Wicked Ambition Read online

  ‘Feeling lucky?’ Matt asked after the show.

  ‘Is that a come-on?’ Robin opened the door to her dressing room. Blood was coursing through her, her legs like jelly and the crash of the crowd still echoing through her ears.

  ‘You wish.’

  ‘Always, Matt, always.’

  ‘C’mon, the others are up for it. This is Vegas, baby! You’ve got a responsibility.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Party. Aren’t you a rock star?’

  ‘My feet hurt.’

  He cocked his head. ‘In ten?’

  She sighed. ‘Fine, you win.’

  ‘Better believe it, I’m on fire when I get in a casino.’

  ‘On the 2p machines in Southend?’

  ‘That was one time and I was too pissed to go on anything else. Besides, it was 10p, not 2p. I won us a quid that night, remember?’

  She grinned. ‘Go away, I need to get changed.’

  Alone, Robin slipped into jeans, a vest and jacket, and removed the more outlandish aspects of her make-up. Satisfied she looked like herself again, she pulled together what she needed for the night and made for the door.

  There was no reason it should have caught her eye…other than the handwriting.

  No, she begged, her throat constricting. Not you. Please, not you.

  It was a photograph, upside down so that its white belly was turned to the ceiling, bearing only her name, which was scrawled in that familiar, creepy, childlike lettering:

  ROBIN.

  She gripped the dresser.

  The picture showed a woman of about fifty sitting in an armchair and regarding whoever was taking the image through half closed, or else sneering, eyes. Her surroundings were gloomy, electric light rather than daylight. On the mantelpiece a clock stared pale-faced, its hands trapped at a quarter to three. There was a painting on the wall, dark and melancholy.

  The room was bizarrely familiar, even though Robin had never been there before.

  Fear filled her. I’m closer than you think.

  The red-haired doppelganger from San Francisco flashed through Robin’s mind. She clung on before fading, like an imprint on wet sand.

  Her stalker had found her. The grudge was back.

  Robin shivered, screwing the photo up in her hand and slinging it in the bin.

  The Desert Jewel casino was zinging with the clash of cash, drinks flowing and money rushing, the scent of changing fortunes ripe in the air. Robin and her crew were escorted to a private area where Barney hit the craps table at the same time as Matt hit on a blonde with insanely long legs. Polly had got there first and was already drunk on champagne, chatting up two German magician brothers whose world tour had taken them to the Strip.

  ‘Robin, meet Steffen!’ She was dragged into the fray. Steffen had statement hair, a number one on either side of a Mohawk-meets-metrosexual strip. His brother was too busy kissing Polly for her to tell what he looked like.

  ‘It’s an honour to meet you,’ Steffen said with a thick German lilt.

  She clinked her glass with his before downing the alcohol. She craved oblivion. All she wanted was to get so drunk she could no longer think.

  ‘I’m surprised they let you in,’ she told him.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, couldn’t you fix the game or something?’

  He was amused. ‘Let’s see.’

  At the roulette he had an uncanny knack but she wasn’t convinced it was anything other than luck. The more vodka she had, the more attractive she found him. She didn’t want to be by herself tonight.

  ‘Let’s go to a club!’ screamed Polly.

  Outside the stream of cars on the Strip rushed like coins through the slots, a streaky blur like an over-exposed photograph. They all piled into Steffen’s private vehicle and headed to ‘the sickest club in town’. Robin was so drunk she couldn’t even vouch for who said it. Each time the eerie photo reared its head she slammed it back down, willing herself to forget the gloomy image and the spooky writing that had etched out her name.

  It’s nothing. Just scaremongering. These people never do anything; they’re cowards.

  On the back seat, packed in tight, Steffen took her hand. By the time they reached the VIP entrance of the club it had meandered up to her thigh.

  In the bar, they got more and more drunk. The shots kept coming, lines being raked up in the loos and before she knew it she was kissing Steffen, she thought she kissed his brother at one point, maybe she was kissing Matt as well. It was ages since she had let go. I need this, she kept telling herself. I deserve this. The tour was almost over; she had just one more venue before her big appearance at the Platinum Awards took her back to LA.

