Play With Fire Read online

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2017 by William Shaw

  Cover design by Gregg Kulick

  Cover art by Getty Images

  Cover © 2019 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  mulhollandbooks.com

  First North American ebook edition: August 2019

  Originally published in Great Britain by Quercus under the title Sympathy for the Devil: May 2017

  Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-56338-3

  E3-20190701-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  DISCOVER MORE

  THANKS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY WILLIAM SHAW

  For Susannah

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  ONE

  Alone, the young man floats in water, his body still on this summer night, long platinum hair flowing around his head. The pool is heated. The water is warm. He wears only a multicoloured swimming suit and four large rings on his fingers.

  A gentle mist rises from the water into the dark air.

  It is approaching midnight; moths fuss around the blaring bulbs that light the way to his home, a red-tiled sixteenth-century farmhouse that squats like a toad crouching in the rolling hills on the edges of the Weald. The garden is lush, though a little unkempt now. The high hedges need cutting; the shrubs have outgrown their beds.

  This is the house of a rich young man; a rock star.

  A trail of wet footprints leads along the stone path towards the building. Through an open bedroom window on the first floor, comes the sound of a telephone. The metallic trill is interrupted by a woman’s voice; ‘Hello? Oh hi. No. I don’t know where Brian is. Brian?’

  It is his young pretty girlfriend. She calls from the room above. There is no answer.

  ‘He’s in the pool, I think. Yeah. I’m fine. Just hanging around, you know?’ A sing-song voice with a slight Swedish accent. ‘Brian? He’s kind of stoned, I guess. Am I stoned? A little bit.’ A giggle.

  Another woman, blonde, emerges from the house while the other still talks. She is beautiful too, because this is a house where lovely women come and go. Even though the star is fading for the man in the pool, the women still come. He is a rock guitarist. Right now, there is nothing cooler. Often there are parties and loud music played on reel-to-reel tape recorders through massive loudspeakers.

  The neighbours who live in the lanes around here are nervous; they are trying to keep up with the times, to be tolerant of the youngsters who arrive in cars and taxis, in Bentleys and on motorbikes, but these rich young people are changing their quiet hillside. On the nights where the music and shouting and revving engines continue late into the night, the locals lie awake in bed unable to sleep.

  Tonight, though, is quiet. The rock star has been drinking and taking pills. No more than usual. Less, probably, in fact. He is tired and worn, weary of everything. The buttons of his shirts strain at the belly; his trousers are too tight. His band don’t want him any more. Sometimes he cries and hugs the women who come here.

  Though there is a Rolls-Royce sitting in the garage, undriven for weeks, he has spent all his money. He’s never been sure where it all came from; now he doesn’t understand where it’s all gone. The building work on the second living room is unfinished and the builders are asking for payment.

  The woman approaches the pool looking for towels. Men just leave them lying anywhere. They expect the women to clear up after them. It’s not fair.

  She can hear the rock star’s girlfriend upstairs, still talking on the phone. For a second, she wonders where the young man who owns the house has gone. She looks around. The pool is so silent; the water is still, lights from the house moving gently across the surface.

  Besides a discarded towel and the empty glass of brandy sitting by the side of the pool, the place seems deserted. She picks up the towel and looks around again.

  And sees him.

  Under the water, he hangs, arms splayed out, inches from the bottom of the pool. He is like a diver in mid arc, except he is still, and beneath the surface, not above it. She looks harder. At first she thinks he’s playing, but the water is too still.

  Time seems to slow.

  She runs back up the path and shouts and screams below the open bedroom window. It seems so long before anyone hears her.

  And so much longer before the police finally arrive and see the body, skin like white rubber, pale and cooling, laid on the limestone paving at the pool’s side.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says a sergeant, tired at the end of his shift. It will be a long night.

  Neighbours sit up in bed, unable to sleep again for the noise. But it will be much quieter here now, at least.

  TWO

  London; a summer evening.

  Though she didn’t live here, the middle-aged woman had her own key to the house; she let herself in. She was smartly dressed, a dab of Yardley on her décolletage. Looking at her, nobody would guess what her job was. That’s the way she preferred it. None of her neighbours knew. She liked to imagine they assumed she was some rich bohemian living off her inheritance. They would be shocked if they knew.

  Today was Friday. She was annoyed because she had left it too late to go to the bank and they all closed at three and wouldn’t open again until Monday morning. It was OK. Lena would advance her a tenner to tide her over, but she didn’t like to borrow. She was a professional.

&
nbsp; She pressed the lift button and waited for the whirr of machinery. There was no sound.

