Deadly Obsession Read online

  ‘She’s visiting her sister Lolly in London, bleeding my bank account dry at Harrods no doubt. She spends it quicker than I can fucking earn it that’s for sure. Mind you, it leaves me in peace.’ Adam’s salacious mind immediately raced to the ‘peace’ he’d enjoyed with Dolly the day before. He may have been paying for it but she was worth every penny and allowed him to enjoy carnal pleasures that Caitlyn had given up on years ago.

  ‘How exactly do you earn your money, anyway?’ Lily parked herself on the edge of the desk, much to her father’s annoyance. Her clothes were just as sodden as her bag, not that the free-spirited Lily gave two hoots. She wanted to speak to her father and now was as good a time as any. ‘Are you involved in anything dodgy? I assume this house wasn’t bought with the profit from the purest of professions. There can’t be many daughters who don’t know what their daddy actually does for a living?’

  ‘What the fuck, Lily? Does it matter what I do for a living? All you need to know is that I work hard and it pays to keep a roof over your head and those increasingly-outlandish clothes on your back.’ He scanned the black chunky plastic jacket, sweater dress and orange fishnet tights she was wearing. ‘Your taste is weirder than that Grace Jones bird I saw on TV. Strange piece, she is. Flapping around on stage with her tits out.’

  ‘It was just something Amy Hart said, that’s all ...’ She guessed that she would have Adam’s full attention as soon as she mentioned Amy’s name. She was right.

  ‘When did you see her?’ snarled Adam. ‘What are you sniffing around her for? She’s trouble.’

  ‘Hardly. The woman’s as innocent as Snow White considering she used to run a banging nightclub. It was yesterday. She nearly got herself knocked down and luckily for her I was there to pull her out of the road. I swear the car was actually gunning for her. She’s obviously been treading on some toes.’ Lily was sure her father seemed to fidget awkwardly in his seat at the mention of the near accident. Did a crumb of a smile just ripple across his face?

  ‘Where was this? And why were you with her, more to the point?’

  ‘I was just passing, out shopping and saw her walk into the road. Didn’t even know it was her at first. Anyway, she took me for a meal to say thanks for saving her sorry little ass and told me that Tommy Hearn filled her in about Riley being some sort of big cheese criminal who ended up surrounded by more corpses than an episode of CSI. Quite a little killer by all accounts. Sure makes him a whole lot sexier than as head of a plastics business, eh?’

  ‘What was her reaction?’ Adam was trying rather unsuccessfully to keep his cool in front of his daughter.

  ‘I think she knows it’s true but she’s finding it hard to believe. She also thinks that maybe he’s alive. Dumb bitch. How can he be? He had his face shot off. That makes for a whole lotta dead in my books.’

  Adam could feel a bead of sweat forming in the bulldog folds of flesh at the back of his neck. ‘He can’t be alive. He can’t be,’ he stated. Lily wasn’t sure whether it was a fact or more of a wish judging from the tone in her father’s voice.

  For a moment there was contemplative silence. It was Lily who broke it. ‘So, is my daddy dearest a hardened criminal too, then? Have you bludgeoned, stabbed and shot your way through life to pay for all of this? I don’t mind if you have. You’ve got the ugly face of a gangland desperado so you might as well have the lifestyle too.’

  ‘Why don’t you just go away, Lily? There is no point in worrying your miniscule fucking little brain with more than it can cope with. I earn good money and that’s all you need to know.’ Adam was beyond dismissive. As far as he was concerned the conversation was over. Lily didn’t need to dig any more.

  ‘Your lack of denial speaks volumes. I’ll take that as a yes. It’s kinda cool – gives you an edge that most fathers can only dream of. Beats being a geography teacher or a traffic warden anyway. My dad, the modern-day mobster. Smart ...’

  ‘Goodbye Lily.’ His words were blunt. It was her cue to leave.

  Lily walked upstairs to her room.

