Starburst (27 page)

I
n the London Street flat, Jamie Stratton sat cross-legged on a large threadbare Turkish carpet that covered only a fraction of the floor space of the cavernous sitting room, scratching perplexedly at his thick mop of blond hair as he stared at the backgammon board on the low cluttered coffee table.

“You’ve done it again, haven’t you,” he said, eyeing his opponent with suspicion. “You can’t tell
me
you haven’t played this game before.”

Leaning her elbows on the table, Angélique cupped her face in her hands and grinned at him. “Not very often.”

“Hah! I knew it!” Jamie exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You’re nothing more than a damned hustler.”

Angélique laughed. “Of course,” she said, getting to her feet and immediately flopping back into the drape-covered sofa. “There is no other way to be in life.”

Jamie pushed himself away from the table and leaned his back against an armchair. “Okay, so you’d better tell me about your other hidden talents, just so as I don’t get duped again,” he said, smiling at her.

Angélique pulled the large towelling dressing gown tight around her neck and tucked up her feet on the sofa. “Well, I could tell you all the names of the French rugby fullbacks all the way back to Serge Blanco.”

“You’re joking.”

“I am not. My brothers thought it was a very necessary thing for their little sister to know. Shall I tell you the names?”

“No, spare the details, I’ll believe you.” Jamie laughed, holding up his hands as if to defend himself from what was to come.

Angélique challenged his cowardly rebuff by wrinkling her nose disdainfully at him. “You are just frightened that I might know more about rugby than you.”

“Probably,” he replied, watching her closely as she ruffled her short dark hair, still wet from the shower, with the fingers of her unbandaged hand. It was funny, he thought to himself, how he had always been magnetically drawn to tall, shapely blond girls with sparkling blue eyes in the past. Martha in the coffee shop was certainly a case in point. But now, having spent two days in the isolated company of Angélique Pascal, he realized that this preference had been narrowing the field quite unnecessarily. He studied the brown eyes that mischievously stared back at him, the downy softness of the sallow-skinned cheeks that were creased with humour, and the small dark-lipped mouth that challenged him with its smile. Everything about her—her diminutive size, her boyish figure—was a complete antithesis to those qualities that had fulfilled his youthful fantasies, but now he was beginning to see this young French violinist as one of the most mysteriously attractive and outrageously captivating members of the opposite sex he had ever clapped eyes on.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Angélique rocked her head from side to side in consideration. “I suppose I am quite good at playing the violin as well.”

Jamie flicked his head thoughtfully to the side. “Maybe you should take it up professionally then.”

“I suppose it’s a consideration,” she replied quietly, the smile on her face fading away and Jamie realized immediately his joke had been crass and badly timed, a stark reminder of her present situation.

“Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”

Angélique shook her head. “No, I understand you did not mean it that way. I can only imagine everything would be much worse if I hadn’t met you and Gavin.”

“Yeah, well,” Jamie replied, dismissing the remark with a wave of his hand, although his true feeling was that their meeting was one of the more fortuitous things that had happened to him. “So, how’s the hand feeling today?”

Angélique flexed the fingers of her bandaged hand. “It seems to be better. I do not have so much pain now.”

“In that case, I’ve got something for you,” he said, clambering to his feet. He walked over to the fireplace and began tipping out the contents of each of the chipped china bowls that lined the dark polished granite mantelpiece. “Where the hell is it? I know it’s in one of these.” He eventually found what he was looking for in the last bowl. “Here you are.” He turned and lobbed something small and black to Angélique. She caught it by instinct and then turned the object around in her fingers, studying it with a baffled expression on her face.

“I think this is a ball for playing squash,” she said.

“Yeah, it is.”

Angélique laughed. “So, are you now challenging me to a game of catch or something?”

“No, but it’s not such a bad idea. I might have a slight advantage over you with two good hands.” He pushed the backgammon board to one side and sat down on the table in front of Angélique. He took the ball from her hand and began squeezing it repeatedly in his fist. “Last year, this enormous rugby prop forward from one of the Border teams decided it would be fun to grind his studs into my hand during a game. By the time I’d been helped off the field of play, my fingers had lost all feeling and had swollen to the size of sausages. I used this squash ball to get them working again, and I was back on the rugby pitch within two weeks.” He put the ball back in her bandaged hand and gently folded her fingers over it. “How does that feel?”

