Power Games

Nathan certainly did—and then some. He looked after her every morning. Every night. Every hour in between, until she was sore and ragged and weeping …

Tawny Linden had been powerless to leave. She could not go back. The Rams was the closest thing she had to a home and, over the coming months, as her beauty surfaced and her duckling became a swan, she began to bat for the big league.

That was when the competition really got going.

It was always a question of which Rams girls the punters wanted that night, who was prettiest and who they were prepared to pay most for. That was how the girls earned their keep. From the beginning Tawny understood she had to be the chosen girl, always, every time—she had to be the hottest, the most willing, the sexiest and the best—in case the Rams decided she wasn’t bagging the dollars and fired her ass out onto the street. She’d have ended up a hooker, just another sunken-eyed junkie begging for dimes. OK, the work wasn’t easy—the men she was forced to service, the things they had made her do—but it was a damn sight better than that.

Thank Christ she had gotten out when she did.

‘You OK?’ asked Minty. ‘You look like you saw a ghost.’

Manhattan rushed past. The Mercedes was warm, the seats plush. Tawny lit a cigarette and opened the window, flicking the butt with red-painted talons.

‘I’m better than OK,’ she said. ‘I’m Tawny Lascelles.’

Minty gave a nervous laugh.

‘No kidding,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you always been?’

But Tawny didn’t reply.

15 (#ulink_d14f84ed-2763-54f9-89f0-0c62487fad21)

Celeste Cavalieri held the diamond up to the light. It twinkled and dazzled between her fingers, a plum-sized explosion of brilliance. She angled it, examining the way it refracted and dispelled the gleam, her eyes trained to hunt out the tiniest imperfection. The clarity was superb, a fifty-two carat Peruzzi with faceted girdle. Bright white.

She would never consider lifting a piece such as this, but the magnetism was always there. It wasn’t about the value, or even the object itself—it was simply the thrill of the steal. Once, Celeste had taken a comb from a woman’s open bag, next to her at an exhibition. Once, she had slipped from a Paris department store with a silk scarf folded away in her purse. Once, she had removed a silver-plated espresso cup from a bistro in Bruges. It didn’t matter what it was. It mattered that she took it.

‘Are you nearly done?’

Celeste jumped. She turned to the museum overseer, who had popped his head round the door. ‘Sorry,’ she smiled, ‘you startled me.’

‘It gets quiet in here, huh.’

‘Sure does.’

He returned her smile. ‘Let me know when you’re ready?’

Celeste nodded. The door closed behind him and she exhaled.

Never again! But every time was the last. Every time she swore she was through. Celeste Cavalieri was revered, a trusted asset to the world’s richest families. As if she had to push that trust, a dare, to see how far it would strain …

She touched the bracelet on her wrist, ruby and silver. Her first ever steal, from a castle in Hungary. She could see it now: buried deep in the forest, its turrets rising like a drawing in a fairytale. The owner had been an ex-banker, living there with his son. Their names escaped her now. Strange people. The son had a stammer.

Celeste had been summoned to value a painting of the banker’s deceased wife, commissioned to the finest artist of the decade. A portrait of a woman, hung dourly in the castle’s Great Hall, the oil thick and dingy and the features encased in shadow …

A channel of cold seeped down her spine.

Carefully, reverently, Celeste replaced the museum diamond in its casket. The jewel shone as a nugget of treasure on the ocean floor, seductive and dangerous.

Exiting the building on Central Park West, she was met by a bustling hive of rush-hour workers and sky-facing tourists. As she hailed a cab, her attention was caught by a bizarre headline on a nearby newsstand. She did a double-take, scarcely believing her eyes. It read:

ITALIAN INDUSTRIALIST INVOLVED IN ALIEN HOAX.

Celeste approached. The accompanying photograph showed Signor Rossetti being escorted from the Veroli house she had run a valuation at back in February.

Detectives stormed the financier’s hidden-away mansion at the weekend and described what they found as ‘a grave and bold deception’. Rossetti and his wife were arrested on suspicion of three counts of fraud, including extortion of money from a group of as yet unnamed conspiracy theorists. Claiming their estate to be a UFO crash site, the Rossettis’ replica was ‘impressive’ and ‘high-concept’, prompting Rossetti to be tagged ‘the Martian magician’ …

Celeste was startled. No doubt about it, the Veroli house had been peculiar, even by the standards she was used to—these old money clans were invariably eccentric, their half-forgotten-about painting, battered coffer of Grandmother’s gems or relic hidden in a drawer fetching enough to sustain any ordinary person for a lifetime.

