Darling Sweetheart (35 page)

‘Nicola’s fee,’ Timmins continued, ‘has been paid for the next twelve hours by the principal in this matter and I imagine that she charges an awful lot more than the girls at King’s Cross. But as with everything else in life, I supppose you pay for what
you get.’ Nicola grinned. ‘Thank you, Nicola. Now please wait outside.’ Deftly, the woman swept the items back into her bag and sashayed out the door.

‘W-who is the p-principal in this matter?’

‘That’s not important. What is important is that Nicola has two thousand pounds which is yours to spend any way you like – take her to dinner, take her to your flat, take her to a nice hotel. Take her to Paris, for all I care. Or,’ and he raised his mobile again, ‘we can see if Harriet is at home in Moulton St Mary…’

Passmore buried his face in his hands.

Two hours later, as daylight was fading, Donnie Driscoll stepped from a black taxi outside his home in Camden. It was a great neighbourhood for faces; Donnie was looking forward to freshening up with a few fat lines then strolling down to the Hawley Arms, to soak up some glory. Who knows, Kate might be there, or Sienna, or if it came to the worst, that silly Peaches creature. In spite of the stitches in his cheek –
because
of the stitches in his cheek – it had been a great day. A snap press conference at the hospital, then he’d negotiated a tidy sum with the
News of the World
for an in-depth weekend exclusive. Every cloud, eh?

As he paid the cabbie, he noticed a furniture lorry parked close by and wondered who was moving into which house and whether they were famous. The taxi drove off and a removal man with thick, black eyebrows and a golden earring sticking out from under a beanie hat waved a clipboard at him.

‘S’cuse me mate – I got somefink for number firty-eight!’

‘Thirty-eight? Hey man – that’s me!’

‘You Mr Driscoll?’

‘Yeah! What you got?’

The punch came so fast, he didn’t even see it. But he felt it; his nose and mouth exploded in an excruciating blood-ball and he folded backwards. Before he hit the road, gloved hands seized his arms. The removal man hoisted him across his back and
tossed him into the lorry like a sack of potatoes. Only now did Driscoll see that it was empty, apart from the mattresses strapped around its interior walls. As he lay stunned, the removal man rummaged through his jacket and took his mobile phone. Driscoll thought he was being mugged until the man slammed the roller door down. A padlock rattled into place and, a few moments later, the engine started with an almighty judder. Driscoll tried to stand up, but the lorry moved off and he fell down again. He tried to shout but only succeeded in spraying the dusty floor with crimson spots from his shattered mouth. With a sickening sense of panic, he realised that this was no ordinary mugging.

At the same time, Monica Goddard was opening her yellow door to her second unexpected caller of the day. She even thought that it might be Annalise back again already, but instead, a little bespectacled man stood on her steps. He held up a wallet, showing a silver badge beside a very official-looking ID card.

‘Sorry to disturb you; my name is Timmins, of the CID… Mrs Goddard, is it?’

‘Yes…’

‘I need to ask you a few questions, if I may, about a possible missing person.’

When she woke, they were on a motorway and the sky had filled with darkening clouds. Slow piano music seeped from the dimly lit radio; Mozart’s Twenty-third, she thought, but wasn’t sure. She peeped over at Proctor. He had another joint in his mouth and looked tired. Something was wrong. She felt around her tummy – Froggy was gone!

‘Where is he?’ She jumped upright. ‘What have you done with him?’

‘Relax.’ Proctor nodded at the dashboard. Froggy was on top of it, pressed face-first against the windscreen. She grabbed him and hugged him tight. ‘He said he was car sick, so I put him up where he could see the road and not puke on ma seats.’

‘Really?’

‘No. Strangely, the cuddly toy doesn’t say very much when you’re asleep. In fact, it says bugger-all. I was going to toss it out the window to see if it would cry for help.’

Annalise noticed a mobile phone on the dashboard, close to where Froggy had been set. She wound down her window, snatched it and threw it out.

‘Hey!’ Proctor yelled and braked hard, but a lorry behind them honked furiously so he couldn’t stop. A cacophony of horns and headlights flew past them as the van picked up speed again. ‘What the hell did you do that for? That phone had all ma contacts in it!’

Froggy sneered. ‘Number one, keep your hands off me, fallguy. Number two, I still don’t trust you.’

‘Stop that freaky shit!’ Proctor barked. ‘Ya better start talking like a normal person or this is gonna be a very short trip!’

