’ Emerson snapped. ‘He was my goddamn stand-in, fella, but he ain’t me. Look, my chief personal assistant here will give you everythin’ we have on the guy – he’s a stuntman on my movie.’ He gestured impatiently at Frost, who stood by a large bay window in Emerson’s Dorchester Hotel suite.
‘Was
a stuntman on my movie,’ the star corrected himself, ‘the bastard is so fired he’ll never work again.’

‘And you say he’s armed?’ On the sofa opposite Emerson, Detective Derek Lowry took notes in a notebook. Lowry wore a plain-clothes suit, but he had arrived with a uniformed policewoman, Constable Audrey Beazely, who now sat beside him. Beazely tapped a plastic folder against her knee, as she wondered how much it cost to stay in a Mayfair hotel room that was twice the size of her Lewisham flat.

‘Goddamn right I say he’s armed! What I wanna know is what you Brit cops are gonna do about this? I mean, ninety minutes ago, a guy with a gun walks onto the set of my eighty-million-dollar movie and kidnaps my leadin’ actress and future wife! Yet here we are, drinkin’ tea and eatin’ goddamn crumpets! Y’know, fella, I’m a personal friend of your president, Mr Blur.’

Lowry gave the actor a neutral stare and refrained from pointing out that not only had the tea and crumpets been present when he and Beazely had arrived, but that Tony Blair had stepped down as British Prime Minister over two years previously.

‘Sir, I’m from the Serious Organised Crime Agency – we’re the equivalent of your FBI.’

‘Well yippidy doo-da!’

‘We only deal with the most serious offences. Constable Beazely here is from the Metropolitan Police–’

Beazely interrupted, ‘Do you have any idea of Miss Palatine’s
present whereabouts, Sir?’

Emerson’s jaw dropped. ‘What the… what sorta dumbass question is that? If I did, d’ya think I’d be sittin’ here talkin’ to
you?’

Lowry shot Beazely a look and lifted a hand, to re-establish his primacy. ‘Sir, our first task is to identify what offence we’re dealing with, if indeed we are dealing with an offence. For example, are you sure this isn’t your cast or Miss Palatine herself playing an elaborate hoax? I believe that practical jokes are quite common on film sets.’

‘Not,’ the response was glacial, ‘on mine.’

‘Does Miss Palatine have a relationship with the suspect? Is he a friend? Something more, perhaps?’

‘No way!’

‘But you say she willingly went with him?’

‘Bastard had a gun!’

‘We have armed officers on their way to her home right now. It’s possible they’ll find her there.’

‘My guys are headed there too.’

‘I hope they know to stay within the law and not to interfere with police activity.’

Emerson sighed. ‘Those guys couldn’t interfere with a handcuffed baby. What if she ain’t there?’

‘Then we may, and I emphasise
may
, have a kidnapping on our hands as you allege. But we need to be certain. Can I ask you about Miss Palatine’s behaviour in recent weeks?’

He tautened. ‘She’s been makin’ a movie – we all have.’

‘Yes, but has her behaviour been unusual in any way? We need to eliminate all the possibilities. If, as you say, she does not know this man, does she perhaps take drugs, drink heavily or is she in some sort of financial trouble?’

‘Fella, Annalise Palatine is the squarest broad I ever met! Do I
look
like the kinda guy who would marry a junkie?’

Now Lowry nodded to Beazley, who opened her plastic
folder. She extracted an
Evening Standard
newspaper, which she passed to Emerson. ‘It’s the late edition,’ she explained as the star scanned the front page with an expression of growing incredulity. ‘PLANTED BY PALATINE’ howled the headline, beside a photograph of a man with black spiky hair, rodential features, a blackened eye and a bloody gash on one cheek.

Frost now witnessed an amazing first: she had never seen her boss stuck for words before.

‘I…’ he began, ‘we had no… I mean… this guy… what the hell…?’

‘Were you aware of this incident?’ Lowry’s stare had hardened somewhat.

‘No!’

‘You’re quite certain about that, Mr Emerson?’

‘I have no idea,’ Emerson held up the front-page photo of
Driscoll, ‘who this fuckin’ freak is!’

‘But now you see why we must examine all the possibilities? If Miss Palatine is missing, perhaps she is simply hiding from the police? And the press, for that matter.’ He glanced at his notes. ‘You just confirmed that she is your fiancée; if you knew where she was, or if you were making a false statement to the police, there could be serious consequences.’

