Loverman Page 11

  Upon her own head be it.

  The traffic light ahead turned orange, and he braked. He reached for the bottle of water in the holder beside him, took a deep swig of it. A headache was beginning to hit.

  He needed aspirin. He texted Kemp.

  This is me not breaking up with you. Do you want to do lunch?

  He knew the answer. He wanted it confirmed.

  If he’d been heading for his own home in Vaucluse, with its stunning harbour views, he’d be facing a longer drive, but Stephen Halliday was still house-sitting for him. Anger tightened his breathing. Stephen would never have been beaten if he hadn’t been on Charles’ property. If Charles had been staying there, rather than at Kemp’s, it probably would have been his skull rather than the other man’s that was smashed to the ground. He could only thank god that they hadn’t targeted his house cleaner to get inside the place; the woman was now instructed to only work there when Stephen was at home.

  In fact, he should have moved Stephen out completely, but Stephen had confided, bloodied, wrecked, wiped out on painkillers that night weeks ago at Viva’s, that his domestic situation was a mess and the house-sitting gig at Charles’ place had been a godsend.

  The alternative was to put him up at a hotel. Not that Stephen would have agreed to it, and too many questions would get asked. Instead, security and surveillance had been tightened yet further around the house. Stephen had not been informed of its extent, but he seemed to like the Rottweiler that now prowled the place. His house guest was quite conscientious about giving the animal two walks a day.

  Charles’ mouth kicked up in a grin. He’d had a Rottweiler as a kid—or rather, his mother had. The beast had been devoted to her and protective of Charles. He’d loved him. But then she’d died, and the dog had disappeared. He’d never found out exactly what had happened to the animal.

  His mouth hardened. Perhaps that was one more question he could pose his security chief.

  At least now, he was the one calling the shots. Asking the questions.

  He might even get an answer he liked, because the answers his imagination had given him about that dog’s fate were nightmarish.

  His phone pinged a notification. At the next red light, Charles checked it. Kemp.

  My mother = shark. If she thinks I’m out of yr life she’s out of yr bank balance. Discuss later. Lunch no. At Murphy’s working on the new material. Been offered use of a country place to workshop it. Actual vineyard. Tell u later. Viva’s tonight?

  Good. He’d have Kemp’s home to himself for a few hours at least. Exactly what he needed. What he didn’t need was any discussion of their relationship, such as it was, being over. Of course, Maxine would return, now that things were civil between them. Oddly gentle, when Kemp wasn’t roughly fucking him senseless, which was exactly what Charles required. It was more than he would have thought possible, at one point. Enough to calm his demons. That break away seemed to have worked some change. Maybe Kemp himself getting away on a working break, vineyard or not, would affirm that.

  He texted back, Can’t disagree on 1st pt. Tonight sounds good

  At Kemp’s place, Charles activated the garage door and drove inside. Charles used the internal door from the garage to enter the converted warehouse.

  Once in there, he headed for the wine rack in the kitchen and drew out one of the bottles, checked the label, and glanced over a few others. Finally, he poured a New Zealand pinot noir. He generally drank little, and never drank alone during the day.

  Today was different. Upstairs, he changed, exchanging the suit for yoga pants, and drained the glass. After a hunt in the back of the walk-in wardrobe, he found the old Mac laptop he’d left there, one no longer connected to a network, and slipped the USB stick from his wallet. For a moment he paused.

  He was alone here. He’d be alone in this building until early evening. And he needed somewhere less personal than a bedroom to view this.

  Finally he sat downstairs on one of the sofas with a fresh glass of wine. The Mac fired up, he plugged in the encrypted USB, keyed in the password.

  He hadn’t viewed this thing in well over eighteen months. He’d forced himself to look at it shortly before his reunion with Kemp. It didn’t make this any easier.

