She’d discovered that Lincoln and D’Arby had been a couple for years and were already planning to move to Europe when the band was over. They reckoned they had another five years at the top, max, before the next big thing shuffled in wearing matching outfits and moving in choreographed synchronicity. But it was the stuff she’d discovered about Logan that had puzzled her most. That red bag never left his side, other than when he was at a stadium or on stage, when he’d give it to Eli, who’d then plant it somewhere until after the show. It was driving her crazy and she needed to know what was in it. She’d considered everything from stealing it to setting it on fire. The enigmatic Eli was puzzling her too. Most afternoons at some point, he’d disappear, and when he returned, a look would pass between him and Logan, a question asked, answered, an exhalation of relief.

  There was a knock before Deeko’s assistant, Ashika, popped her head round the dressing-room door. ‘Half an hour, Logan. You all good?’

  ‘All good,’ Logan replied, spitting the words out in time to the bicep curls he was doing in front of the mirror. Sarah had realised it wasn’t through vanity. He was a switched-on cookie, this guy. He understood that the way he looked was part of his job and he worked at it. A five-mile run every day. Weights in the morning. A top-up session to pump him up before he went on stage.

  On the sofa, Sarah lay tapping on her MacBook. Since that night on the plane, Logan had been happy for her to hang with him before and after the shows. In truth, Sarah could see the irony of fame. The bigger you got, and they didn’t get much bigger than South City, the more you were given. The boys each had their own dressing rooms at every arena; they travelled separately in their own cars; they had their own assistants and bodyguards. But the flip side of that was that they didn’t spend much off-stage time with the only other people who understood the lives they were leading.

  A text pinged in on her phone. Mirren.

  All OK? No sign?

  None. Don’t worry.

  In the first couple of days, she’d sent long, chatty texts back, but she’d soon realised that all Mirren really needed to know was that Logan was safe, especially now they’d established that Marilyn was in the country.

  Thank God tonight was the last night before a week-long break that would take them back to LA. With every day that passed without the investigators locating Marilyn, Sarah felt more uneasy about Davie not knowing she’d come back from obscurity. She was going to speak to Mirren when they landed back in California. It was time to tell Davie, and if Mirren didn’t do it, then Sarah would. In the meantime, Mark Bock, Davie’s head of security, had been updating her daily on the situation and there had been no more security breaches. Somehow that felt like the calm before the storm. Or maybe she’d just been watching too many episodes of 24 to pass the time she spent hanging out in dressing rooms.

  ‘Looking forward to getting back to LA?’ she asked Logan as he finished his reps.

  ‘I can’t even tell you how much,’ he whistled, dropping the 10-kilogram barbells to the floor. ‘I’ll miss ya, though,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘Understandable. I’m the best dressing-room ornament ever.’

  A dressing-room ornament that still hadn’t found anything out. Nearly two weeks of her life wasted. For what? Nothing. Sure, it was another chapter in the book, but it wasn’t anything that would set the world on fire. She’d tried to dig into the beef between Logan and Jonell, but everyone had just glossed over it. Put it down to tempers fraying on the road. She’d grilled Deeko, Ashika, the sound guys, the roadies, but if there was a long-standing problem between the guys, no-one was talking. There had been no more signs of Logan getting up to anything untoward. And she was no expert, but he never seemed high and she’d never seen even a physical tell that he was using. Did he only do drugs when he wasn’t on the road? Is that why he was buying gear in the club. Was it only for recreational use? This wasn’t making sense. There had to be more going on here, but if she didn’t find out what it was tonight, she was done. Epic fail.

  ‘I’m just gonna hit the shower and get suited,’ Logan told her. It was her cue to go. Usually she’d head out to the side of the stage, find a good position to watch from, chat to the wardrobe staff, who were already up there, setting up the costume changes.

  A thought struck her. She knew what she did for the next half-hour, but what did Logan do? The decision was made before she even got to her feet.