‘Oh yeah?’ Froggy rasped. ‘You’re permanently stoned, so, go on, lay your version of normality on us, fall-guy – we can’t wait!’

Proctor appeared to sulk in silence for a minute, but really he was thinking of a way to stop the soft-toy nonsense. Obviously, confrontation was not the answer, so he changed tack.

‘Your frog didn’t talk when you were sleeping… but you did.’

‘Did I?’ She asked in her own voice, and Proctor notched up a small inner victory. ‘Er… what did I say?’

‘You kept saying “darling sweetheart”, over and over. Is that your coochee name for Emerson?’

‘No!’

‘Your boyfriend?’

‘I don’t have a boyfriend!’

‘An ex-boyfriend?’

‘No!’

‘Goody, I love this game. Is it animal, vegetable or mineral?’

‘It doesn’t mean anyone – I must have been dreaming.’

He smiled. ‘Were you dreaming about olive oil and a set of steel nipple clamps? ’Cos you mentioned those too…’

She laughed. ‘He’s perfectly foul, isn’t he, Froggy?’

Froggy croaked. ‘Actually, I wanna hear more about the steel nipple clamps…’

‘You’re just a pair of lewd, crude men.’ She stretched and looked around. ‘Where are we?’

‘See that orange glow on the clouds? That’s Leicester.’

‘Wow. Is Leicester near Scotland?’

‘No, Leicester is not near Scotland. Leicester is over two hundred miles not near Scotland.’

‘Oh. I need a wee.’

‘I warned you to go before we left!’ he admonished, which made her laugh again. ‘Actually, I could do with a pitstop myself, but when the cops are lookin’ for folk, motorway service stations come top of the list.’

‘This cloak has a hood…’ She demonstrated.

‘Aye, no one will notice you in that, especially if there’s a Harry Potter convention in the vicinity.’

‘Let’s see if I can find something for you.’ She knelt up in her seat and rummaged through the rear sleeping area. This was home to a few crusty duvets and some badly embroidered cushions, but eventually she came up with a peaked cap. It was black and battered with a logo that read ‘Whitesnake’. Proudly, she held it up.

‘This can hide your face from the CCTV.’

‘Whitesnake? Gimme a break!’

‘What’s wrong with Whitesnake?’

‘What d’you mean, what’s wrong wi’ Whitesnake?’

‘What
is
Whitesnake?’

‘Only the worst heavy metal band of all time!’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘White… snake. Geddit?’

‘No.’

‘Crap heavy metal bands aren’t exactly known for the subtlety of their sexual subtexts and Whitesnake were complete Spinal Tap. David Coverdale started them when he left Deep Purple, but he wasn’t even Deep Purple’s best singer, that had to be Ian Gillan.’

‘For a band you hate, you seem to know a lot about them.’

He nodded at the radio. ‘I prefer easy listenin’, in ma old age.’

She tossed the cap in his lap. ‘Well, I’m sorry I have no “Mendelssohn is your Daddy” hats; it’s the best I can do.’

‘Nothin’ with Raith Rovers back there, I take it?’

‘What sort of music did they play?’

He rubbed his face. ‘Christ help me… they’re a football team, love; a football team.’

‘Let’s play I-spy!’ Froggy piped up.

‘Let’s not.’

‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with R!’

‘Road?’ Annalise suggested.

‘No! Arsehole!’

Oh ha-ha,’ Proctor sneered, ‘you’re ever so witty when you’re hiding behind that stupid frog. We’ll stop at the next service station and get food and petrol, but then we need to figure out where to spend the night.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos you might get recognised if we book into a hotel.’

‘I meant, why is that a problem, when we have a camper van?’

‘Eh… would you be cool with that? It doesn’t exactly have separate sleeping quarters.’

‘I trust you. Froggy doesn’t, but I think I do.’

‘If just under half the popular vote was good enough for George Bush, then it’s good enough for me…’

They encountered no problems at the service station, but, even so, Proctor insisted on driving on afterwards for quite some distance. He left the motorway to travel up the eastern side of England along an A-road that took them past a gigantic spotlit sculpture of a human figure with aeroplane wings – the Angel of the North. Then, he steered in the dark down a succession of country roads until he found a track into a forest. He followed this to a lonely car park, hemmed in by black pines and vaulted by stars.