‘Do you know where Miss Palatine is, Mr Emerson?’ Beazely repeated her question, mainly to relish the mixture of astonishment and fury on the star’s face. ‘Because we’re seeking her help with our inquiries…’

After the police had finally departed, Emerson stood on the terrace of his suite, staring across the tree-tops of Hyde Park. Frost joined him. She snapped her mobile phone shut.

‘That was Levine; he reckons she went to her house, but she’s not there now.’ When her boss didn’t answer, she moved a step closer and experienced her second surprise of the afternoon – his eyes were moist. ‘Oh, Harry…’ She put a hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away, snarling.

‘If this movie goes down, I’m screwed! You’re screwed! All this…’ he gestured at the terrace, the suite, the view ‘… is completely fuckin’ screwed! You
know
how much I have ridin’ on this thing! I’m down to my last fifty million dollars, Judy! My last,’ he yelled, ‘fifty … million!’

‘I know.’ She wanted to reach out and hug him but didn’t dare. He slapped the metal railing.

‘We gotta find her! We gotta find her before she gets herself locked up! London was a mistake,’ he sighed. ‘Callin’ the cops was a mistake, and I admit, I shoulda listened to you about gettin’ to know Palatine a bit better. But we’re committed now. We gotta find her before the cops do. We gotta get her back to France and get this show back on the road! We’re nearly a week behind schedule and every day is costin’ me money. You and
me, we gotta turn this around real fast!’ Frost nodded vigorously and, she hoped, sympathetically. ‘Okay,’ he continued, ‘listen carefully: I need you to hire the best. Do you understand me? The absolute best. Whoever that is, I wanna see them sittin’ here in my hotel suite as a matter of extreme urgency.’

‘On it, H.E.!’

‘Me, I gotta ring the studio and explain why I need yet another new director. Believe me when I say that you got the easy job.’

‘I don’t understand!’ Proctor protested as he trotted after her through the reverberating, white-tiled passageway. ‘Where are you going and what
is
this place?’

Annalise took Froggy from her belt. ‘It’s a tunnel beneath the Thames,’ he croaked, ‘but you’re more than welcome to try swimming across instead.’

‘Do you see those people?’ Proctor pointed at a group of tourists, passing in the opposite direction. ‘Do you see those people? They’re starin’ at you as if you’re mad. Do you know why? Because you’re talking mad, you’re acting mad and you flaming well
look
mad!’

‘Hey fall-guy,’ Froggy sneered, ‘you weren’t invited to the party, so why not walk away?’

‘Because
someone
has to look after you! You’re gonnae get raped, arrested or beaten up! And where are you going, anyway?’

‘To boldly go where no pissed-off soft toy has gone before!’

‘And where would that be, exactly?’

‘Kensington.’

‘Kensington? As in Harrods, museums and Lady Di? Why Kensington?’

“‘Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come, in yours and my discharge.” That’s
The Tempest
, Act I, Scene 2.
The Tempest
is a play, by the way, written by some bloke you Scots
have never heard of.’

‘You’re deranged.’

They were almost at the north end of the Greenwich foot tunnel.

‘Hey,’ Froggy pointed out, ‘you’re the one who’s followin’ a deranged person around.’

Somewhere in Shadwell, within sight of Tower Bridge, Proctor finally fell against an abandoned shop-front.

‘Stop!’ he called after her. ‘I can’t keep up! Me legs are killing me!’

‘Are you a stuntman,’ Froggy shouted back, ‘or a raspberry-flavoured pussy willow? We’re on a mission here!’

Annalise strode on, her hair and cloak wafting about her, apparently unbothered by the traffic-fume-filled air that choked Proctor as he gulped for breath. The actress, he was beginning to realise, was fitter than she looked. He glanced desperately around. Across the busy main road, he spotted a battered, old Volkswagen camper van parked outside an unsalubrious block of flats. Dodging the traffic, he made his way over to it. He walked casually around it – the tyres seemed all right. He took a pen-knife from his pocket and within twenty seconds was inside. The interior smelled musty – for a moment, he thought it might not start but, after a bit of fiddling with the wires beneath the steering column, the engine coughed noisily to life. He moved slowly away. Before pulling out onto the main road, he took a mobile phone from his pocket and quickly sent a one-word text.