Kill For Love (2 page)

It was a virtually silent journey, a candle-lit
procession as everyone around her seemed to be mentally rewinding and replaying
the concert, the only sounds being the shuffling of feet as for thirty minutes
she was carried along by the flood.

And when eventually she was washed up close to
the new Buckingham Hotel in Mayfair, where
Jesse Gadden was holding his goodbye party, she wasn't entirely surprised.

Chapter Two

"So, what do you think, laughing lady? Did
that look like a farewell concert to you?"

Kate looked around. Beaming down
at her in the lobby of the hotel was a tall, shaven headed young man in old
jeans and a Kasabian T-shirt. A large leather bag was slung over his shoulder.
“Greg!” she smiled. “I should have known you’d be here.”

Greg Passfield kissed her. They’d
been friends since they’d met on a training course early in their careers,
since when she'd done brilliantly, and he, now a freelance radio broadcaster
who specialised in rock music, hadn't. “You know me,” he laughed. “Never one to
miss what might be an iconic moment.”

“
That
was an iconic moment!” she said, showing the Press invitation
she’d never intended to use to the requisite pretty girl on the guest desk.

“What else? The last big free
concert of the last tour…if he means what he says about retiring.”

“You don’t believe him?”

Greg pulled a face, waiting as his
bag was searched by a security guard. "Why would anyone retire when he has
the world in his hands?"

"An early sign of Sinatra
syndrome?"
 

"You mean he's going to pull
a stunt like this every year until he's eighty? Jesus!” And together they
joined a wedge of glossy, noisy party-goers entering a lift, to be immediately
expressed thirty two floors to the hotel's roof gardens.

"All right then, what about
the ultimate adolescent sulk?" she resumed as, picking up glasses of
champagne, they made their way through a glass domed Arcadia. "Perhaps he’s just saying,
'You
don't love me enough. I'll leave you. You'll be sorry then'
."

"They could hardly love him
more! You must have noticed.”

 
"Yes…” Kate hesitated for a moment. “But
they were very quiet. I’ve only just realised. Subdued. After the concert, too.
Half a million people moving through London
and hardly anyone saying anything."

"Isn't that how it is with
kids today! Deaf, dumb and blind! It's always like that at Jesse Gadden
concerts. Didn't you know?"

"No, I didn’t know."
She'd told them she was out of touch.

Greg dropped his voice.
"Anyway, enough of Jesse Gadden, what about you? Fully recovered? I must
say you’re looking terrific." Greg had been among the first to visit her
in hospital.

"Never better." And her
eyes went to a CCTV camera that was panning the party.

"Really?"
 

“More or less. But…I want to get
back to work.
Proper
work.
And..."
 

"Yes?"

"Well...my sort of stories
don't happen in Hyde Park. You know that.
Every other day I put in a request to go to Afghanistan
or Somalia
or... But they always send someone else."

"They're probably just
looking after you. You should be grateful. Have you told them how you
feel?"

"I've tried. But you know how
it is with bosses…only ever hearing things they want to hear, then interfering
when you don't want them to." She fell silent. She was looking down at the
lights of late night traffic moving across London, but other pictures were leaking into
her mind: a Cartier tank watch on a chubby black wrist; a new, white trainer
with blue trim encrusted with blood.

"Are you all
right?"
 
Greg was watching her.

"Yes. Yes, of course."
She pulled herself together, embarrassed. "Sorry." She changed the
subject. “How’s Harry, anyway?”

Greg winced. “Off to Stockholm next week. To
work.”

“Ah…”

“Right! It’s a terrific
opportunity for him. Great new job. But…God knows what I’ll do stuck here
without him.”

She sympathised. Greg was in love.
“Sweden
isn’t so far. Only a weekend flight away.”

“I know. I’ll probably book a
season ticket.” He looked around. The party was now becoming increasingly
noisy. "No sign of the man himself, I notice. Look, I'm supposed to be
working, picking up some post-concert reaction for tomorrow morning’s Radio
Five. What about a drink some time?"

"Yes! Please. Any time."

"Great! I'll call you. And if
you see anything that looks like my kind of work, give me a shout!"

"Promise."

Then with an affectionate squeeze
of her arm, he moved away into the expensive murk of the crowd, pulling a
digital recorder from his bag as he went.