  It was risky. Stupid. If he found out, it would destroy every shred of trust between them, but she never got a story by considering the ‘what if?’s.

  As soon as she heard the shower go on, she flicked her phone to silent, clicked through to the video function, pressed ‘record’, then slipped it behind a cushion on the sofa, so that only the tiny pinhole of the camera peeked out.

  Heart thudding, she got up and left the room. Fifty yards down the corridor, though, she changed her mind, turned, started running. Almost there. He’d still be in the shower. He’d never know. Ten yards. Just about there. Bugger, why did Logan’s dressing room need to be the very last one in the corridor? Five yards. Four. She was aware of someone coming round the corner in front of her from the other direction, moving towards her.

  Three. Two.

  But it didn’t matter. Because the person in front of her was Eli, and he now had his hand on the door of Logan’s dressing room and was looking at her quizzically. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  No. Just no. Really not OK.

  ‘Sure,’ she said breezily. ‘I’m just…’ Just what? OK, choices. She could say she’d left something in the dressing room, but there was a risk he’d attempt to help her find it. Not good.

  She could… She could… Oh crap. She tried to remember where the exit at this side of the corridor took her. Maintenance? Front exit? He wouldn’t believe she had a reason to go there.

  ‘Running. I’m feeling like a slob with all the craft services and room service, so I’m just running some of it off. See you later.’

  With that, she turned and jogged back the way she’d come. Halfway down the corridor, she briefly turned round, to see he was still there. And by the look on his face, it was obvious that he didn’t believe a word she’d just said.

  Stomach clenching with panic, she headed up to the side of the stage and waited. And waited. Half an hour had never seemed so long. A lifetime later, the lights changed, the crowd roared, and the band appeared, ran past her, down the steps to the hydraulic lift under the stage. They all stepped in. The crowd roared louder. The anticipation escalated. The atmosphere in the Verizon Centre crackled with a tornado of hormones and excitement as South City rose through the floor, culminating in a scream that was high on the noise-pollution scale.

  It had to be now. It was going to be the only chance she had. After the concert, they’d head straight from the stage to the car. Shit, she hadn’t thought this through.

  Surreptitiously checking around her, she saw Eli standing twenty feet away in deep conversation with Jonell’s bodyguard. Now. It had to be now.

  Keeping close to the shadows of the wall, she slipped away, left the side stage area, took the stairs down to the lower floor two at a time, retraced her steps, ran along the corridor, got to Logan’s dressing room and—

  ‘Jogging again?’

  Eli had appeared from the other side of the corridor for the second time. How the fuck did he do that? And oh crap. Oh fucking crap.

  This wasn’t good. Bluff or fess up? Bluff or fess up? Bluff or…? Bluff.

  ‘Ah, no, not this time,’ she said with too much forced jollity. ‘I think I left my phone in Logan’s dressing room. Just came back to check.’

  ‘I’ll help you look,’ he responded dryly. Bluff called.

  He opened the door and waved her in. As she passed, she wondered if he could see that the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.

  OK, play this properly. She immediately headed for the sofa, but played it cool, scanning the room as if searching, while positioning herself so that he couldn’t get to the phone first. ‘Nope, I can’t see it.’

  She really couldn’t. It wasn’t there. Fuck! Where was it? Eli had already found it. Right now, he was staring at her like that because he knew exactly where her phone was, exactly what she’d tried to do and exactly how he was going to dispose of her body.

  But then… ‘Oh, here it is!’ The level of relief was way disproportional, more on a level of saving a child from a burning building or pushing someone out of the path of a speeding car. She snatched it up, the motion making the screen come alive, so she quickly turned it, pressed it towards her body, then stepped to the door. Eli didn’t move.

  He was still in the doorway, eyes still trained on her. ‘You’re sure that’s it?’ he asked, obviously expecting her to do the normal thing and look at it again to check. From the angle he was standing at, he’d have full view of the screen.

