Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  ‘I can remember what you said.’

  ‘It was all lies anyway. Filthy lies.’ She spoke with sudden venom. ‘All those lies about Natasha. She isn’t like that—never has been.’

  She paused, as if waiting for confirmation of this statement. When she received none, she gave a sigh.

  ‘Accurate about you, though. Chapter and verse. Where you’d been, who you’d been with…’

  ‘Accurate in some ways.’ He turned and gave her a pale steady look. ‘And those tapes told Natasha nothing that I hadn’t already told her. You might remember that, Angelica.’

  ‘You’re honest with her, I give you that.’ She paused,—eyeing him. ‘She won’t take you back, you know.’

  ‘Then I shall have to find a way of taking her back,’ he replied evenly. ‘Believe me, I will. And when I do, I won’t be consulting or informing you, Angelica.’

  That angered her; he saw the blood creep up into her neck and suffuse her face. Her expression became set.

  ‘She’s free of you now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on that.’

  ‘She’s free of King as well. She can start a new life. He’s dead; he has to be dead. Not one call, not one letter, in nearly five months. They found that body. They found the ID with it.’ Her voice had risen. ‘I have to know, is it finished? Is he dead, or isn’t he?’

  Court gave her a long, still look. He wondered if she were aware of the duality of her own question; he thought not. She wanted to believe King was dead because, for some primitive reason, some reason buried deep in her mind, she believed that if King were dead, Natasha’s marriage would similarly be dead. It was himself, he thought, as well as King that she wanted to eradicate from Natasha’s future.

  ‘The indications are that he is dead,’ he replied, ‘as you’ve been saying, and as I told Natasha.’ He paused. ‘But I don’t believe he is. I believe he’s very much alive…’

  ‘Biding his time?’ Angelica leaned forward.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But they found the body…’

  ‘They found a body,’ Court corrected.

  Giving her what Colin Lascelles would have described as one of his Prospero looks, he crossed the room. With a sigh, seating himself opposite her and speaking quietly, he began to tell her the story.

  ‘I didn’t tell Natasha this,’ he began, ‘but I know the place in Glacier where they found the body—and I know it well. I went there, Angelica. I went there last July first, with Jonathan, while he was staying with me in Montana. We went with a bodyguard, because I’d promised Natasha I would do that, and we took a back-country trail. It takes you through the mountains and on down to Kintia Lake…’

  ‘You camped.’ Angelica nodded. ‘I know, Jonathan loved it there; he told me.’

  ‘We were away three days. It’s a very beautiful part of Glacier and it’s remote—hardly anyone uses that trail. Even in high season you can walk all day and not see a single person. We had…’ He hesitated, looking away and seeing the place in his mind’s eye as he spoke. ‘They were three of the best days of my life. We walked, we fished, we had cook-outs—it took me back to my childhood. We slept out under the stars; we didn’t even need the tents. We had three days and nights of perfect weather and absolute peace, and I was glad of that—for Jonathan.’

  ‘He’d spent months cooped up here in this city,’ he continued. ‘I wanted to show him that there’s another America; a place where he could breathe pure air, where he didn’t have to worry about telephone calls, or what the mail might bring. A place where he didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.’

  He paused. ‘At the end of those three days, we went back to the ranch, and then, months later, when the body was found, I discovered we hadn’t been alone in Glacier. We’d been watched and followed—and someone went to considerable lengths to ensure I knew that. Do you know where they found the man’s body, Angelica? What was left of his body?’

  ‘By some water, in scrub. Right under this great wall of rock—that’s what you told Natasha.’

  ‘Yes—and that was accurate, up to a point. What I didn’t tell her was where that rock wall was located. The trail we took goes over it, Angelica. They found that body by the lake shore, not two hundred yards from one of our overnight camping sites. The body had been smashed up by the fall and left there to rot; and I’m certain that wasn’t accidental. It was a place where I’d been happy, where Jonathan had been happy—and anyone watching him there could have seen how happy he was. So they took that place and they polluted it. They’ve certainly ensured I’ll never go back there.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus.’ Angelica made one of her superstitious little signs. ‘He’d followed you there, then.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that, as you’ll see in a minute. Wait a while. Look at the chronology. In October, the rangers patrol the park before the snows come, and it’s closed for the winter. That’s when the body was found; by which time, it had been lying there, they think, for around four months, in the heat of a Glacier summer. There are bears in Glacier, Angelica. You can imagine; there’d been decomposition, animal interference, some bones were missing. The only way they’re going to make an identification is through dental chart records. It could take months, longer, before they find a match—if they ever do. At the moment, they’re going through the records for missing persons state by state—it’s slow, and it may well lead nowhere. Meantime, shortly after the body was found, I was contacted. You know why? Because someone had gone to considerable lengths to suggest an identification for that body. Someone wanted to suggest, to the police, to me, to Natasha, that the body was Joseph King’s. Now, you know how careful King is, and how ingenious. How do you think he did that?’