  Another shot was passed round but this one tipped her over the edge. The room lurched and she started to feel ill. She stood up and the wall skewed.

  ‘Whoa, are you OK?’ Steffen asked, rising to steady her.

  ‘Fine,’ Robin managed. Shrugging him off, she staggered to the bathroom, through three sets of doors and two stairwells and thinking she must have gone wrong because next she was stumbling down a passage, the walls polished and glossy as apples, and heading for a single narrow door at the end.

  When she opened it, the whole of the Vegas Strip ran out before her, thousands of feet below. The room was huge and square, black as the sea at night. Its floor was transparent glass: nothing between her and the distant ground. At its centre was a lone porcelain commode, which she headed for, walking on air, flying through drunkenness, and sat on it, fully clothed, to pull herself together. Sitting on the sky with Vegas spread beneath her was as surreal as it was trippy. Only in Vegas could you go to the bathroom and feel like a god.

  Music pumped into the room. Robin closed her eyes. A familiar refrain started up: the charity single she had done with Puff City and the Olympians.

  The time she had sung with Leon…

  Just thinking his name was a knife through her heart. She had to let him go but she couldn’t. She wanted to know if he was OK. She thought about him all the time. She dreamed about him. He was the first thing she thought about in the morning and the last thing she thought about at night. She longed for him and ached for him.

  She remembered almost telling him her fears that night on the beach; how she hadn’t because she was too damn stubborn and stupid and hadn’t wanted to let him in. She wished she had. She wanted his arms around her now more than she had ever wanted anything.

  Leon might be lost to her, but Robin vowed that as soon as the tour was done she would go to the police and tell them what she knew about Puff City. She couldn’t be sure, and she’d lied to Shawnella when she’d told her she wasn’t afraid. But there was no choice.

  It was the only way for Leon to run free.

  When the song finished and her tears had dried, she returned to the party. Steffen pulled her into his arms and soon after that she was asleep.

  59

  Shawnella Moore stomped out on to Slink Bullion’s pool patio and slammed a magazine article on to her boyfriend’s chest. Its headline read:

  DEMAND MOORE COLLECTION STINKS, SAYS SLINK.

  The impact roused him from sleep.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Slink demanded, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. The medallions around his neck dislodged with the movement, catching the sun.

  ‘What is this?’ Shawnella raged, jabbing a finger at the piece. ‘How dare you slate my fashion range, after all the work I put in, you bastard!’ She was on the brink of tears but battling against it because she refused to give him the satisfaction.

  Slink scanned the piece. ‘‘S no big deal,’ he diagnosed lazily.

  ‘No big deal? This is my project, I’ve worked on this collection for—’

  ‘You seen Principal?’ He waved a hand, batting her concerns away. ‘Brother’s meant to be here by now…’

  ‘Did you really say that? Did you say all this stuff? That I’m an embarrassment? That my range is…’ Shawnella consulted the
paper ‘…like Halloween came early?’

  ‘Maybe it ain’t your vibe, baby, d’you feel what I’m sayin’—?’

  ‘No, I don’t “feel what you’re saying”. All these years I’ve supported you and then when I finally do something on my own you go and wreck it for me.’

  He made to grab her. ‘C’mere, sweet stuff, I get it, you want a little attention…’

  ‘Too late.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Only time you give me attention is when you want a hole to put your dick into.’ She checked out his shorts and sure enough the goods were there.

  ‘You’re a selfish asshole,’ she said witheringly. ‘You always have been.’

  ‘Selfish?’ He rose to his feet. Shawnella took a pace back. ‘Take a look around, and watch what it is you’re sayin’.’

  ‘You promised me the world.’

  ‘And I gave it to you.’ Again he gestured to their backdrop. His equating emotional fulfilment with the riches his cash could buy was desolate.

  ‘You said you’d bring me in on the music,’ she told him angrily.

  ‘Aw, whatever, girl, you can’t have thought I was serious…’

  Her lip trembled. ‘How can you be so cruel?’

  ‘You can’t sing!’ he spluttered.