Alone again, Kate was aware of
eyes upon her, as guests recognised her, those with famous faces bestowing the
friendly glances the well known reserve for each other. She didn't encourage.
Having a familiar face might be like belonging to an exclusive caste, but it
had never made her feel she had to be friendly to perfect strangers. Besides,
she knew why her face was so memorable at this particular moment, and she
wished it could have been otherwise.

She would have left then, but the
prospect of another battle with the mob outside deterred her. So, collecting a
late dinner, she allowed her colleague from the WSN entertainments desk, the
effervescent Hilly Weston, to attach her to some television people, and settled
into a garden seat to half-listen to their gossip.

It was after midnight when she saw
Petra Kerinova. Loud music was now playing, a recording from an earlier Jesse
Gadden tour, someone said, when a tall woman in her mid-thirties, with cream,
almost ivory hair pulled back off a white face, dressed in black silk trousers
and shirt, and accompanied by an escort of agreeable looking young men and
women, made her way across the roof garden.

For a distinct moment, Kate
realised, the woman's eyes fell fully on her before she strode purposefully
past.

 
"The daunting Petra Kerinova?" A
greying, rather glamorous middle-aged reporter from CNN said, looking up from
his drink. “The gatekeeper.”

Kate nodded. She'd seen
photographs of Kerinova on a Jesse Gadden website that morning. She was a
startling looking woman, with a triangular, feline face.
  

"She’s Estonian,” a BBC
research assistant mused. “Her master's voice in all things. She keeps everyone
away from him. Including me!”

"What about the others?"
A woman producer from Sky-News was surveying Kerinova's retinue of young
people.

"They're the Glee Club." This was celebrity
expert Hilly Weston. She was, Kate noticed, sitting very close to the man from
CNN.

"The Glee Club?"

"The tabloids call them that because they
never stop smiling," Hilly continued. "They work for Gadden, running
the office and his homes. They're all very helpful, so long as you don’t
actually want to talk to him. But they drive you mad because they're so
nice."

"You'd smile if you were paid a fortune to
spend someone else’s money," CNN joked, seeking and being rewarded with
some very special Hilly Weston eye contact.

"She already is," someone else threw in
to general amusement.

Kate glanced at her watch, bored with the banter.
It was time to go home. Leaving Hilly to more drinks and the apparently welcome
pursuits of the man from CNN, she bade goodnight and began to make her way from
the party. By the bar a couple of disc jockeys, accompanied by their black
clad, leggy blonde girls, were in earnest conversation.

"
River
of Ghosts
was my
favourite," one was saying.

"Seminal! Especially
Snakepit
,"
came in the other.

"
Crusader Of Sadness
. That was when I
realised. But
The Sandman
…Fundamental!"

“Yeah!”

Kate skirted the nonsense. The cloying
superlatives which anointed rock stars and their works were too foolish for
words. She had to get back to some real work before she went mad. She pressed
the lift button to go down.

His blue eyes met hers as the doors slid open.

She stopped in surprise.

 
"Well, are you getting in or aren't you?" Jesse Gadden asked
quietly.

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course," she said,
feeling foolish, and stepped quickly into the otherwise empty lift. He waited.
She waited. She was admired at WSN for her ability to extemporise in almost any
situation, but for once words had dried up.

"Second floor, ladies underwear; mezzanine
would be gents outfitting. And haberdashery, garden furniture and electrical appliances
in the basement.” Gadden paused. “It's the lobby you want, I take it."

"Oh yes, I'm sorry." She stepped
forward to press the button for the ground floor but he got there first. Their
hands bumped. She pulled back embarrassed, and was then mortified by her own
confusion. She was behaving like a demented fan.

The doors closed. The lift began its descent.

"You're leaving early. You don't like
parties?" His soft Irish accent was more pronounced when he spoke than
when he sang.
 
He looked younger than
thirty five. Dressed now in black slacks and jacket and a black silk shirt, his
long, wavy hair was falling about his shoulders.

"I have to go to work tomorrow," she
said. He didn't answer and she felt compelled to fill the silence. "It was
a..." She hesitated. "I enjoyed the concert," she finished
feebly.

"More than you thought you would, I
hope."

