The Cross

‘Come on, Bullivant,’ Alex snorted. ‘Even a human can’t be this easily taken in.’

But, seemingly, a human could. It hadn’t taken much wooing from Baxter before the critic had gulped down the bait.

‘Bugger,’ Alex said, looking at her watch. Baxter must have left just a few minutes ago, but he still had a pretty good headstart on her. She’d little more than quarter of an hour to cut across town to Wimbledon, if she wanted to interrupt the romantic lunch date before it went too badly for Piers Bullivant.

Seconds later, Alex was tearing out of the smashed door of the Trafalgar Suite and running for the stairs.

Chapter Twenty

Wimbledon

A giant poster of Jean-Luc Godard frowned sardonically down from the wall over Piers Bullivant’s desk in the cramped study of what he liked to call his bijou residence. Tapping on his keyboard and pausing every few words to titter to himself, the critic was just putting the finishing touch to his latest torpedo attack.

On the strength of its director and most of its cast,

Firestorm

has the potential to be a passable little thriller, by Hollywood standards at least. However, even before the cameras shoot a single frame, this movie is doomed by a fatal, irredeemable flaw. And the name of that flaw is Baxter Burnett. Never in the history of cinema has an actor been so guaranteed to destroy single-handedly any production in which he takes part …

When he’d finished tinkering with it, Piers read the piece back out loud and gave a satisfied cackle. He looked at his watch, wishing it was a twenty-four-carat Rolex Oyster like the one that bastard Baxter Burnett had been flaunting in his last TV interview. But, Piers quickly consoled himself, was it not he, and not the hated Burnett, who was about to be visited by the super-hot Gwendolyn Cooper? Was it not he who …

12.26. She’d be here any minute. Piers shot out of his desk chair and hurried into the tiny living room of his flat. He put on some mood music, lit a scented candle, tore open a bottle of wine, set two glasses on the table, polished his thick spectacles with the hem of his short-sleeved shirt, adjusted his tie in the mirror, took a breath spray out of his pocket and gave it a couple of squirts. He smiled and felt in his other pocket, touching his fingers against the packets of condoms in there and wondering if two would be enough.

Piers’s heart leaped as the doorbell rang. After a last-minute armpit sniff-check, he raced to the door and flung it open with a beaming smile on his face. ‘Come in, Gwe—’

That was as far as he got before Baxter Burnett grabbed him by the tie and almost ripped his head off as he hurled him backwards into the room. Piers triple-somersaulted into the sofa and overturned it, sprawling across the rug. Baxter slammed the door shut and marched inside the flat. He was wearing a heavy black cowhide motorcycle jacket, leather jeans and boots. In his hand was a torn-out page from Movie Mad.

Squirming on the floor, Piers recognised it as last month’s review of Baxter’s star vehicle, Berserker 6.

Baxter stood over him. ‘Pleasure to meet you at last, asshole. Hey, nice fucking place you got here, toilet licker. Couldn’t swing a mouse in it, but hey, you won’t be needing it much longer. Now, something I wanted to ask you about what you wrote.’

Piers stared up at him and could only whimper.

Baxter held the torn-out page out in front of him and stabbed the text of the article with his finger. ‘Says here, now let’s see … “the Parisian cafe scene is one of the most risible pieces of cinema ever committed to celluloid, featuring a Burnett performance so wooden that one might have mistaken him for part of the pine cafe furniture”. Oh, yeah?’ Baxter shook the paper furiously. ‘And what about this bit — “The twist that follows is so insultingly contrived that the smallest infant could see it coming from thirty miles away. This is a film that should never have been allowed to escape from pre-production …”’ Baxter lashed out with his foot, and Piers doubled up in agony. ‘All right, scum sucker, let’s talk about the twist. Tell me what you know, dumbass. Spit it out.’

Piers opened his mouth, but all that emerged was a string of bloody mucus.

‘Oh, the great critic’s at a loss for fucking words. You know what? I don’t think you even saw this movie. You know how I know that, inchworm? Because that part was in the fucking trailer‘ — Baxter kicked again, harder, and Piers screamed — ‘and it never even made it to the final fucking cut. So you just gave yourself away, you big dicksmoking phoney.’ Baxter crumpled up the sheet and smiled. ‘And now you’re gonna die.’

Piers Bullivant’s bladder let go at the precise moment that Baxter opened his mouth wide and the fangs came out.

The Jaguar’s dashboard clock read 12.37 as Alex skidded to a halt outside Piers Bullivant’s apartment building. She sprinted to the entrance. Pounded up the stairs, and crashed through Bullivant’s door.

Whoops. Too late.

Among the blood-soaked wreckage of the tiny living room, the movie star was crouched on the floor, bent low over the twitching, but very obviously lifeless, body of his critic, gnawing and sucking at the ripped flesh of his throat. Baxter looked up as Alex appeared in the doorway. The blood that slicked his chin was running down his throat and soaking into his shirt.

‘Hi there, Agent Bishop,’ he said, bright red foam bubbling at the corners of his mouth.

Alex popped the retaining strap of her shoulder holster and drew the pistol. ‘Don’t do anything silly, Baxter. You know what I’ve got here, don’t you?’

‘Nosferol bullets,’ Baxter sneered. ‘Right. As if your goddamn Feds won’t pump me full of that shit anyway.’

‘What’s got into you, Baxter?’

‘Fuck you!’ Baxter sprang to his feet, seized the overturned sofa and hurled it across the room. Alex ducked out of the way, but the sofa hammered into the wall next to her and bounced back at an angle, knocking the gun out her hand before landing with a crash on a side table. A pair of wine glasses and a lit candlestick tumbled across the carpet. Flames quickly caught a hold on the bottom of one of Bullivant’s flowery curtains, but there wasn’t much Alex could do about that right now. She grabbed the pistol from the floor as Baxter leaped across the room and through a doorway into the tiny kitchenette. There was a smashing of glass.

Chasing after him, Alex got there just in time to see him dropping the eight yards to the ground and sprinting franti c ally away through the little gardens at the back of the apartment building. She raised the Desert Eagle and felt the light trigger break against the pad of her fingertip. The blast of the gunshot punching against her eardrums. The hard recoil back into her palms being absorbed through her elbows. The fat.50 calibre shell casing spat from the pistol’s maw as the breech opened and closed faster than even a vampire eye could see. Masonry dust erupted from the wall of the neighbouring building as Baxter darted around the corner and out of sight. Alex vaulted out of the window after him and hit the ground running for all she was worth towards the spot where Baxter had disappeared.

She heard the roar of the engine a fraction of a second before the blazing headlight and raked-out chrome front forks of the Indian V-twin motorcycle bore down on her from around the corner. Baxter’s fists were tight on the handlebars and his hate-filled face glared at her from between the clocks. She dived aside just in time to avoid being run down. The bike thundered past and kept on going.

Alex scrambled to one knee and let off three more pounding shots from the Desert Eagle. The Indian’s back light exploded and its rear wheel stepped out of line as the fat tyre burst apart. Baxter sawed wildly at the handlebars, but couldn’t prevent the machine from toppling over and sliding across the pavement with a grinding of steel on stone, showering sparks. The movie star tumbled to the ground but was quickly back up on his feet. A glance over his shoulder at Alex already coming after him with the gun, and he was off like a madman down the street.