  The USB contained one file, an mpeg. It was the sole copy of the video in existence. It was, without a doubt, the single most dangerous thing he possessed. He’d thought of putting the file on a server or the cloud and destroying the memory stick, but anything could be hacked. So instead, the small encrypted drive had spent the last ten years in a bank safe deposit box and lately had been carried in his wallet or hung around his neck, hidden beneath his clothing. It had never felt less than a ticking time bomb.

  For a moment he paused. Then he double-clicked the file and pressed Play.

  The angle was odd: the tiny eye of the camera he’d set up in that hallway over a decade ago had been hidden by a spiky, elaborate flower arrangement on top of a hall table; discreet downlighting kept the area lit during the evening, the nearby stairs bright enough for safety.

  A fortnight before placing it, Charles had been up in the early morning hours and in the kitchenette of the wing delegated solely to himself and his stepsiblings. The Evian he’d grabbed had been chill in his hand. He’d gone to walk back into the corridor when he’d seen his father heading down the stairs; heard Viva’s sobs from her bedroom nearby, the sound thick with broken despair and anger.

  He’d known in an instant. The next day his father left on business. By the time he returned, Charles’ setup was complete.

  The Palm Beach mansion had been sprawling. Viva’s room had been located at the opposite end of a long L-shaped corridor to Kemp and himself. Gulping wine now, Charles rubbed a hand over his nape. Watched.

  He knew what happened next. It still happened.

  Onscreen, his father came into view. At past midnight he should have been anywhere else in the complex but on that landing, in that zone of the mansion.

  Richard Durant went to Viva’s room and opened the door. He did it with all the assurance of a man who’d opened that door dozens of times before. He probably had. Charles didn’t know. He’d only installed the camera there that week.

  Only with the door still open two figures were flying back out of it. Viva was slamming into his father. Viva was driving him backwards and howling and beating at him with her fists as if she had slipped into insanity and somehow—the later autopsy showed that his father was, in fact, blind drunk—the shock of that crazed, animal scream of fear and rage she gave and the unexpected momentum of them both was enough to carry Richard Durant’s bulk across the landing.

  Screams. Yells. His father flew backwards, balance gone. The stairs.

  He was flying back into air, wheeling, hands grabbing for Viva, but she’d already broken free as he thudded back down the staircase, sounds of limbs hitting bannisters, arms wheeling, hands snatching at pure nothing. Screams. His father’s. Viva’s.

  “Christ,” Charles whispered.

  Silence.

  Viva was standing at the top of the staircase, staring down.

  Yells. Kemp flew into range of the camera, grabbed at his sister, and then ran down where she pointed. Seconds went by. Dragged. Voices. Now Charles leant forward.

  Maxine Durant ran up the staircase. Judging by her disorder, she’d seen the body of her husband crumpled on the floor below. Kemp ran up from behind her. Maxine had Viva in a tight grip, bare upper arms caught in her jewelled hands. Viva wore trackpants, a baggy top. She was trying to wrench away, crying and speaking incoherently.

  Charles’ stepmother turned to her son. “Get to your room.”

  The words were clear, the sound perfect. Charles had bought the very best equipment money could obtain. He’d known he’d need it. He’d known he’d be capturing something on film.

  Just not this.

  “No,” Kemp snapped back.

  Fourteen years old, trying to push in, past his mother, to speak to
his sobbing, almost hysterical sister. Viva was trying to wrench out of her mother’s grip.

  “Is he—is he—”

  “He’s dead,” Kemp said. “What happened?”

  Maxine slapped Viva’s face, hard. The girl’s head snapped sideways, and she stopped struggling, simply stood, panting, stunned, with a passivity that Charles had not seen in her before or since.

  “This little whore killed him,” Maxine said flatly. “But she’s going to go back into her room and pretend to wake up once I call the housekeeper for help. And you, Kemp, are going to go back to your room. Charles clearly hasn’t heard anything, so pretend you didn’t either. Understand?”

  Watching now, Charles remembered differently: he’d been woken by the screams. He’d heard Kemp thunder down that corridor. He’d opened the door, almost run out, until he’d heard Maxine. Instinct had warned him that Maxine would temper her words with him there, and something told him that he needed her off guard. The camera would be a better witness.