She looked at him.

"I saw you on television. I heard what you
said before I went on stage. You didn’t seem to be looking forward to it very
much. A bit dismissive, I thought. I knew I'd have to be good tonight to change
your mind."

"Well, I was just..." She stopped
again, unsure of what to say. Surely he didn't want a justification. “I was
just doing my job as an impartial observer. And there weren’t many out there
tonight.”

He grinned. “’Course you were.”

At that moment the lift came to a halt and the
doors opened on to the hotel lobby.

There was a moment's silence. “Well, it’s been
nice meeting...” she began.

He’d been playing with her, but now, looking over
her shoulder, his expression changed as in the lobby a herd of fans who had
somehow sneaked past security, had spotted their object of devotion. "Er,
look…”

"Oh, sorry." Quickly Kate stepped out
of the lift, feeling awkward. Looking back to say goodbye, she was just in time
to see the lift doors close behind her. And he was gone.
 

A curtain of disappointment fell across the faces
of the onrushing fans. Pushing through them she made her way towards the
street.

Outside the crowds were still waiting, but at
least she could now choose which way she went.
 
Setting off, it was only when she'd covered some distance from the hotel
that the oddness of the encounter struck her. Had Jesse Gadden been going to
the party when she'd got into the elevator, and then, for some reason, changed
his mind? And could it really matter to him what she thought about his concert.

"Just wait till I tell Beverly," she told herself. "Will
she be jealous!" Then she smiled. For a man famous for his enigmatic introspection,
Gadden was actually a bit of a flirt when you got to meet him. But, then,
wasn’t that the way with stars: nothing like their image.

Chapter Three

September
13:

She didn't dream. She didn't have to. Her
nightmares came with the dawn
when she was awake and could get a better reception
,
she heard herself thinking, as she did on so many mornings.

It was just after seven. She didn't need to look
at the clock to know. That was when it had started. She lay and waited for the
images and sounds, the blood on the sand, and her own uncontrollable shaking.
The running order never changed. First came the hut, a concrete prefabricated
building at the edge of the forest by the shore; then the single electric bulb
with its squadron of fat, slowly circling moths; and finally the boy guards in
their voodoo masks, wigs and tattered dresses, torn from the women they'd raped
and murdered, worn now as trophies.

Jumpy on ecstasy and crack, they were unpredictable
in their emotions, one moment asking politely, "Do you know the Queen of
England. She is everybody’s boss, yes?", the next polishing their stolen
bayonets on the trembling skin of their captives, then giggling hideously as an
old Abba record played incongruously in one of the other huts.
"You are the dancing queen, young and
sweet, only seventeen.”
All through the night the music never stopped, old
songs, which she knew, and newer ones, most of which she didn't, someone's
compilation from better times.

From outside the hut came the tumbling roar of
the ocean as the tide receded, leaving the open beach firm and clean and ready;
then the sound of feet padding past in the darkness as the local people were
assembled to witness and be complicit in the guilt of the occasion.

Inside the hut the stillness was broken only by
the terrified, quiet sobbing of a young girl, a wife though hardly a woman. She
was wearing a Cartier Tank watch and a brand new pair of expensive trainers
with special blue trim. Beside her lay her husband, until a few hours earlier a
handsome man in his late thirties prime, his face now broken by boots and rifle
butts, his white shirt ripped by machetes. Soon they would take him and
castrate him. He knew that. Everyone did. And that would be just the beginning.

And Kate, now in her bed in London, bathed in
sweat, wondered, as she never ceased to wonder, if there was anything she could
have done that would have stopped it; if it had happened because of her:
because she and a television camera had been there.

It was nearly ten when she got up, disturbed by a
call from the travel desk at WSN-TV reminding her that she hadn't put in any
expenses for three months, and that this was the last day to claim. Promising
to do something about it, she hung up and switched over to voicemail. Then,
showering, she pulled on a track suit, checked her email in her study, and,
finding nothing of interest, went downstairs.

The morning newspapers lay with the post on the
mat of the Fulham cottage in which she lived, and she leafed through the
foreign news pages as she drank her coffee at her large kitchen table. In the
background the television, tuned to WSN, provided a murmur of rolling incident.

