Wild Hunger

CHAPTER ONE

GERARD FINDLAY was watching his fax machine roll out another irritated message from his news editor when he heard the screaming.

The noise took him back nearly three months, to the moments that haunted his sleep every night. He began to shake, waiting for the machine-gun fire, the deafening thud of rockets landing on their target, the smell of burning, the clouds of brick dust rising in the air, then his mind cleared and he remembered where he was, realised what he was hearing.

The noise came from the house next door and he was safe in London.

‘Those girls! Those damned girls!’ he said through his teeth, angrily aware of the perspiration trickling down his back. ‘One day I’ll wring their necks!’

From the day, six months ago, that he’d moved into a little mews cottage a stone’s throw from Chelsea Bridge he had been driven mad by the girls who lived next door. They were either having a party, playing loud pop music or yelling at each other from room to room. He had banged on the wall, gone next door to complain, and got nowhere. In the end, he had complained to the agent who had rented him his cottage.

‘One of them is the owner’s stepdaughter,’ the agent wryly told him. ‘The redhead.’

‘Oh, her,’ Gerard had said, remembering a girl who walked like a dancer, tall, slender, amazingly graceful, with a mop of vivid red hair and green eyes that reminded him of the slanting stare of an angry cat.

The agent had grinned at him. ‘Easy on the eye, isn’t she? Mind you, so is her friend, with the long black hair. They’re both models, you know.’

Incredulously, he had said, ‘You mean there are only two of them? There always seems to be a whole mob in the place!’

The agent had laughed indulgently. ‘You know what young people are like! Partying day and night. Look, I’ll report your complaint, but I can’t promise anything will come of it.’

Gerard had no idea how the landlord had taken his complaint. He had been unexpectedly dispatched next day, with a camera team, to cover a civil war in what had once been a peaceful little country, when the team who had been out there for some time showed signs of battle fatigue. It was unwise to leave them under strain of that kind for too long; their reports always deteriorated. Gerard himself had felt the strain before long, although he had only been in the war zone for a matter of weeks.

When he’d got back home from the hospital he’d noticed that the only tenant of the tiny cottage next door was now the owner’s stepdaughter, the redhead who moved as if she danced every step she took. Every time they saw each other, coming or going, she ignored him in a very pointed, icy fashion.

It was obvious that she knew he had complained to the agent about her and her friend, and she resented it. Had her stepfather blamed the other girl, the dark-haired one? And asked her to leave? Gerard felt guilty about that; he had rather liked the dark girl. When he’d first moved in, she had come round with sandwiches and a pot of good coffee while his removal firm was shifting furniture around. The removal men had been wide-eyed and fascinated. When she had gone they had wolfwhistled and said, ‘You lucky man, you! We’ll move in with you, with neighbours like that. Did you see her legs? Wow.’

Gerard might have been more interested, himself, if he hadn’t just quarrelled with a girl he had been dating for months. He had discovered that while he was abroad for weeks Judy usually dated other men, and Gerard resented it.

‘You mean you never stray while you’re away?’ Judy had been cynically incredulous and when he’d insisted that he didn’t she just wouldn’t believe him. It had been the end of the affair. He had been badly hurt, jealous every time he imagined her with another man. It had left Gerard too sore to want to get involved with anyone else just yet.

The dark girl had invited him to one of their parties, the following weekend, but he had been busy and had forgotten all about it. The next time they bumped into each other coming or going from the mews she had softly reproached him. He had made his excuses, and she had relented gracefully. ‘Well, I forgive you this time! Look, we’re having another party next Saturday—try and come this time!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m just off to Brazil,’ he had said, smiling wryly back.

‘For TV?’ she had asked, admitting tacitly that she knew who he was—and Gerard had stiffened up. Were they inviting him because he was a celebrity, his face on TV every night, in the news? Gerard didn’t enjoy celebrity. He was a reporter, not an entertainer. He hated it when people were friendly to him simply because his face came into their homes every night. When he’d worked on a newspaper he had never got that sort of reaction. Newspaper reporters were anonymous, faceless people, on the whole. Nobody recognised you; when they found out what you did they were usually indifferent, unless they had an axe to grind about some report you had filed on them or their relatives.

