The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 21

"So, what do you want from me?" Caro asked with brittle dignity. "Money?"

The girl laughed outright. "Didn't I already say I wasn't selling? Johnny Franz deserves what's coming to him." She put her head on one side. "The only question is ... do you?"

"He loves me." But even an actress of Caro's skill heard the underlying uncertainty.

"Hm. I'm sure that's what all those starstruck teenagers thought, before he d.a.m.n-near raped them," the girl said deliberately. "You know how many he's paid off?" When Caro didn't respond, she shrugged. "Well, can't say I didn't warn you."

She took the camera out of Caro's momentarily nerveless fingers, squatted to repack it into its padded bag, adding in conversational tones, "Personally, I don't see what all the fuss is about with that boy. From what I saw, I'd rate him maybe a four out of ten for energy if not for style. And that's only because sometimes I can go a little rough." She rose easily, flashed Caro a doubtful smile from beneath that Cruella de Vil-style hair. "Good luck, babe you're going to need it."

When Caro Urquart began her walk down the aisle, gasps from the a.s.sembled congregation greeted her appearance. The dress with its mile-long silk train carried by a single bridesmaid, that distinctive golden hair under the diaphanous veil, the perfect bunch of white orchids in her hands.

It took them a moment to wonder why she wasn't on the arm of her father, and another to realize she seemed in something of a hurry to meet the handsome rock star in his trademark swaggered pose alongside the waiting priest.

Caro reached the altar faster than rehearsals had predicted, paused while the organist tried to catch up and eventually floundered into silence. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, lips slightly parted, the bridesmaid fussing with her train.

Johnny Franz failed to notice any of this lapse in timing. He stepped forwards with that famous killer smile and gently lifted the veil away from his fiancee's face.

"You are the love of my life," he murmured, just loud enough to carry to the guy ghost-writing his autobiography, seated two rows back.

"Really?" Caro said blandly, her own voice the one she'd perfected on the West End stage to be clearly audible in the G.o.ds. "So, who was the little b.i.t.c.h-in-heat you were s.h.a.gging in the summerhouse this morning, then?"

Johnny's guilty eyes flew to the bridesmaid, only then realizing that she was taller than he remembered. She hadn't been wearing a blonde wig then, either, and he was pretty sure there'd been no tattoos.

And she definitely hadn't had a camera hidden somewhere that she was now using to fire off frame after frame of unflattering close-ups.

Bewildered by his own rush of guilt, his gaze jerked back to Caro.

"'The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair'?" she thundered, temper finally breaking loose. "How about 'The Girl with Her Fist in Your Face', you cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

Johnny never saw the first punch coming.

The tabloid banner headlines quoted her verbatim the following day, above one of Angel's exclusive photographs from the church. It showed Caro's delicate clenched fist frozen at the very moment of contact, square on the side of Johnny Franz's jaw. A perfect shot, with his chin tucked back and his eyes shut and his cheeks bloated in shocked surprise, just a fleck of spittle spraying outwards to show the force of the blow.

Caro's own face had blazed with righteous fury, proving that she was one of the few women who truly was more beautiful when she was angry.

Immediately afterwards, Caro's agent started fielding calls from the major studios, offering her leading roles in big-budget action adventures. She chose that of an ice-cool a.s.sa.s.sin in a sci-fi epic, playing it with golden contacts, spiked black and white hair, and a number of curious tattoos.

She refused to be drawn by David Letterman on her source of inspiration. The movie became the blockbuster hit of the summer.

After Angel's pictures from the summer-house hit the Internet, three girls came forward to lodge formal complaints about Johnny's often vicious s.e.xual style in the back of the tour bus after gigs. One of them was only fifteen.

The resultant police investigation meant the second single from The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair barely made it into the Top Twenty on release, and dropped rapidly down the charts. His next alb.u.m tanked.

Blackley's agency attempted to recover their outlay, but since the pictures Angel took were, strictly speaking, not of the wedding, Johnny's lawyers were stalling. He had other things to worry about.