She'd lived alone all her adult life and had been
in this house for three years. With a large living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen,
study and a white walled patio, it was functional and convenient. There had been
men along the way, some of whom had wanted to move in with her or have her move
in with them, but sharing a life was not how she saw herself. Love, cosiness
and responsibility to another would have imposed limits. She was a foreign
correspondent, frequently a war correspondent. It was a transient kind of life:
sometimes dangerous. But it was the career she wanted, even if the price she
had to pay brought the occasional ache of loneliness.

After the late night at the Jesse Gadden concert she
wasn't due at the studio until the afternoon, so she took her time over
breakfast, before making a token attempt at tidying her kitchen. Personally clean
to the point of obsession, the result, she was sure, of never being certain that
there would be a plug or even water to put in the wash basin whenever she got
off a plane, at home she was untidy. And, quickly losing interest in her housework,
she stepped out on to her patio to take a look at her potted plants. The WSN
weather girl was forecasting rain, so there was no need to water them, and
after idly tugging out some random chickweed that was growing around the
miniature tea roses, she went back inside to dress.

She was, she knew, an attractive woman. She
couldn't not know it, or be unaware that her looks had contributed to her
success in television. She looked good on screen and because she talked well,
too, she was favoured by those she wished to interview. With an efficient bob
of dark brown hair, a fresh air complexion, a small, neat nose and the sort of
educated, classless English accent which suited broadcasting, she also carried
a measure of gravitas, an air aided by her five feet nine inches. Straight
backed, she wore clothes well, and on this day she selected a tailored linen jacket,
blue button down shirt and newly washed jeans.

Her telephone rang again as she was finishing
dressing. She'd ignored a couple of routine earlier calls, listening to the
messages and deciding to return them later, but this was a new voice.
"Miss Merrimac?" a woman asked. "This is the Hammersmith and Fulham
Youth Offending Service." There was a hesitation as though the caller was
wondering if anyone was there.

Kate picked up the telephone. "Yes?"

"Miss Merrimac? I'm sorry to bother you. My
name is Helen Walker. Your name has been given to us by a young man called Jeroboam
da Silva who was arrested by the police this morning." There was a pause.
"You know Jeroboam, I believe."

Kate frowned. "Yes. I know Jeroboam."

He was waiting for her on the last of a row of
chairs outside a door bearing the probation officer's name, his head poking
from behind an old copy of
Q
magazine.

“Not one word, Jeroboam," she said
immediately.

The boy looked down quickly.

Across the room one of a posse of shaven headed
braggadocios recognised her, and, grinning from under his baseball cap,
excitedly told his pals. Immediately another in the gang muttered something,
probably dirty, and the rest cackled.

The probation officer's door opened. "Miss
Merrimac?" Helen Walker, a plump black woman with a Yorkshire
accent, wore the worn smile of the infinitely understanding. "Thank you
for coming in."

Kate looked at Jeroboam. "Don't move!"
she breathed and entered the office.

"It wasn't anything very serious."
Helen Walker was considering the top page of a thick file lying open on her
desk. "I don't know whether the police will press charges. It depends on
the shop."

"What do they say he took?" Kate asked.

That she appeared to be suggesting that there
might be any doubt about the allegation brought the suggestion of a smile to
the probation officer. "They
say
he took three CDs. They also have
CCTV evidence, statements from two shop assistants and another from a customer.
It would appear Jeroboam didn't try very hard to conceal what he was
doing."

No, thought Kate, he wouldn't. She looked around
the walls. They were plastered with admonitions not to take drugs, to beware of
AIDS, to take precautions against unwanted pregnancy and to keep out of bad
company, in between advertisements for healthy outdoor sporting activities,
jolly smiling youth clubs, volunteer work with the aged and cookery classes.
She couldn’t imagine where Jeroboam would fit into any of them.

Helen Walker was watching her. "Jeroboam
says you'll vouch for his good character." She looked again at her file.
"I'm new here, but I see you've been in before to see my
predecessor."

"Once or twice,” Kate smiled ruefully.
“What's the worst that could happen to him?”

"Well, if he carries on like this… it'll be
detention. Could he cope with that?"

Kate’s eyebrows knitted. "I don't think so.
He isn't..." she hesitated. "He isn't very confident."