  ‘Positive,’ she said breezily. He still didn’t move.

  He was blocking her path. He had no intention of moving, and his face was a mask of cool suspicion.

  The time for bluffs was over.

  He knew she was up to something she shouldn’t be.

  If he asked to check the phone, he’d soon discover she’d been filming Logan, which, as well as being wrong on every level, was probably illegal.

  He just needed to ask and it was over. The question was, would he?

  37

  DAVIE

  ‘Eight Letters’ – Gary Barlow

  Davie was on his way to do something he really didn’t want to do.

  It sparked a flashback to when he was a little kid and his mother would bribe him to do things he didn’t like doing. The dentist. The doctor. Working hard at school. The reward was always the same. They’d get the bus into Glasgow and they’d go to the cinema to see the movie of his choice. Twice a year, maybe three times if he was lucky. They didn’t have the cash for that kind of thing, but sometimes if Ena had picked up a bit of extra casual work, or got a bonus from one of her three cleaning jobs, the multiplex was his oyster. And he loved it.

  Now his movie-viewing experience was slightly different. He watched them on his home cinema, a $200k exercise in indulgence, with a bar, a permanently stocked popcorn maker, reclining leather chairs and sofas, and any title he wanted to see, whether they’d been released yet or not.

  That was the kind of pull Davie Johnston had in this town. And that’s exactly where he wanted to be now. Lying in the dark, escapism on the screen, his mind anywhere but here.

  The truth was, he couldn’t put it off any longer.

  He’d been avoiding it for months. Stalling. Deferring. Until now.

  The pool at the Fairmont Miramar had a gaggle of twenty-somethings with perfect teeth, hard bodies and high-grade ambition lying on the sunloungers that spanned each side.

  It hadn’t been hard to track down Zander. It never was if you knew how to find someone. A call to a publicist, who’d call another publicist, who’d call a friend, who’d call a bit actor who worked as a personal trainer to a star who had a chef who knew a waitress who had slept with the chauffeur who’d driven him home.

  Or some variation of the above.

  Davie had simply asked his agent, Cal Wolfe, to find out where Zander was living, and thirty minutes later, he’d called back with an address that surprised him. He’d been sure Zander lived in Venice Beach, but this was in Santa Monica.

  Odd.

  Now he was approaching Bungalow 1, and even though he was the one who needed to meet, there was a huge part of him that was hoping Zander was out. Busy. Sleeping. Anywhere but here.

  ‘Davie?’

  None of the above. He was sitting on the steps outside the bungalow, white T-shirt, jeans, smoking a cigarette. This could have been any one of a thousand nights in their youth.

  Zander sitting on some kind of concrete structure, a cig dangling from his mouth.

  Only difference was, back then, he wasn’t staying in a hotel room that cost the same for a week as it would now cost to buy the houses they’d grown up in.

  ‘Hey.’ He considered offering to shake hands and then decided against it. Too formal. Too weird.

  Davie kicked off the conversation. ‘Hope you don’t mind me coming out here.’

  Zander shrugged. ‘Not at all. Good to see you.’ Davie wasn’t sure if that was a lie. If it was, it was a convincing one. He sat down on a small brick wall that bordered the steps.

  ‘Good to see you too. This your new digs? Thought you lived in Venice?’

  ‘Long story.’ Zander answered with a shrug. ‘Change of scene felt like the right move.’

  That was it and Davie knew better then to push. Zander would tell him the details if he wanted him to know. Given his mate’s lifelong tendency to keep things close to his chest, Davie didn’t expect that to be any time soon.

  Zander’s dismissal of the question created a lull in the discussion.

  The great thing about old friends was that they could have a comfortable pause in a conversation without feeling the need to fill it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those moments.

  Davie cracked first. ‘I’ve fucked up with Mirren.’

  Zander squinted against the sun as he looked up. ‘What happened?’