  It was one of the rickety, old-fashioned ones, with a criss-cross metal scissor gate. She tried the ‘Up’ button again, and once more.

  ‘Hell.’

  ‘Broken.’ A voice behind her made her jump.

  She turned. Mr Payne, the old man from Flat 1, was at his door. He seemed to lurk there, waiting for someone to talk to.

  ‘Hasn’t been working all day.’

  ‘Hell’s bells.’ Now, every time a customer rang the doorbell she would have to traipse down two floors, and all the way back up again. With her knees.

  ‘You’ll have to stay down here with me.’

  ‘Get lost.’ She smiled at him. ‘You pervert.’ Pathetic, the way she enjoyed flirting with men more as each year passed, even the ones old enough to be her father. Once, she had lived off her looks. She looked up the steep stairs.

  In younger days, when she had been slimmer and the cigarettes had not coated her lungs, two flights would have been easy, but she found on this summer evening, she was sweating by the time she reached the second floor.

  She knocked on the door, as she always did, but opened it with her key.

  ‘Hello? Only me,’ she sing-songed, as she always did, but today there was no answer.

  ‘Lena?’

  The rest of the house was ordinary. The stairwell was drab. It was only when you went through the front door to Lena’s flat that everything changed.

  She didn’t like her employer much, but she had to admit it; she had a kind of genius.

  Pink. Everywhere. The walls, the curtains, even the lampshades, were a rich girlish colour. The carpet, at least, was white. The beanbag, a shocking lime green. There was a framed picture of The Beatles on the wall, not as they were now, bearded, dissolute and immersed in Eastern philosophies, but when they were still neat, uncomplicated and joyful, and when every teenager loved them.

  Everything had been picked with care. The pop group grinned, wearing pink shirts and ties and holding red roses. Other less famous stars surrounded them, some cut out from Rave and Jackie and stuck up with Sellotape, others framed and signed in black pen. Across the world, teenage walls looked like this now. Lena had invested in the place.

  It was perfect, down to the collection of dolls and gollywogs, lined up on a bookshelf, which Florence hated. It wasn’t just their unclosing stare that was creepy.

  She looked around her and sighed. Most days Lena tidied up for herself. But there were rare times when she finished late and crawled into her bed, exhausted. Last night must have been one of them.

  The teddy bear was on the floor, face down. The ashtray was full of cigarette ends, there were half-empty glasses on the table and an empty champagne bottle on the carpet.

  Today was a Friday; the busiest night of the week. The first clients would arrive soon, after work. Everything had to be ready.

  ‘Lena?’ she called.

  Still no answer.

  Strange. She must have gone out. Florence checked her watch. The first customer would be here in half an hour.

  She stuck out her tongue, threw open the window to get last night’s stink of smoke, alcohol and whatever else out of the room. She picked up the stuffed toy, wrinkling her nose at him, plumped the sofa cushions, and then sat him in his usual place.

  Someone had been using the record player and had not put the records back in their sleeves. There was a disc on the turntable and a single just lying on the carpet: ‘Sugar, Sugar’ by The Archies.

  Lena was not normally this slovenly, but someone had been having a nice time. It looked that way, anyway. Who was the last one in yesterday? The man who always brought children’s toys. Florence shuddered. So it wouldn’t have been a social occasion. And though she went out to parties sometimes with the in-crowd, Lena never had friends over. In fact, she doubted Lena had any friends. If she did, she never talked about them.

  The single rose in a vase had shed onto the polished wood, next to the bottle. She picked up the loose yellow petals and scrunched them hard in her hand until the colour stained her skin. The bowl of sherbet lemons had been spilled on the floor too. Someone had trodden one into the white carpet. Florence knelt down and started to pick pieces out of the pile.

  She had almost all the bits, cupping them in her left hand, when the black phone began ringing. Lena had two telephones. The ivory one for personal, and the black one for business. This was the business phone.

  Florence sighed and straightened, painfully. She was too old to be scrabbling around on her knees. She brushed the broken sweet off her hand into the litter bin under the mock Louis Quinze desk, then picked up the handset.

  ‘Julie Teenager’s apartment.’ Her posh voice.

  Many of the men were hesitant on the phone. You had to be patient with them; try and make them think all this stuff was normal, else you’d scare them off. This one wasn’t shy though. She recognised his voice; one of the regulars. It was one of the men who called himself Smith. There were a few. This was the large one, the married man who bit the nails of his left hand. She opened the appointment book.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Smith. Nine o’clock is all booked up, I’m afraid.’