  Shawnella was shaking. She threw a glance at the discarded magazine and said:

  ‘I did somethin’ on my own, without you, and fact is you don’t like it. You’d sooner I was waitin’ here on the bed for you to come home with my legs wide open.’

  He shrugged. ‘If you like.’

  ‘But only if you don’t already have some hooker in tow.’

  Slink had the audacity to roll his eyes.

  ‘Not any more,’ croaked Shawnella. ‘I’m better than this.’

  ‘You threatenin’ me?’

  ‘I’m giving you the facts. I’m leaving. It’s over.’

  He sneered. ‘A’ight. Do what you like, see if I care.’

  ‘That’s all you have to say?’

  ‘You’re overreactin’,’ he said, amused by her outburst. ‘You’ll be back.’

  ‘Like hell I will. When we first got together you told me you loved me. How many other women have you said that to?’

  He pushed past her, through the mansion doors, where he opened the refrigerator and withdrew a can. ‘Ain’t you got someplace to be?’ he asked, bored by the confrontation.

  Shawnella withdrew the only card she had left. Her ace.

  ‘If you know what’s good for you,’ she breathed, laying it on the line, ‘you’ll fess up and you’ll do it quick.’

  He popped the can and took a drawn-out sip. He wiped his mouth.

  ‘Fess up to what?’

  ‘You know what.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘People are gettin’ close, Slink.’

  ‘My ass.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Get outta my crib, bitch, and don’t come back.’

  ‘I won’t, don’t you worry.’

  Shawnella didn’t even stay to pack her bags. This had to be a fresh start. Slink had bought all of her possessions and she didn’t want any of them—except the BMW.

  He exploded as she flounced out of the door and unlocked the gleaming vehicle.

  ‘Has G said somethin’?’ he boomed, striding on to the drive in his flip-flops, finally engaged. ‘Who’s talkin’, huh? Who’s talkin’?’

  Shawnella’s tyres squealed before she sped away.

  ‘Good luck, shithead. You’ll need it.’

  When Leon arrived home on Sunday night, something was different. The apartment was cleared of all Marlon paraphernalia, the surfaces freshly cleaned, the wardrobe half empty and the toothbrush and bubble soak missing from the bathroom. Lisa was gone.

  A note explained that she had decided to return to New York for a while. Its tone was curt and Leon knew he had offended her: the way Lisa saw it she had put her life on hold to account for the loss of Marlon’s, and all she’d received in return was grief from his brother.

  Regret gave way to relief. His heart had never been in it with Lisa. She was an intelligent, beautiful woman, and one day she’d make a man very happy—only it wasn’t him.

  He fixed dinner and watched a movie, a Cosmo Angel thriller that he fell asleep halfway through. At midnight something woke him and he cleared up, brushed his teeth in a stupor and eventually staggered to bed.

  Once there, his mind wouldn’t switch off. His body was tired but his brain was alert and the vacant side of the bed was cold and unforgiving. At two a.m. he admitted defeat, got up and made a drink. Leon stood at the kitchen counter, the place ghostly in the milky light of the moon, with only the wash of the ocean disrupting the still.

  At Lisa’s desk he took a chair, leaning forward and slipping his thumbs into the grooves above his eyes. He reread her note and wondered if wherever she was she was sleeping soundly. Perhaps she had expected a call. Perhaps he should have been on his knees, begging her to come back, promising they could work it out. He wasn’t.

  Alongside Lisa’s desk was the Marlon case. Boxes of files and photos had been neatly stacked and arranged, taped up and returned to the grave. He lifted one on to the surface—it was heavy—and ran a pen along the seal to open it. Even though Lisa had been working with the documents for many weeks, they still released a musky, damp smell, as if reminding him of how long they had been left neglected in the dark.

  Remorse shot through him. What Lisa hadn’t said on the phone was the only thing that would have changed his mind: that Marlon would surely have wanted this. Marlon would have needed his assassin brought to justice and it didn’t matter how much it hurt for those left behind, his brother would not be able to rest in peace until it was done.