  Davie launched into the story, leaving nothing out. Zander barely commented, and yet, somehow, about halfway into the story, Davie realised it was OK.

  It was yet another flashback to their childhood relationship. Zander would sit there, smoking, the strong, silent, brooding type, while Davie gave a long-winded, dramatic but funny account of some situation he found either shocking or moving. A feeling of comfort descended, and Davie could see by the lowering of Zander’s shoulders, the loosening of his jaw that he felt it too.

  ‘Oh, man, you are so fucked,’ Zander said, when Davie got to the bit in the restaurant when he finally told Mirren the truth.

  ‘What the fuck were you thinking? Why didn’t you give her a heads up before it was a done deal?’

  ‘Because…’ Davie let that hang.

  ‘Because you bricked it?’ Zander answered for him, correctly as it turned out.

  ‘Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.’

  ‘So what did she say when you told her?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Davie shook his head. ‘Nothing. She just got up and punched me in the face.’

  ‘Christ, I love her.’ That was all he had to say for it to become one of those bizarre moments in life. Zander started a chain reaction that began with him laughing, and before long, Davie succumbed to the hilarity until they were both wiping away tears of amusement.

  ‘I feel for you, pal. I do. Do you remember she did that to me once?’ Zander asked.

  It took Davie a moment, but he got there. ‘You took a bottle of whisky from your maw and da’s cupboard,’ he said, his Scottish accent becoming thicker. ‘And when your maw found out, you said it was Mirren. Your maw asked her about it and Mirren took the blame then gave you…’

  ‘A black eye that lasted a fortnight,’ Zander confirmed, with a rueful grin, before going into the bungalow and returning with a bottle of water for him and a beer for Davie. They drank in silence for a few minutes before Davie spoke again, this time from the heart, the crazy moment of surreal amusement gone.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Zander. I just got her back in my life. Can’t lose her again.’

  He realised as he was saying it that it was just as relevant to this guy here.

  He hadn’t wanted to come, but now that he was here, he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

  Zander swallowed a mouthful of water.

  ‘You know what you have to do. You have to cancel the show.’

  Davie nodded, his body language screaming ‘reluctance’. ‘The contracts are signed. No cooling-off period. Bastard Gore knew what he was doing.’

  ‘So pay him,’ Zander said. ‘If it’s the money…’

  ‘It’s not the money.’

  Actually, it was partly the cash: $2 million, up front, for doing nothing. That thought made Davie’s teeth grind. It was more than that, though. He could handle losing the money. He just didn’t know if he could handle losing the show. If the figures continued to grow on their current trajectory, it could easily bring him $10 million over the next three years. That was a whole lot of visits to the cinema with Ena Johnston.

  But… It was the only way. He already knew it. He’d just had a vague hope that Zander could see another way out.

  The sun was beating onto Davie’s back, so he pulled off his blue Armani T-shirt, then immediately wished he hadn’t. There was no doubt he was in great shape – he was lean, muscular, and last weekend’s spray tan was still giving a glow. With his black curly hair swept back with hair wax that cost $200 a tub, he was definitely an attractive specimen of manhood – unless he sat, as he did right now, next to Zander Leith. Six inches taller, eight or more inches bigger in the shoulders, the biceps, the chest. Zander was a powerhouse of raw masculinity. But hey, as everyone would say when they were kids, Zander got the looks, but Davie was the funny one.

  ‘If it’s not the money, then buy him out. Cancel it. Take satisfaction in the fact that you might be out of pocket, but that guy is officially a wanker.’

  ‘I’ll suggest that description for his obituary in the Post.’

  ‘I think Mirren probably has a few more names to add to that.’ Davie spotted Zander’s downcast expression when he said Mirren’s name this time and wondered what that was about. Was there trouble between them too? He knew better than to ask. Zander would tell him if he wanted him to know. Besides, right now there was something else that was preoccupying his mind.

  Unable to hold it any longer, Davie shattered the peace like a grenade.