The head of HR rang me and said I was being given a fifty grand hardship bonus for my loyalty and the exemplary way I had handled matters. Would I like to transfer to the LA office, all expenses paid? The precise nature of my role was still to be confirmed, but was I at all interested in producing?
I booked an Ayurvedic aromatherapy in-room massage for two. We ordered tuna poke and sweet potato fries. We got into the master bed, drank Tattinger and watched a Bravo series with attractive young people working on a luxury yacht, bickering and getting drunk and serving exotic cocktails to entitled guests. Eventually, we made love.
Siobhan had a boyfriend back in London. Some young actresses were coming out now, as lesbian or bisexual, but only women who had already had major Hollywood blockbuster success and now wanted to work in art films. One of them took the part of the nun in Ave Maria; she said in interviews that, like Jodie Foster in The Betrayed, it was much easier for her, as a gay woman, to play the victim of a male gang rape, than it would have been for a straight one.
Siobhan asked for and got the coveted part of a sexy assassin in a well-received thriller which led to a role in a Marvel franchise. I moved to LA and got into production. It had been a nominal job title, given to me under the assumption that everyone wanted to produce, but to my surprise, I turned out to be very skilled at it. I have a sense of how to sell a story, what people will believe, what they won’t... And there’s quite the lesbian network in Los Angeles. They’re all big fans of Julie Andrews and Mary Poppins.
I was Siobhan’s maid of honour at her wedding to her understanding long-term boyfriend. We’re still very close, though I’m married now myself, to a writer/director who was nominated for an Oscar last year. The boys’ club has realised it needs to let in more than a token couple of women, and we’re shoving hard at the floodgates.
Siobhan and I don’t talk about that afternoon in Jared’s office; we spent four days holed up at the Plaza, talking, crying, sleeping, working through it, and then we were done. She didn’t realise then that I was the one who filled his prescriptions, stocked his fridge with them, cleaned up the used needles, provided the starlets’ contact details for the lawyers to move in smoothly with their NDAs and settlement offers. It may have occurred to her since, but she’s never brought it up to me; why would an actress unnecessarily antagonise a producer?
Sometimes I think I see a little flicker of speculation in her eye as we hang out on the terrace of my house high in the Hollywood Hills, the lights of downtown glittering below, Katrine grilling a paleo-suitable slab of meat over our fire pit, Siobhan and I sipping dry, low-sugar red wine, the fountain playing down the living wall of our vertical garden. But that could so easily be a glimmer reflected from the leaping flames, the glint of light on moving water.
It’s very unlikely that she’s wondering if I emptied out that syringe of erectile dysfunction disorder medication and replaced its contents with heavily condensed potassium chloride, boiled down on my kitchen stove. That she’s remembering my passion for her in that huge bed at the Plaza, and asking herself whether, after all the starlets I’d seen come and go, I finally killed him to protect her, putting that syringe in his fridge, the last one in the box, after I took her to the casting suite.
Because then it would dawn on her that, if my only motive had been to protect her, I hadn’t done the best of jobs. I had subjected her to his aggression, his insistence that she show him her tits, unbutton her jeans, as he sat at his desk chair, pulled the last syringe out from the packet, unzipped his trousers, discarded the plastic needle cover and stuck the needle into the side of his penis — avoiding, of course, the head and underside and any visible veins.
I had forced her to watch him stand up, lurch towards her, tears forming in her beautiful eyes as he told her that good girls get leading roles, and to strip down, get on her knees and show him what a good girl she could be. To stand there, paralysed, terrified, conflicted, before he gasped and grabbed his left arm, his own knees buckling, his torso bending forward, hitting the wide leather arm of the sofa, his head crashing down like a heavy weight, pulling his body with it. To watch him die.
If I had truly done it out of pure love for her, I wouldn’t have put her through that. I would have loaded that syringe for another actress’s ‘meeting’ with him in his office and spared her the entire experience.
But then, she wouldn’t have owed me. I wouldn’t have been the one who rushed to her side, comforting her, telling her everything would be all right, and was as good as her word. I wouldn’t have been holed up with her in the Plaza for four beautiful, miraculous, heaven-sent days. Wouldn’t have been perfectly positioned to take advantage of her in a state of extreme shock and vulnerability.
In my defence, however, she had sex with me entirely willingly. On that score, at least, I’m morally superior to Jared.
Copyright
Swiftwing 98 by Peter O’Donnell writing as Madeleine Brent; © 1984 by Modesty Blaise Ltd, reprinted by permission of the Trustees of the Estate of Peter O’Donnell.
Some Sunny Day by Julian Rathbone; © 1993; first published in New Crimes, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; reprinted by permission of the Estate of Julian Rathbone.
Funny Story by Larry Beinhart; © 1995; first appeared in No Alibis, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; reprinted by permission of the author.
Herbert in Motion by Ian Rankin; © 1996 by John Rebus Ltd; first appeared in Perfectly Criminal, edited by Martin Edwards; reprinted by permission of RCW Literary Agency.
Roots by Jerry Sykes; © 1998; first appeared in Fresh Blood, edited by Mike Ripley and Maxim Jakubowski; reprinted by permission of the author.
Martha Grace by Stella Duffy; © 2002; first appeared in Tart Noir, edited by Stella Duffy and Lauren Henderson; reprinted by permission of the author.
The Weekender by Jeffery Deaver; © 1996; first appeared in the UK in Twisted; reprinted by permission of Gelfman Schneider/ICM Partners.
Needle Match by Peter Lovesey; © 2007; first appeared in the UK in The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; reprinted by permission of the author.
The Bookbinder’s Apprentice by Martin Edwards; © 2008; first appeared in the UK in The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; reprinted by permission of the author.
Homework by Phil Lovesey; © 2011; first appeared in the UK in The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; reprinted by permission of the author.
Laptop by Cath Staincliffe; © 2012; first appeared in Best Eaten Cold, edited by Martin Edwards; reprinted by permission of the author.
The Message by Margaret Murphy; © 2012; first appeared in Best Eaten Cold, edited by Martin Edwards; reprinted by permission of the author.
Fedora by John Harvey; © 2014;first appeared in Deadly Pleasures, edited by Martin Edwards; reprinted by permission of the author.
Apocrypha by Richard Lange; © 2015; first appeared in Sweet Nothing; reprinted by permission of Hachette Book Group, USA and Hodder & Stoughton.