Caro sent Angel an open-ended offer to be her bridesmaid for real as and when the actress made another trip down the aisle. Angel's texted refusal was more regretful than it sounded. She had no desire to become her own prey.

George, who perhaps knew her best of anyone, sent her a case of Stolichnaya.

With her commission, Angel went to Oklahoma for the start of the tornado season, capturing shots of an F4 touching down just outside Tulsa, which she sold to National Geographic.

"Stunning," George said, thoughtful, when she brought him a copy of the magazine. He peered at the invented by-line. "b.l.o.o.d.y shame you couldn't use your real name on this, kiddo."

Angel was lounging by the cracked-open office window, blowing experimental smoke-rings out over Canary Wharf. Today, her hair was pink and her eyes were a vivid aquamarine. She shrugged. She hadn't forgotten the guy in the doorway opposite the emba.s.sy.

Always get the money.

"As long as they get my name right on the cheque," she said, with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, "what do I care?"

LOVELY REQUIEM, MR MOZART.

Robert Barnard.

THE COMMISSION CAME into my life accompanied by Mr Lewis Cazalet. The arrival of that gentleman was announced by Jeannie, my unusually bright and alert maid of all duties.

"There's a wee mannikin to see you. Says he has a proposal, something to your advantage."

I did not jump up with the alacrity I would once have shown. My position as piano teacher to the Princess Victoria brought me, as well as great pleasure, none of it musical, a great number of prestigious pupils. I stirred reluctantly in my chair, only to have Jeannie say: "Don't hurry. Let the body wait."

I nodded, and went to the piano and played a showy piece by my friend Clementi, sufficiently forte to penetrate walls. Jeannie came in as I was finishing.

"He's walking up and down. He's a mite ... unappetizing."

I raised my eyebrows, but I relied on Jeannie's judgement, and told her to show him in.

The gentleman whom she ushered in was not short, but there was a sort of insubstantiality about him: he was thin to the point of meagreness, his gestures were fluttery, and his face was the colour of putty.

"Mr Mozart?" he said, taking my hand limply. "A great honour. I recognized one of your sonatas, did I not? Your fame is gone out to all lands."

I was not well disposed towards anyone who could confuse a piece by Clementi with one of my sonatas.

"Mr ... er?"

"Cazalet, Lewis Cazalet."

"Ah a French name," I said unenthusiastically. That nation had virtually cut the continent of Europe off for twenty years, the very years of my prime, when I could have earned a fortune.

"We are a Huguenot family," he murmured, as if that was a guarantee of virtue and probity.

"Well, let's get down to business. I believe you have a proposition for me." We sat down and I looked enquiringly at him.

"Perhaps as a preliminary-" No, please! Spare me the preliminaries! "I should say that I am a man of letters, but not one favoured by fame and fortune like yourself." Did my sitting room look as if I was favoured by fortune? "As a consequence I have been for the last five years librarian and secretary to Mr Isaac Pickles. You know the name?"

I prevaricated.

"I believe I have heard the name mentioned by my son in Wakefield."

"You would have. A great name in the North. Immensely wealthy. Mr Pickles his father was Pighills, but no matter is one of the foremost mill-owners in the Bradford district. He is, in newspaper parlance, a Prince of Industry."

"I see," I said. And I did. A loud vulgarian with pots of money and a power l.u.s.t.

"A most considerate employer, and generous to boot on occasion. I have no complaints whatsoever."

"That's good to hear. In sending you to see me this, er, Pickles has some end in view, I take it?"

Mr Cazalet hummed and hawed. Then he suddenly blurted out: "A Requiem. He wishes you to write a Requiem."

"Ah. I take it you mean a requiem ma.s.s. Is Mr Pickles a Catholic?"

"He is not. His religion is taken from many and is his own alone."

"And the person for whom this requiem is to be written?"

"Is immaterial."

"I a.s.sure you it is not. If it is for His late Majesty King George IV it would be very different to what I would write if it was for the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example."

"I would imagine so!" He hummed again, let out something like a whimper, then said: "It is a requiem for his wife."