  Once inside she emptied the contents of her bag onto her bed and fished around for a bag of weed and some cigarette papers. Lily was in the mood to get a little high. In fact, as she contemplated the fact that Riley was ... hell, maybe is ... a criminal, she let her mind wander freely, thinking back to the sex they’d enjoyed together. It had been good, toe-curlingly so. God, if he was alive, she’d have adored a repeat performance. Rolling the cigarette papers, Lily decided that she wanted to get so high she’d be risking vertigo.

  * * *

  Having booked into the hotel for the night, as she knew she would, Amy was annoyed with the fact that she took a little bit longer getting ready than she really needed to. She was miffed with herself for having spent the afternoon finding a decent clothes shop to buy a new outfit from and a department store as well for a touch of pampering. When she’d left her flat that morning she hadn’t expected to be staying overnight anywhere so luxuries such as a change of outfit and some decent toiletries were not considered. Why was she bothering? All she wanted was information.

  The truth of the matter was that she was definitely bewitched by Grant Wilson. She couldn't help it. Since Riley had died there had been no male attention in her life. She’d not looked for it, she didn’t need it and she certainly didn’t want it. So why did she suddenly feel a rippling of desire the moment she’d come face to face with Grant? Simple – the man was hypnotically gorgeous. Despite a clash of conflicting emotions coursing rapids-like through her, she couldn’t help but feel that she wanted to look her best. Guilt fused with forbidden attraction. Lustrous blond hair curved back in waves across his head, deep blue eyes that any woman could dive into, immersing herself in lustful longing, and an ice-white smile that screamed ‘toothpaste ad’, Grant was the peak of masculinity. With a hardened body that was shown to great effect on countless Ward 44 bedroom scenes, he was the complete package.

  But Amy wasn’t here on a date and attempted to park any lascivious thoughts at the back of her mind. She may have been living like a widow for the last six months but she was still a woman, and she missed the love-making she'd shared with Riley. There had been no-one sharing her bed since Riley and attractive though Grant was, this was neither the time nor the place. For all she knew, Grant could be the one responsible for her husband’s death, or at least a failed attempt on it if he were still alive. But somehow she was still taking longer than normal to make sure she looked as hot as she possibly could ...

  It obviously worked. ‘Wow, you look bloody amazing,’ were the first words from Grant’s lips as Amy walked into the hotel bar. She could feel her heart beating inside her chest. Was it just fear and nerves or a cocktail of trepidation and unnecessary excitement? Amy wasn’t sure.

  ‘Thank you.’ It was all that she could think of to say. Anything else would have seemed too awkward. She added ‘you too’, feeling compelled to repay the compliment.

  The first twenty minutes of their conversation, aided by two glasses of rich red wine, were nothing more than basic niceties. Grant asked Amy how she was, how she’d coped since that night at The Kitty Kat, how hard it must have been losing both a husband and a best friend, what life was like for her away from Manchester and indeed whether she ever intended to return to her home city.

  It wasn’t until they’d sat down in the hotel restaurant and ordered a meal that the conversation turned to the real crux of the matter. It was Grant who shifted the discussion out of first gear, sensing Amy's struggle.

  ‘You know your late husband and I never really liked each other, don’t you? In fact I hated him. Always did. We were what you’d call rivals when we were younger.’ Grant flashed a hint of a smile to try and ease the complicated nature of their conversation.

  ‘Yeah, I know ... why was that? I would have thought you and Riley would have been mates. You are kind of similar ... I mean, were kind of ...’ Amy’s voice petered out, not knowing how to continue.

  ‘It
all stemmed from our schooldays. When you’re in the same year together and you meet someone who is just as good as you are at sports and academics and is popular with the teachers and even more so with the girls then it tends to grate slightly. I guess I was jealous.’ Grant shrugged his shoulders and flashed a smile.

  ‘But you were what ... eleven years old when you first met? That’s pretty mad to dislike someone at such a tender age.’

  ‘Hey. I’m an actor. Vanity is my middle name. I guess it started at an early age. Your husband was always a popular guy, especially with the ladies ... I needed to know I could beat him, compete with him.’