  In the appointment book, each week had two pages, split into five days. Sundays to Wednesdays, Lena didn’t work. The remaining three days were divided into four two-hour slots, starting at 5 p.m. and ending at 1 a.m.

  ‘You’re usually Thursdays, aren’t you? We had been expecting you. Nothing the matter I hope? Is eleven tonight too late?’

  Yes, eleven was too late, Mr Smith said, sounding annoyed. He had to be on the train home by then.

  ‘Oh, what a shame, Mr Smith,’ said Florence. ‘Julie will be ever so disappointed. She always looks forward to your visits.’ She smiled as she talked to him; a good impression was always important. ‘Perhaps you would like to make a date for next week?’

  She entered his name into the appointment book, closed it and looked around her, sighed.

  The bedroom was worse. The bed was unmade, the ashtray spilled onto the carpet and Lena had left knickers on the floor. She was normally such a good girl, too. The school uniform, at least, was folded up neatly on the chair.

  She put the dirty knickers into the bin and was about to close the bedside cabinet drawer, which was half open, when she saw a handful of pound notes stuffed in there. Honestly. Careless. Florence peeled off ten. She shouldn’t have to be doing this work anyway.

  Then she looked at her watch. It was twenty to five already. Where did all the time go? And, for that matter, where was Lena? She went back and checked the appointment book. Her first customer was due at five. Another regular. Another Mr Smith. This one was an elderly gentleman, rich and well-connected, but a poor tipper, like all his sort.

  She took the empty bottle downstairs with the rubbish and paused on the first floor to catch her breath. The students in Flat 3 had left their door open to let the air circulate. Peeking through the door, she spied a young girl, dressed in only a red T-shirt and a small pair of knickers, standing in the living room smoking a cigarette. It was the pretty one. All the boys who shared the apartment would be in love with her. She scowled and set off up the next flight.

  She left the bathroom till last. She was surprised to notice blood in the toilet. It lay as a layer in the curve at the bottom of the bowl, vivid against the white. Unusual. It wasn’t Lena’s period. She knew that for a fact. They didn’t work when it was.

  She peered at the red blood for a while, frowning, then flushed the cistern. She looked at her watch again. Where the hell was she?

  At five, exactly, the bell rang. The flat was tidy at least. But Lena was still not back.

  The man arrived, panting from the climb, and sat on the couch next to the enormous teddy bear. He had brought a present, wrapped in white paper and tied with a big red ribbon. ‘Would you like a cup of tea while you wait?’ Florence asked him, looking at the red against the white and
starting to feel as if something was not right. ‘Or something stronger perhaps?’

  ‘Bloody lift,’ he said, catching his breath. ‘Not working.’

  Maybe it was a good thing Lena wasn’t here. The man didn’t look like he’d survive an hour with Julie Teenager anyway.

  THREE

  It was Saturday morning; Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen of the Metropolitan Police’s D Division had just put on the first pair of jeans he had ever owned when the doorbell rang.

  He opened the door only a little way. Elfie was standing on the doorstep, holding a cake. ‘It’s just so sad,’ she said.

  ‘What is?’ called his girlfriend Helen from the living room.

  In front of her pregnant belly, the young woman Elfie, who lived upstairs from them, held out the hot cake tin. ‘This is. Look at it. I made it for us to take to the concert, but it’s rubbish.’

  Their neighbour was wearing a brightly printed muslin dress that you could see her underwear through. And oven gloves. ‘Do you have icing sugar? I was thinking I could fill in the dip with it. Aren’t you two ready yet? No point being late. We’ll never get in.’ She looked down. ‘New trousers, Paddy?’

  Cathal Breen’s father had been Irish. Cathal had never asked to be called Paddy but the name had stuck. He looked down at his jeans. He was a policeman, unused to trousers without creases; in the Met, only the Drug Squad wore jeans. ‘Seriously. What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Are they OK?’

  ‘Icing sugar?’ called Helen from the living room. ‘Will ordinary sugar do?’

  Breen was never sure whether his girlfriend Helen was just winding Elfie up, or she genuinely didn’t know this stuff. Elfie pushed past him into his flat where Helen was sitting in Breen’s armchair eating biscuits straight from the packet.

  Though they were both due in the next few weeks, Elfie’s bump was huge; Helen’s looked ridiculously small. They were both pregnant. Obviously he was glad the two women had become such close friends; he worked long hours. Who wouldn’t be glad? It was convenient that Helen had company when he was on duty. But while Helen was a former policewoman, Elfie had never worked in her life. She was a hippie who lived with a man who drove an ancient sports car, who had some job in advertising in Soho. There were days when he wished he could spend more time with Helen, on her own.