  Onscreen, a scrawny fourteen-year-old Kemp was saying angrily, “She’s not a—”

  “Do you want to see your sister arrested? Do you want her to go to jail?”

  Kemp had an arm around Viva. “No, never—”

  “Then go.”

  Reluctantly Kemp turned away. Alone with her daughter, Maxine bit out, “You led Richard to this. You wanted to destroy my marriage. You wanted to ruin the one good thing I had. The only security I had. You were jealous of it. And now I’m going to have to cover for you, you little bitch.”

  “He was a filthy pervert—”

  Maxine grabbed her daughter’s jaw and dragged her face close. “He was my husband. Now get out. He fell down the stairs. That was all, you understand? He just fell down the stairs. An accident. It was a terrible accident.”

  “He wouldn’t leave me alone. You knew and you—”

  Maxine spat, “That’s the last time you’ll ever say that. Now go.”

  The camera’s angle gave Charles Viva’s face in profile, lips parted, panting, caught the hard, accusing stare she gave her mother before she walked again to the top of the staircase. For a long moment, she stared down at whatever view it gave her.

  Abruptly, she turned and walked back to her mother.

  “If the police ask me, I’ll tell them everything,” she said. The words were like stones. They fell into the space between the two women.

  Charles realised he was scarcely breathing.

  And then, face wet with tears he could see even in that light, Viva headed for her bedroom.

  Charles hit Pause on the video and got up, walked around the room. He found himself by the kitchen sink and poured a glass of water. As he gulped it down, he tried to consider his next move. He could not. He couldn’t think.

  Finally, he pressed Play again on the video. Not that there was much more of relevance. He’d seen it before. Knew it too well.

  The evidence on this recording was explosive. It was invaluable.

  He’d given away a certain amount when he’d confronted Maxine in that lawyer’s office years ago. Made her back off from the Durant fortune. Told her that he had proof of what his father had been doing.

  He just hadn’t told her exactly what proof. And of exactly what.

  Maxine had assumed all he knew was that Richard Durant had repeatedly raped Viva—with her mother’s tacit approval. That Maxine had traded Viva’s body for the Durant lifestyle.

  What Maxine hadn’t realised was that he knew both secrets: that Richard Durant had abused her daughter, and its consequences. Viva had snapped. Viva had accidentally killed Durant, shoving him down those stairs, and Maxine had covered that up too.

  If she could find a way to wreck him, Maxine would. Charles had made a powerful enemy in her.

  He’d bettered her. Cut her off from the many more millions she’d fought for.

  Later, an adult, Charles had experimented, discreetly of course, with certain lovers. When younger he’d been very, very publicly indiscreet in private clubs whose security and vetting systems rivalled those of small totalitarian nations. Their clientele were those who, like himself, had names and profiles that were all too recognisable.

  The problem was, he enjoyed public scenes, as Kemp well understood.

  As long as those public scenes stayed within a private, utterly secure arena. A safe space.

  The break-in made him certain Maxine had somehow still heard a whisper of it. Perhaps she’d thought there would be mementos of those scenes. Stephen’s assault, the break-in at his home had been no random act. He knew that she’d initiated the crime. It had been a hunt for any evidence she could use against him. She was playing her cards recklessly, but with Kemp back in his life, perhaps she saw leverage, a second chance at the millions she’d lost.

  Maxine operated on a sociopath’s logic and sheer entitlement.

  Stephen Halliday had already paid a price in blood. What would she do next?

  More to the point, what would he? And would his choices keep Kemp in his life or push him out?

  Chapter Twelve

  That evening Charles found himself in the crowded living room of Red and Viva’s colourful, funky Darlinghurst terrace house. “Underground Dragon,” Isto’s next release, pounded through the system’s speakers while the latest edit of the song’s video played on screen. Stark the drummer cheered, and the bass player’s girlfriend sprawled on the green velvet sectional sofa beside him. Somehow, this had turned into less business and more of a casual get-together.