Annalise put Froggy to bed, tucking him under a blanket at the back of the van, whilst Proctor looked on sceptically but quietly. Then, with the side door open to the night, they lit a candle and ate the food they’d bought at the service station - an apple and a little cheese for her; a cold sausage roll and a bag of boiled sweets for him. They demolished a bottle of supermarket wine then Annalise opened another.

‘Good woman yourself,’ Proctor approved. ‘I’ll skin one up.’ He reached for his tobacco pouch. He still wore his cap, apparently having forgotten about it. He looked, Annalise thought, like a trucker.

‘I don’t normally take drugs, you know.’

‘Me neither. Just Mondays through to Saturdays then sometimes on Sundays after church. Cannabis resin isn’t a drug; it’s an important necessity in these troubled times.’

‘Ben…’

‘You used my first name.’ He licked a cigarette paper. ‘I have a horrible feelin’ that your next words are gonnae be “can ah ask you somethin’?’”

‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘Do you think I’d be sat in a forest in the middle of the night with a soft toy for bloody company, if I had a girlfriend?’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘Eh? What gives ya that impression?’

‘Just checking.’

‘Since you raise the subject, what about you?’

‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I caught my last one in bed with three schoolgirls.’

‘Christ… good answer. I wish I could say that about ma last girlfriend.’

‘Why did you break up?’

He shrugged. ‘Usual shite.’

‘Work, being away a lot?’

‘Kinda.’

‘You don’t talk shop, do you? Everone who works in film never shuts up about it, but you never mention it.’

‘Stuntmen get hit and fall over – what more d’ya need to know?’

‘Some of the biggest gossips I ever met were stuntmen – who they’d stood in for, who’s good to work with, who’s not. But you don’t say a word.’

‘That’s because I’m the strong, silent type.’

‘So what about that day on the rope? When you said I shouldn’t marry Emerson; what was that all about?’

‘Och… I was just messing. The lads dared me to ask – you had quite a fan club going there and you were right: they just wanted to know what the gossip was. Err… what are ya gonna to do about all that, anyway?’

‘About Harry?’

‘I meant the film, but yeah… the whole shebang.’

‘Do you know? I’d almost forgotten I was making a film.’

‘So why are you wearin’ that old dress?’

‘Roselaine’s?’ She pulled her cloak back to reveal it. ‘I suppose I don’t want to leave her behind, not entirely. I worked so hard to try to be her, and just when I was becoming her, all this… madness started.’ She waved a hand at Froggy.

‘That thing with the frog – is it for real?’

‘What do you mean, is it for real?’

‘It’s an inanimate object, not a real person.’

‘Shhh!’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let him hear you say that! I’m trying to get him to like you, but if you don’t believe in him…’

‘Annalise… when you make him talk, your lips move! I can see with my own eyes – you do his voice.’

She sighed. ‘Look. If you were me, would you not marry the Hollywood megastar, spend his millions and do a blockbuster movie every few years?’

‘If I didn’t have to have sex with him, I probably would. But what’s that gotta do with–’

‘That’s how I know Froggy is real – because it’s the worst possible moment in my career to have him back again.’

‘To have him…
back?’

‘Oh, Froggy was always there for me when I was little, he was my best friend… actually, he was my only friend. Then, when I was sixteen, I had another friend called Lucy but she didn’t last long and then my Dar… my dad died, so Froggy became my best friend again. But I put him away when a psychiatrist told me to, but now everything’s a dreadful mess so Froggy’s… back again,’ she finished lamely.

‘Sorry, but I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

She sighed. ‘I know that other people find Froggy… difficult. I find him difficult, but in his own way he helps me when I need him most.’

Proctor recalled his tactic of non-confrontation, although privately wondered how much longer he could keep it up. ‘“Always turn adversity to your advantage.” My old granny used to say that, usually when she was shooting her air rifle at the bailiffs.’

Annalise smiled sadly. ‘Your granny sounds a lot like my mum. Was she on your mother’s side or your father’s?’

Proctor lit his newly rolled joint. ‘Why do women always want to know things like that?’ She pouted and glanced over at Froggy; anxiously, he followed her look. ‘Okay, okay! Here’s everything worth knowing about me. My name is Ben Proctor. I’m from Kirkcaldy in Fife. I was born in 1974. I was raised by my granny – on my mother’s side, if it matters – and I’m a stuntman. The end.’

‘What happened to your mum and dad?’