"I see. Mr Pickles was a devoted husband, I take it?"

"Mr Pickles is the complete family man affectionate, but wise ... I must insist, however, that the information I have just given you remain completely confidential. Com-plete-ly."

"It will. But there must surely be a reason for this request?"

He looked at me piteously but I held his gaze.

"The lady in question is still alive."

I sat back in my chair and simply said "Phew."

In the next few minutes he confided in me the facts of the case. The wife in question was sick, sicker than she herself recognized; the doctor was certain her illness was terminal, but would not commit himself to a likely date. All the uncertainties of the commission would be reflected in the fee, and there was one further condition that Mr Pickles absolutely insisted upon.

"That is that you tell no one of this commission, tell no one that you are writing a Requiem, tell no one when it is performed that you wrote it, and give total and absolute rights in the work to Mr Pickles, along with all ma.n.u.script writings."

"I see," I said. "And the fee he suggests that he pay me?"

"The fee he is willing to pay you is fifteen hundred pounds."

Fifteen hundred! Riches! Good dinners, fine silk clothes, rich presents for my children and grandchildren. O wondrous Pickles!

"Say two thousand," I said, "and I am Mr Pickles's to command."

I was not deceived by the conditions. Mr Pickles was an amateur musician who wanted to pa.s.s my work off as his own. When his wife died he wanted to impose on the world by pretending that the superb Requiem that was performed for her was written by his good self, divinely inspired (rather as that arch imposter Samuel Taylor Coleridge tries to pretend that his poems were in fact written by the Almighty, with himself acting merely as amanuensis). And it would all be in vain: every society person with any musical knowledge would know it was not by him, and anyone of real discernment would guess it was by Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.

The only fly in the ointment was spelled out for me by the Princess Victoria at her next weekly piano lesson, where she murdered the works of lesser men than I (I had learned the lesson of not encouraging her to her painful operations on works of my own). When she had screwed out of me the reasons for my lightness of heart (unusual, even with her delightful presence) she said: "He seems a very dishonest man, Mr Mozart."

"Distinctly devious, my dear."

"Devious! What a lovely word. If he can rob you of credit for the music, he can hardly be trusted to pay you for it."

It was something I resolved to bear in mind.

From the start Mr Pickles showed he had learned lessons from the negotiations of Mr Cazalet.

"The fee I'm offering," he said to me in his Hyde Park mansion, "is two thousand pounds. Subject, naturally to some safeguards."

Two thousand pounds, as asked for! I wouldn't like to say how long it would take me to earn that amount by more legitimate pursuits. Kensington Palace paid me thirteen and sixpence an hour for my lessons with the Princess. We were sitting on a superb sofa, which must have been in Mr Pickles's family since the time he started to make a fortune from his niche in the cotton industry, which was warm underwear. I could have done with a pair of his long combinations now: this luxurious sofa was about half a mile from the nearest of two fires in the high-ceilinged drawing room of his mansion. I got up and strolled over to his fine grand piano, much nearer the fire. I played a few notes.

"This will need tuning," I said. Mr Pickles was outraged.

"I a.s.sure you it is just as it came from the makers."

"That is the problem. Pianos go out of tune."

"But the finest singers and pianists have used it," he neighed, like a child wailing. "My musical soirees are famous."

"Mr Pickles, I played for King George III when he was a young man. I know when a piano needs tuning."

He backed away at once.

"Yes, yes, of course. But we haven't gone over the cond the safeguards."

"For a fee of two thousand pounds I accept those without question. If I understand Mr Cazalet they are that you will own the piece absolutely, my name will not be attached to it, nor will I verbally lay claim to it. I suggest you might like to call it the Pickles Requiem, and state on the t.i.tle page that it is 'by a gentleman'."

Mr Pickles almost purred.

"Yes, yes. They have a ring to them. 'The Pickles Requiem'. In memory of my late wife, of course."

"Of course. I didn't realize that your wife had died since I talked to Mr Cazalet."

"She has not. I refer to her proper designation when the great work comes to be performed."