  Charles knew everyone in the room, even if they were Kemp’s friends rather than his. Dylan, a friend of Kemp’s from his pre-private school days, had given him a wide, welcoming grin and a cheerful greeting when he’d walked into the room. Dylan had also posed for several of the images in his show. A painter, he’d provided the cover image for the band’s last release. His easy friendliness and the nods from the band members should have made Charles feel truly welcomed. But Viva was only permitting him here as a concession to Kemp. That nullified any welcome. The room dark but for the screen, the other band members were leaning in. Their assorted friends, lovers, and hangers-on were silent. All pretence at cool was shredded.

  Charles cut a glance to Kemp. Only the tap of his bare foot on the polished floorboards gave him away. Knowing Kemp, he was a million miles away and scheming on how in the hell to keep his mother away from Viva.

  Still shaken by that old piece of surveillance video, Charles could scarcely concentrate himself.

  A decade later, somehow, surely against all odds, Viva had flourished. Exactly what her journey had been Charles did not know. Kemp told Charles little about his sister. All he knew was that in the aftermath of that night, all their worlds had imploded.

  Richard Durant’s death had brought a media storm of the kind that made what he’d endured since the gallery show—was still dealing with—seem like nothing. His father’s widow had stayed long enough for the funeral and legalities to be cleared.

  Viva had been placed into one Sydney boarding school and Kemp into another. In Kemp’s case it had been a simple matter—the school Kemp and he were already attending had always had boarders as well as day students.

  He’d never told Kemp just what a relief it had been to see him again, after the weeks of being alone in that place but for the so-called friends who’d clustered like flies, scenting disaster and secrets. The ones whose parents had most certainly instructed them to make a friend of him years back because, well, the whole point of such establishments was networking, and he was a Durant.

  He’d never trusted those hangers-on. He’d never trusted that automatic admittance into their club. He’d never trusted anything his father’s money had bought him.

  As a boarder, Kemp had been put into his room, and that had been a particular form of beautiful torture all of its own.

  But what those years had been like for Viva? No way to ask.

  Ultimately, she was tough and respected, and Charles could on
ly envy the strength of the relationship she and Red shared. He wanted that for himself and Kemp.

  As if she’d read his mind, she turned the classic perfection of her profile away from the screen and towards him. For a moment her eyes fixed on his.

  Her lip curled and she relaxed against Red, an eyebrow lifted as she glanced from Charles to her brother. Even as Charles watched, she gave a small shake of her dark, sleek head. He read her stony expression, and his own was just as icy.

  As much as he hated it, he got it. Anyway, he’d always be tainted by his name. As far as Viva was concerned, there was no such thing as a Durant with any redeeming qualities. He couldn’t exactly blame her, but he refused to give Kemp up. The man was his only sanity.

  Watching her, he leaned over, pressed his lips to Kemp’s temple, and didn’t bother to wait for her reaction. Didn’t trouble to look her way again.

  Instead, he allowed the dark, heartbreaking words of the song to flood his senses.

  It was brilliant. The video itself was incredible. Whatever Viva did next, she would achieve massive international success, and Charles knew one thing: Any fame should only be for her art. For her work as a director. Not for the horrors that had taken place so many years back, or the way she had ended them.

  God, how she would hate that he knew that terrible secret of hers.

  As much as the two of them would never get along, they were in agreement on one thing.

  Richard Durant had indeed been a pervert. An utterly vile and despicable human being. Charles knew the man had broken his mother’s heart. He’d certainly broken her spirit. He closed his mind to that last memory of her, finding her bloodied and broken on the bathroom tiles, pill boxes and a blade scattered beside her. No, he wanted to remember her with the sunshine in her hair, smiling. Beautiful. Whole.

  And so he could only thank Viva, if silently, for having removed his remaining parent from the planet. He’d never had the guts to do it himself. The last thing he wanted was for this woman to be punished for it.

  No, she should be applauded.