‘That’s right.’ Irritated, he added, ‘By the way, can you and your friend keep the noise down in the evenings? I have to get to bed early and you seem to be up half the night playing rock music. It’s giving me a headache.’

She had looked at him sweetly. ‘Sure.’

They hadn’t, of course. In fact, he had a strong impression that they had turned up the volume after that, and they had stopped inviting him to their parties. If Gerard banged on the wall the volume went up even higher. If he went round to remonstrate with them the redhead looked at him as if he were a slug which was eating her lettuce.

A sudden hammering on his own front door made him jump. For a moment he couldn’t move, paralysed by shock. Oh, pull yourself together! he told himself contemptuously. This isn’t the Civil War; you’re back home again, in London, safe. Aren’t you the lucky one? What if you were still there?

His doorbell was ringing, loudly and persistently; someone had their finger pressed down on it. ‘Hello?’ someone called through the letter-box. ‘Oh, please be in, please…help me!’

Gerard made it to the door, pulled it open, his black brows jerking together in a scowl which made the girl outside back away instinctively for a second.

Gerard was a formidable sight: a big man, lean and sinewy, muscular but light on his feet when he had to move fast. He was a squash player, swam every day, when he had time he worked out at the gym near his newspaper office and quite often walked a good deal of the way to work, unless he was in a tearing hurry.

‘I’m—I’m sorry to bother you,’ stammered the girl on his doorstep.

‘You’re the girl who moved out!’ he said, recognising her.

‘Sara Ounissi,’ she said, nodding, but she was too upset for polite chat. ‘Please, I need your help,’ she added pleadingly. Her accent was foreign, although her English was very good. The name sounded Arabic. She had told him her name before—he was sure it hadn’t been Ounissi, though.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, resisting when she tried to pull him out of his home by the hand. He suspected a fight between the two girls and didn’t want to get involved.

‘I have to get into the cottage; she won’t let me in, but I know she’s there—I heard her moaning. I’m afraid she’ll die this time.’

‘Die?’ he repeated, taken aback. What had the two girls been fighting over? A man? This one looked so gentle: slightly built, although like her friend she was tall, with elegantly long-fingered hands and slender feet, hair the colour of jet, smooth skin, with a soft, golden sheen, her great, dark eyes like a doe’s, liquid and sweet.

‘Please come; don’t waste time asking questions,’ she wailed. ‘I’ve been trying to get her to answer, but she won’t.’

‘Maybe she isn’t in?’

‘Oh, yes, she is in there; I tell you I have heard her.’

‘You’ve quarrelled with her?’

‘No, no, you don’t understand…she’s very upset. She lost her TV contract this morning, a big advertising campaign, for Rexel, the cosmetics firm. Keira has been their face for the past year; you must have seen her on TV, putting on their makeup?’

His mouth twisted. ‘I rarely have time to watch TV.’ For the past three years he had been out of the country more often than he had been in it, and when he was at home the only programmes he watched were news and current affairs programmes.

‘But you are on TV every night!’ The dark eyes reproached him, accused him of hypocrisy, double standards. ‘TV is your business!’

‘Only the news!’ People increasingly confused news and entertainment, and it annoyed Gerard. He and his colleagues spilt their blood getting the news back to this country from war-torn parts of the world, and people watched as if it were all another adventure film, the blood just make-up. ‘And if I do catch a programme I never watch the advertisements,’ he said impatiently. ‘While they’re on I get myself a drink.’

The dark girl shrugged. ‘Well, Rexel is a big cosmetics firm and the contract was worth a lot of money. Her contract was up for renewal this week-and without warning they dropped her.’