Angélique’s mouth screwed to one side, as if she was trying hard to suppress a laugh. “Very nice. Quite sensual, actually.”

Jamie smiled at her in surprise. “Just keep squeezing it. You’ll find it does help.” He got to his feet and pushed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “Listen, I’ve got to get on with writing some of these reviews. I’m a day behind and I have a deadline for this afternoon, so I hope you don’t mind if I leave you to fend for yourself for an hour or two.”

Angélique swung her legs off the sofa. “Jamie, have you heard yet from Gavin?” she asked concernedly.

“No, I haven’t.”

“So we don’t know what Albert is doing.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Angélique nodded. “It’s just that I would really like to have my violin. I have never been parted from it for so long, and I feel…lost without it.”

Jamie scratched thoughtfully at his head. “I don’t think we should do anything until Gavin gets in touch, but tell you what; if I don’t hear from him by midday, I’ll give him a call.” He walked over to the door and opened it. “In the meantime,” he said, turning back to her,
“work the ball!”

An hour later the telephone began to ring shrilly in the hall, making Jamie type faster than his fingers would allow as he tried to commit to his computer’s memory what he knew was the perfect description of the Fringe comedy show before it faded from his mind. He swore under his breath when he looked up and saw nothing but a plethora of misspelt words on the screen. Pushing himself out of the chair with a frustrated yell, he ran through to the hall and made a dive for the telephone.

“Hullo?”

“Jamie, it’s Gavin here. How’s everything today?”

“Oh, good enough,” Jamie replied absently, picking up a Biro to scribble down the sentence on the back of an unopened envelope. When the Biro refused to write, he threw it with force against the wall.
“Bugger!”

“Obviously not a good time.” Gavin laughed.

“Sorry, I was just trying to write something down before I forgot it.”

“Do you want me to call back?”

“No, don’t worry. I’ll probably remember it.”

“How’s Angélique this morning?”

“Doing okay.”

“And the hand?”

“On the mend, I reckon. She’s not in so much pain now.”

“A good sign, then. Listen, Jamie, I think our little plan about getting her luggage back from the hotel might have backfired.”

“In what way?”

“Dessuin didn’t leave the Sheraton Grand yesterday, so that’s why I never called you about collecting Angélique’s belongings. Now it would appear that he’s gone and checked out of the hotel at about eight o’clock this morning and taken a taxi to the airport. I can only deduce from that that he’s following her back to Paris.”

“He hasn’t taken Angélique’s stuff with him, has he?”

“That I can’t tell you. My source of information couldn’t confirm it one way or the other, but I’m afraid it’s highly likely.”

“So, what happens now? Angélique was just saying she was desperate to get her violin back.”

“Well, let’s not write off everything at this point in time. Dessuin will have been pretty distracted before leaving, so there’s the slimmest chance he might have left something behind. I would suggest you just go round to the Sheraton Grand and see what’s what.”

“Okay, but what do I do if he
has
taken everything?”

Jamie heard Gavin sigh resignedly at the other end of the line. “Then we’ll just have to consider what our next step is going to be, but let’s just rule out one thing at a time, shall we?”

“All right. I’ll call you when I get back.”

“You do that. Thanks, Jamie.”

Jamie replaced the receiver and turned to go back to his bedroom but stopped when he saw Angélique leaning against the door of the sitting room, silently watching him.

“How long have you been standing there?” he asked.

“Long enough,” she replied.

Jamie nodded. “Right, well, you probably gathered I’m going to try to pick up your things this morning.”

“If they are still there.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he replied, moving off towards his bedroom door. “I’ll go as soon as I’ve finished off writing that review.”

“Jamie?”

She had not moved away from the door, but was following him with her dark brown eyes.

“What?”

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked quietly.