"I've read the reports, Miss Merrimac."

"Yes."

Helen Walker closed the file. "He's very
proud about knowing you. I mean, knowing someone on the television. He didn't
want me to telephone you at first, but we had to contact someone and his mother
was at work. He was afraid that this time you wouldn't understand… that you'd
be angry."

"I am angry. Did the shop get the CDs
back?"

"One was damaged when he threw it away as he
tried to run."

"I'll pay for it. But don't let him know
that."

The probation officer shook her head.
"No." She paused. "I don’t really know Jeroboam, yet, but I
don’t think he's a bad boy!"

“No,” Kate repeated. “He’s not a bad boy.”

"I'm sorry." His voice was scarcely
above a whisper.

Kate concentrated on the road as she drove.

"I won't do it again."

She still didn't speak. She was afraid he
probably would do it again or something like it. What she didn’t know was how
to stop him doing it again, and how to get him to go to school in the mornings
instead of roaming around shopping malls and getting into trouble. So she
stayed silent as they drove. She knew he hated her averted eyes, but she didn't
know what to say to him. She couldn't go on reprimanding him for ever without
some sort of punishment.

Reaching Shepherds Bush she took the opportunity
of pretending to look down a side road to steal a glance at him. He didn't
notice. He was gazing out of the car window, blinking back tears. Sitting
there, small and brown, his ugly little face almost hidden under his mess of
treacle black hair, his jeans badly scuffed and wearing only a yellow T-shirt,
he looked younger than fifteen. He was also shivering slightly. After the
balmy, late summer evening of the previous night’s concert, the temperature had
plunged overnight, and at that moment the first sharp splash of the predicted
rain hit the windscreen.
 

"I'm taking you back to school," she
said at last. "You must stay there all day. The probation officer has
already spoken to your head teacher and he'll be keeping his eye on you."

There was no response, but she knew he was
listening.

"You and I were supposed to meet tonight.
Right?"

At last a slow nod.

"Well, we're not. The lesson's
cancelled."

The nod stopped.

"If you want me to help you, you're going to
have to mend your ways. I'm not going to waste my time teaching a petty thief.
Do you understand?”

Alongside her his small body was stiff with hurt.
She wished he would look at her and say something, perhaps even answer her
back. But that wasn't Jeroboam’s way. They drove on.

In the end it was Kate who broke first. She
couldn't bear to think of him being miserable all day. "What CDs did you
take, anyway?" she asked as they drew up outside the iron railings of St
Michael's special needs school.

He half cleared his throat. "Roots Manuva,
Jay-Z and Twist-O and the Koolboys’ new one."

"And are they all good?"

"Yes." He began to open the car door.

A thought struck her. "I didn't know you had
a CD player."
 
When almost every
other boy he knew would have an iPod and a computer, Jeroboam was scarcely into
the steam age of music.

He didn't answer.

"You haven't stolen one of those, too, have
you? A CD player? Because that’s
really
serious?"

"No."

She waited.

"Honest."

She believed him. He was a terrible liar.
"So?" She still wanted an explanation.

None was offered.

There was nothing she could do. "All right,
suit yourself, don't tell me. But don't forget what I said."

"When will we...?"

"Phone me on Friday. Perhaps I can find some
time for you at the weekend...provided there's no more trouble! Now
go!
"

Quickly Jeroboam slipped from the car and,
closing the door quietly, hurried into the schoolyard without looking back.
Kate watched him until he was inside the building, and then waited an extra two
minutes in case he decided to slip out again. Finally, satisfied that he was
going to stay at school, at least for the rest of the morning, she put the car
into gear and started back across London
towards the WSN television studios.

It was raining quite heavily, the first rain of
September, as her journey took her past Kensington
Gardens and along the north side of Hyde Park. At Marble Arch the lights were on red, and,
while waiting for them to change, she glanced across the road into the park. It
was now clean-up time after the concert, and hundreds of casual workers with
plastic bags and rakes were stretched across the grass, wet, windswept chains
of people collecting the now muddy detritus of the previous evening. Further on
the high temple that had been the stage was being dismantled, leaving the stark
skeleton of the scaffolding with its arteries and veins of cables and wires.
The strings behind the multi-million pound puppet show were being revealed.