But this?

She remembered something else, too—the truly unusual part. Among the clandestine meetings she had witnessed, one visit in particular stood out. Celeste had been locked in the Veroli library, stifled behind shrouded windows and permitted to leave the room only under escort. But she was trained to decipher nuance, it was her trade, and no detail escaped detection: a smack of footsteps drifting in from the gallery, a series of closed doors and an American accent, gruff and male, speaking with authority but at the same time deep unease. Celeste had placed it right away.

Republican senator Mitch Corrigan—movie star turned government royalty. Family man. All-American hero. Toast of Washington. What was he doing here?

Rain spitting against glass, Celeste had dragged up a stool and peeled open the drapes. The Veroli courtyard spilled into view. Out on the cobbles stood a billowing structure, a shed draped in tarpaulin, flanked by two sentries in protective helmets and boiler suits. The visitors were given the same, and after a short dialogue were admitted. Twenty minutes later they emerged, faces ashen, eyes thick with horror.

Shocked, she’d stumbled down. What was in there? What had they seen?

Celeste thought no more of it. She wasn’t paid to ask questions. Even so, she’d been intrigued when, a week later, reporter Eve Harley left a private appeal on her voicemail. As a rule, Celeste didn’t liaise with the press and, despite further attempts, hadn’t been in touch. Here, then, was why. A group of as yet unnamed conspiracy theorists …

Senator Corrigan would be wild with fear at the exposé.

‘Hey, lady, you want a ride or not?’ The cab driver leaned out of his window, chewing gum.

Hastily, Celeste bought the paper. People never failed to amaze her. Humans were more complex and subtle fakes than any gem she could uncover. She made her living from citing forgeries, from scratching the surface and finding what lay beneath. Knowing when something wasn’t all it appeared. She herself was no exception.

Climbing into the taxi, she slammed the door hard.

Back at the Plaza, she undressed, folded her clothes into a neat, even-sided block and brushed her teeth, once, twice, a third time. Celeste spent minutes brushing, always did, before and after every meal and sometimes in between. It made her feel clean, and the fiercer she brushed the more she stripped away. She didn’t need her shrink to tell her it was all connected: the theft, the OCD, the insecurities, the throttling habits, the damaging relationship she’d been in for five years now, so that every trip away she was counting the days till she could leave, just to get away from him …

Slipping beneath crisp white sheets, she flicked on the TV and landed on a biopic of Tawny Lascelles—Rise of a Fashion Icon. Tawny was gabbling into camera at a fashion shoot, chatting to reporters at a red carpet line-up then posing on the arm of her latest boyfriend, her dress split to the thigh and her scarlet lips pouting.

Celeste was ready to switch over, but something about the model held her in thrall. She had met Tawny once, a while back. Though she mixed regularly with the rich and famous, she still found their company challenging—all that show and glitz, it wasn’t her thing. Discretion and caution were the hallmarks of her career and over the years she had honed them to perfection. In a crowd she could blend in, become hidden, and that was exactly the way she liked it. Anonymous.

The supermodel had been even more striking in real life than she was in pictures: goddess-like, with long, caramel legs and tousled blonde hair. Celeste had felt outshone by her in every conceivable way. On introduction she had extended the arm of friendship, warmly saying hello, but all Tawny offered in return was a sniff of disdain, as if an unpleasant smell had passed under her nose. She had scanned Celeste up and down, deemed her unworthy of comment—worse, offensive to her in some way—and proceeded to whip round and stalk off without a single reply.

‘Models!’ their host had feebly joked, thrusting another drink in her hand.

Celeste had been able to think of a few other words.

She killed the channel and lay back.

What must it be like to be Tawny Lascelles? Brazen, unapologetic, so absolutely sure in her own skin as to cease to care an iota for what other people thought? Her rudeness was so blatant it almost demanded respect. Celeste had been left open-mouthed, wondering what on earth she had done wrong.

She closed her eyes. Sometimes, when she was alone, she imagined she was a different woman—a woman like Tawny, contained and confident, wholesome and undamaged, resting in splendour like a china doll in a velvet-lined box. A woman like Tawny didn’t harbour darkness. She was a golden girl, a perfect swan. Clean.

In comparison, Celeste was rotten. Soiled. Ruined. Broken.