‘That’s tough luck. I suppose she’ll miss the money? But aren’t her family wealthy? She won’t starve, surely? It can’t be a matter of life and death—’

Sara Ounissi interrupted fiercely, ‘That isn’t the point.’ She made a frustrated gesture with those long, delicate hands. ‘Keira takes rejections hard; they can trigger a violent mood swing. Her agent rang me to warn me she was devastated about suddenly being dropped by Rexel. Benny was my agent too; that’s why he rang me—I used to model. Fashion mostly—for magazines.’ She gave him an instinctive, faintly flirtatious look through her long, dark lashes. ‘Maybe you noticed me in one some time? But I gave it up when I got married last month. My husband doesn’t want me to go on modelling.’

Gerard’s brows rose; the women he worked with wouldn’t take kindly to being told to give up work by their husbands. ‘And you don’t mind that?’

She gave him a cool, dignified glance which resented the question. ‘His lifestyle will mean that I have a great deal to do at home; I wouldn’t have time to model as well. We travel a good deal; he has homes in Switzerland, the Gulf and Sussex. Luckily that was where I was this week. It took me ages to get up to London, and now she won’t let me in. I’ve been banging and calling for ages. I must get into the cottage—I suppose your key wouldn’t fit her front door?’

‘I hope not,’ Gerard said curtly. ‘I certainly wouldn’t want her letting herself in here whenever I’m away.’

The dark girl made an angry, spitting noise. ‘Oh, for the love of heaven! Don’t you get it? This is an emergency!’

He considered her, frowning. ‘What are you afraid of? Losing a job may be a bad blow, but it won’t make her suicidal unless she’s neurotic.’

‘You don’t understand. Keira…has a problem…’

Gerard’s mouth twisted contemptuously. ‘I see. Drugs.’ His tone was scathing now. ‘You’re afraid she’s taken an overdose?’

‘No!’ the girl said explosively. ‘She’s ill; she has bulimia…Now do you see?’

He looked blank. ‘Bulimia? That isn’t life-threatening. It’s just the opposite of anorexia, isn’t it?’

‘I thought you were a journalist?’ It was Sara’s turn to be scornful. ‘You should know about bulimia; it can be just as serious as anorexia. She eats and eats, and then deliberately makes herself sick. Eventually that can cause internal bleeding; she could be unconscious in there, could have choked to death. Since I moved out I haven’t been able to keep an eye on her; I don’t know what’s been going on.’ The girl stared at him, her face angry and desperate. ‘Look, if you won’t help, can I use your phone to call the police? There isn’t time to argue with you. I have to get to her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gerard said. ‘OK, then, why don’t we ring the owner? Isn’t he her stepfather?’

Sara’s face tightened. Gerard got the feeling she didn’t like the owner of the cottage. ‘He’s in Tangier.’

‘Hasn’t she got any other family?’

‘Not in this country.’

‘Oh. Well, we could ring the agent and ask if he has a key.’

The dark girl’s face lit up. ‘I should have thought of that! He’s just around the corner. I’ll go right away.’

‘Hang on, we should ring first—I’ll find his number.’ Gerard went back into his own cottage, with the dark girl on his heels, looked up the number, rang the agent’s office and spoke to his secretary.

‘He’s out at present. We do have a key, of course. Did you say Sara was there? Could she come here to pick it up?’

The dark-haired girl had been listening. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, and was gone, running.

He told the secretary she was coming and rang off. The fax machine was chattering again; he let the latest screed from his editor drop into the tray awaiting it, glanced at it, sighing. It was another refusal to send him abroad on a story. ‘Come into the office. I need to talk to you,’ it ended.

Gerard screwed it up and threw it across the room, then went out into the cobbled mews.

A hundred years ago horses had been stabled in these little gabled buildings which had been built at the back of gardens belonging to the big Victorian houses lining the streets on either side of the alley. After the Second World War the stables had all been converted into dwellings. They were highly sought after; painted in bright colours, each one had a window-box for a garden. Gerard’s house had a scarlet-enamelled front door with a brass lion’s head knocker. The brick walls had been painted cream, and he had planted geraniums in the window-box.

It was a warm afternoon in early summer. The mews was drowsy with heat, the scent of flowers and trees in the gardens behind. Most of the other occupants of the