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Because I am causing you a lot of problems. It would be easier for you if I was not here.”

Jamie shrugged. “Yeah, that’s true.” He grinned at her. “But life would be a helluva lot more boring.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Course I do. Anyway, you can’t go.”

“I know that Gavin says I should not—”

“It’s got nothing to do with Gavin. You’re not leaving here until I’ve beaten you at backgammon.”

The haunting shadow of worry evaporated from Angélique’s face as she contemplated this challenge, eventually answering it with a shrug of her shoulders. “I cannot be here forever, you know.”

Jamie narrowed his eyes and jabbed a finger in her direction. “Tonight, Mademoiselle Pascal, you are history.”

“Ça m’étonnerait!”
Angélique exclaimed, pulling back her arm and throwing something at him with force. Jamie ducked to one side as the squash ball thudded against the wall behind him. She rushed forward and bent down to retrieve it, and as she straightened up she stood on her toes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You were supposed to catch it,” she said, her face so close to his that Jamie felt her breath brush past his ear. He had time to see one small, squint-toothed imperfection in her teasing smile before she turned and walked assuredly back towards the sitting room. “That, I’m afraid, is another game I have won.”

Leonard Hartson adjusted the knob on the back of the 1K redhead to balance the contrast of light hitting the chalk-white face of one of the Japanese dancers and the reflective gold thread that was intricately woven through the silk of her deep-red kimono. He walked forward to the dancer and scanned her with his light meter before returning to the row of canvas chairs T.K. had set up beside the camera, two of which were occupied by the dance company director, Mr. Kayamoto, and Claire, his young interpreter.

“Right,” Leonard said, slipping the light meter into the pocket of his jacket. “I think we’re about ready to shoot.” He smiled reassuringly at Kayamoto as Claire translated his words. “And I would suggest that after we’ve finished this particular scene, the company breaks for lunch. That’ll give me time to reset the lights for some close-ups.” He glanced towards the unlit area of the warehouse behind the camera. “Right, T.K., if you could start the music and then mark the scene.” He stepped up onto the camera box he had positioned behind the tripod legs to give him extra height, set the aperture on the lens, checked his focus through the eyepiece and waited for the music to start. Nothing happened. He turned and looked across to where the darkened shape of his assistant leaned forward in front of the rack of amplifying equipment. “T.K., when you’re ready.”

Again, nothing happened. Leonard heard a scrape of chairs as both the director and his interpreter turned to see why the music hadn’t started. He stepped stiffly off the camera box and walked away from the dazzling pool of light. In the few seconds that it took him to reach his assistant, Leonard’s eyes became accustomed to the obscurity of the warehouse and he could tell immediately that T.K. had not heard a word he had said. He placed a hand on the shoulder of the boy’s slumped form and gave it a gentle shake. “Are you all right, lad?”

T.K. jumped to his feet too quickly, lost his balance and fell hard against one of the large loudspeakers. It toppled over with a low resonant thump.

“Sorry about tha’,” T.K. said, heaving up the speaker and gingerly returning it to its position. He dipped his head, not wishing to make eye contact with the old cameraman. “Sorry, Leonard. Ah think ah drapped aff.”

Leonard stared hard at the boy. Because T.K. had not turned up that morning until well after the dance company had arrived, Leonard had decided to hold back from saying anything to him about his general state of appearance and his sloppy, wordless demeanour during the morning’s shoot, but he certainly would have to address it during the lunch break. T.K. was wearing the same clothes he had worn the day before, his hair was greasy and disheveled, and his whole being emanated a sour smell of body odour and unkemptness.

“Yes, well,” Leonard said curtly, “if you’re ready now, maybe you would be good enough to turn on the music and then come and mark the scene.”

It took three takes before Leonard managed to put the shot in the can. He noticed that one of the dancers had looked straight at the camera during the first, a jerky camera pan put pay to the second, but the third worked beautifully. Having congratulated the director and the company on a good morning’s work, accompanied by many a reciprocated bow, he watched as the little ensemble in their bright, out-of-place clothes filed through the fire door at the side of the warehouse and closed it behind them.