  The mention of Riley’s popularity with women pinched at Amy’s skin. A vision of her husband and Lily together in bed scratched itself across her mind. As her one true love, even the thought of him with another woman brought a nasty taste to her mouth. For the briefest moment a thunderclap of emotion hurtled across Amy’s mind. If Riley was alive then giving herself to Grant would be the ultimate revenge for his betrayal with Lily.

  She let the thought disappear as soon as it had come, as if too wicked to contemplate. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any trouble pulling.’

  ‘Let me tell you something. My mum and dad brought me up to believe that I would never amount to much. Even now, as a successful actor, they don’t really give me any praise. It was the same at school. If I wasn’t made captain of the rugby team, given the best marks for a project or first in line for a date at the school disco then I wasn’t happy. I felt a failure. Dominant parents can do that to even the strongest of lads. I was determined to succeed in everything I did. I had to be number one so that my parents couldn’t constantly say I’d failed. Anything less than top of the heap wasn’t good enough for them, or for me. If life was to be bearable every time I went home then I had to be able to hold my head up high and be the best. Riley was the sodding thorn in my side.’

  It was the first sign of vulnerability that Amy had seen in Grant. It was instantly endearing, despite the evident anger seething beneath the surface.

  ‘I would always try to work harder than any other classmate doing whatever it took to be number one. I studied for hours for tests, revised for weeks for exams just to make sure that I could do my best. It was the same with sports. I had to be the team captain, because vice-captain meant only one thing in my head and that was second best. It was like an addiction. For a while I was top dog. For the first two or three years of school I excelled in cricket, rugby, swimming ... you name it. The same with all of my school subjects. Then all of a sudden one name kept popping up and beating me to captain of such and such a team or top marks in one subject or another. It was always Riley Hart. It seems pathetic I know. I should have thrived on competition, but I didn’t. I hated your husband throughout my entire school career and the feeling was pretty much mutual. He hated the occasions when I was number one and vice versa.’

  ‘And you’ve carried that all of your life. That’s ridiculous,’ scoffed Amy. ‘You and Riley didn’t see each other for years after leaving school did you? Surely that rivalry was all behind you, just a boyish thing of the past.’

  There was a moment's silence, Grant somehow searching for the right words. ‘Blokes are blokes. We let things fester and rot. I hadn’t seen your husband for years before that night at the Kitty Kat and God knows that I wouldn’t wish what happened on my worst enemy. Nobody deserves to die like that. I thought I was a goner that night too – bullets seemed to be flying everywhere, but I never liked Riley. I make no bones about it. I didn’t want him to succeed when he left school and it pissed me off that he got everything passed on to him from his dad. He wanted me to fail too. Call it jealousy. My parents gave me nothing, still haven’t. I’ve earned everything I have, had to overcome every obstacle. I don’t think Riley had to fucking work for anything. I’m sorry if that’s harsh but you came here for the truth, didn’t you?’

  Amy was keen to defend Riley – he was the man she'd married after all. Despite everything. ‘Yes, I did, but you can’t choose your parents. It wasn’t Riley’s fault that his dad ran a successful business. No more than the fact that yours aren’t as supportive as you’d like them to be. You’ve had the last laugh though, haven’t you? You’re the biggest thing on UK television. That’s rubbing a rather large barrel of salt into the wounds if you ask me.’

  ‘I'll tell you something about your late husband, shall I Amy? He went out of his way to humiliate me many times and that’s something that has scarred me for life.’ Grant was shaking as he spoke. It was uncomfortable for Amy to watch.

  'In our final term – we both must have been about seventeen – we were having an end of year ball. Great big thing – marquee, hog roast, New Orleans jazz band ... the works. It was going to be awesome. Every bloke wanted to be there with the fittest girl on his arm. I had my eyes on a girl called Lottie Webber. I had done for most of my final year. Captain of the netball team, best voice in the school choir, played opposite me in the school production of Whistle Down The Wind. There was a real spark between us. She was everything I saw in myself. She epitomised success. And she was drop dead gorgeous to boot. I wooed her, I took her out on dates, and I lost my virginity to her. She was the girl I definitely wanted to be with for that ball. Hell, she was the girl I wanted to be with, full stop.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Amy had a feeling of foreboding that she knew where the story was headed.