  Leon withdrew a stack of photographs and held them up to the glow of the lamp. He smiled sadly at images of his brother racing at Fountain Valley, face turned to the sky as he secured victory, clapping his teammates on the back, his grin brighter than the sun.

  In one Marlon was thwarted by a rival, chasing down the line, giving it everything he had but foiled in the last millisecond of the race. Leon remembered shooting hoops with his brother one evening in the yard, close to his selection for Sydney.

  ‘Can I be honest with you, bro?’

  Leon had socked the ball through the net, glad to have Marlon’s confidence. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m terrified I’m not gonna make it. There’s too much competition out there. I’m afraid I’m gonna let people down, like I won’t be good enough.’

  Leon couldn’t imagine his brother ever failing or being bad at anything. His brother was his champion; everything Marlon did was heroic.

  ‘I just want to make my family proud.’ Marlon had been resolute. ‘Everything Mom’s put into me—all that faith and belief. I have to win. D’you get it? I have to.’

  Only now did Leon understand what his brother had meant. There was no consolation in coming second. Anything save gold was a loser’s badge.

  His ambitions to win at the Championships and beyond were Marlon’s ambitions, too…the ambitions his brother had never lived to fulfil. He would be running for both of them.

  Leon had been thumbing through the prints without looking properly. Now his gaze fell on it, and he leaned in, concentrating, rubbing his weariness away to focus on it properly: a photograph taken at Marlon’s funeral, his mom and sister tight to the grave and the mourners behind. Leon thought he spotted himself but it was hard to tell because the head was bowed and besides he hadn’t felt there that day at all, not really, just a glimmer.

  He peered closer, still not believing what he was seeing. There, at the back of the congregation, was a face he recognised—younger, yes, and the quality was scratchy and blurred, but it was the same person…undoubtedly the same.

  What had he been doing there?

  Leon’s pulse quickened, making him hyper-alert. All the wheels Lisa had ground to make progress, and it was just this one cog that had been stuck.

&
nbsp; Now he had oiled it free.

  He knew this person. And with that knowledge everything became clear.

  60

  Turquoise would never have made it through the gruelling schedule for True Match unless she had been certain that Cosmo’s downfall was imminent. The tape was ready to hit YouTube. She could taste how sweet it would be. Cosmo and his wife had no idea. They imagined her to be silenced and she gave them no reason to suspect otherwise.

  Turquoise spoke to Cosmo when spoken to, delivered on her promises and played the part to perfection. Every so often her costar would take a liberty—fondling her ass in a press queue, grabbing her when no one was looking and whispering what he wanted to do to her, all to reassure himself that she was still his pet, still the scared call-girl she had been when they’d first met. He was treading dangerously close to the line. Cosmo couldn’t guess what she had planned and the devastation about to be heaped at his door.

  But there was one thing she had to do first.

  The one thing Cosmo had always been too gutless to face.

  She arranged to rendezvous with Jax in LA. She had spelled out her request on the day of the sauna, in private, just the two of them. The fact was that when it came to it, Jax, much as she disliked him, was the only person she could trust. Not through any bond of affection, but through the cold reality of blackmail. If Jax revealed her—be it now, next week, in a year, ever—then she would do the same in turn. It was life-long indemnity.

  Jax was throwing a launch party to mark the release of his new hip-hop single.

  Afterwards, he would take her where she needed to go. There was no other way for her to get there—she couldn’t go alone, and she couldn’t risk a stranger.

  From that point, there would be no road back.

  She arrived early at Hollywood hotspot El Paradiso and was directed straight through.

  Inside, Turquoise admitted that his people had done a good job. Past the gauntlet of paparazzi she emerged on to the magnificent terrace, like something out of ancient Greece. Swathes of white gauze billowed between pillars; nude sculptures of classical Olympians were set on marble plinths, impossibly chiselled and beautifully formed; deep, wide basins had been filled with glistening black olives and succulent grapes; heaps of black caviar were piled up in silver bowls and a fountain of golden champagne was positioned in each corner. There was no doubting the message behind it: Jax wanted the world to know that he belonged on a higher plane, up with the great immortals and the heroes who had conquered history, and that one day he would take his rightful place among the fables that had gone before.