  ‘Well, the one thing I didn’t have at school was money. My parents didn’t give me much in the way of pocket money so I couldn’t wine and dine Lottie as she deserved. We had nights out underage drinking down the pub and we’d hang out in town but I wanted to give her more. She said she didn’t mind. We planned our outfits for the ball. I borrowed a suit, Lottie bought a fancy dress – not the one she really wanted, that was way too expensive, but nice nevertheless. Everything was good. I was ready to be cock of the walk for our end of year bash.

  ‘Then it happened. I turned up at Lottie’s house to pick her up and her folks tell me she’s not there. The front room looked like a fucking florists, bunches of roses everywhere, but no sign of Lottie. Her mum told me she’d be at the ball. Too fucking right she was.’ There was more than a sliver of anger creeping into Grant’s voice now. Amy could only sit and listen to the inevitable conclusion.

  ‘I rock up at the ball, all dressed up in my borrowed finery and there she is, hanging off Riley’s arm, in the dress that she’d really wanted. She couldn’t even look me in the eye, but I knew what had happened. Riley had bought her with fancy flowers and the dress. I wasn’t wrong. He strolls over like the big I-Am and just grins. The most idiotic, supercilious grin I’d ever seen. He didn’t even really like her – he dumped her after the ball. He just wanted to beat me, to take something away from me and to stick two fingers up. I hated him ... hated him with a passion. He’d made me look a fool and that’s the one thing I can’t bear. My parents had made me feel like that far too often and I swore nobody else would. Riley did, so yeah, I hated him ... he was pathetic.’

  ‘Enough to kill him?’ The words had tumbled from Amy’s lips before she’d had a chance to consider them. If she could have swallowed them back then she would have.

  ‘Is that what you’ve come here to ask me? You think I might have killed your precious husband? I hated the man at school but look who’s doing all right now ... despite everything.’ There was a swagger in Grant's voice as he spluttered the sentence, his tone rising with his anger. ‘You honestly think I’m capable of that. For fuck’s sake, Amy ...’

  Amy tried to backtrack with an apology. ‘No, it’s not that, it’s just that some things have happened and ...’ but her words were drowned out by the scraping of Grant’s chair as he pushed it away from the table and stood up.

  ‘Just forget it ... your husband’s dead, but it was fuck all to do with me, all right! He was the bane of my life in my teenage years but I've grown up since then. I'm the one on the front of the magazines, no
thanks to him. I'm the one with Hollywood knocking at my door. So screw you, Amy Hart ...’

  Grant stormed from the restaurant leaving an awkward Amy sitting there alone, a roomful of eyes upon her.

  22

  Now, 2015

  * * *

  Dolly Townsend was sitting in a back room at the escort agency she worked for busy talking to one of the girls who had just signed onto the agency's books. The girl, a wispy slip of a thing fresh out of school reminded Dolly of herself nearly two decades ago, full of dreams, aspirations and hopes about the future.

  But at the age of thirty-five Dolly was rapidly learning that her once perfectly rounded breasts, cellulite-free thighs and peachy pert butt cheeks were not exactly as rounded, cellulite-free and peachy as they once had been. Not that Dolly was bitter, far from it, she loved her life, but something was missing ...

  'I've always thought of my body as a building. One that's a multi-storey. This bit up here ...' Dolly pointed to her head. 'That's the office. That's where all of my thinking and calculating gets done. My brain takes care of all the financial business. But down here ...' She was now pointing between her legs. 'This bit is the nightclub built for fun in the basement. This is where the action happens, and it's up to me who I bring to my club if you get my drift. Always remember that you're the boss. You act as your own bouncer.’

  She crossed her legs, both of them still incredibly defined and shapely. 'When I was a new kid like you, I thought life on my back would get me everything I wanted too, darling. I thought I'd be as rich and famous as Cindy Crawford or Linda Evangelista ...' The girl stared blankly at Dolly from underneath her poker-straight fringe, her ignorance of the names glaringly apparent.