  ‘There was a rucksack,’ Angelica said, with some eagerness. ‘They found a rucksack near the remains, and in the rucksack…’

  ‘In the rucksack, Angelica, or in what was left of the rucksack, was something that wouldn’t decay, or rot away—something that would be preserved, and could communicate a message however long it had to lie there. There was a plastic box. A very ordinary plastic box; the kind you might use to pack sandwiches in. Only this one, of course, had rather more unusual contents.’

  There was a silence. Court looked around the room, knowing he would continue, yet reluctant to do so. To speak of Joseph King, he always found, was to empower him. He could almost sense his presence now, and so, he knew, could Angelica. He saw her face tighten, and he knew she was remembering, as he did, various little packages Joseph King had despatched in the past—packages with suggestive and unpleasant contents.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. She rested her large, square, ugly hands on her thighs. ‘Tell me. Was there a photograph?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll come on to the photograph in a moment. First of all, inside the box, there was a hunting knife; the kind you can buy in a thousand stores across America—a thin-bladed knife, the sort you use to debone animals. Then there were some shotgun cartridges, though no gun was ever found. And, just to make sure I knew that I’d been watched in Glacier, there was a T-shirt of Jonathan’s. He’d been wearing it the day we camped there by Kintia Lake; it went missing overnight, and we’d thought no more about it. He’d taken it on and off ten times that day—we’d been swimming, and we assumed it had simply been mislaid; it wasn’t. Someone had been down to our camp-site, while we were sleeping—and he wanted me to know that. He could have killed Jonathan then; that’s how close he was.’

  ‘That bastard.’ Angelica flushed with anger. ‘That bastard. I want to kill him…’

  ‘Wait, Angelica, that’s not all that was in the box. There was also a wilderness permit—they issue those in Glacier if you’re going to walk the longer, more dangerous trails, or if you’re going to camp out. That permit was in the name of Joseph King; issued for the same three days we were there. The home address was some street in Chicago that doesn’t exist, and never did exist.’ He paused, his voice becoming less steady. ‘A
nd finally, Angelica, there was a photograph. Not one of the publicity pictures of Natasha that he’s used before, but a family photograph, of Natasha and Jonathan—a photograph I took, when Jonathan was still a baby, in the garden of that house we had years ago in California.’

  ‘A photograph you took?’ Angelica stared at him. ‘But that’s not possible…’

  ‘A photograph I took over five years ago now.’ Court gave a weary gesture. ‘Jonathan was about eighteen months old. Natasha and I had just finished work on The Soloist—you remember?’

  ‘I remember.’ She looked at him in confusion. ‘But I don’t see—how could he get hold of it? That’s got to be before we got any letters or calls from King…’

  ‘Exactly. The police have checked; I’ve checked; the agency has checked. I know exactly when I took that photograph; it was two months before the first of the calls and letters from King—so we have to re-date the start of his obsession. Except, for all I know, he’s got pictures I took even earlier, and he’s just waiting to produce them…’

  ‘But how did he get it? He stole it somehow?’

  ‘No, easier than that. That photograph was the last on a reel of family pictures I took. Jonathan was walking by then, beginning to talk—Natasha loved that house…’ He broke off, then after a pause, continued. ‘Anyway, I had it developed at the same laboratory in LA that I always used. They sent back the prints and the negatives, and I still have them—but, of course, for anyone working in that lab, it was easy enough to run off extra prints, and no-one would be any the wiser…’

  He gave a sigh and rose to his feet. ‘So, they’ve now launched a new set of checks: who worked at that lab then? Where they are now? There were over thirty employees who could have had access to that film. It’s over five years ago. Most of them have since left the firm, moved out of state, married, changed their names, dropped out of sight…It’s going to take months, yet again, to trace them and question them. And it will probably lead nowhere. It will probably be another dead end.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘You know what he’d done to the picture?’

  ‘Cut it up? Like the others?’

  ‘Yes. He’d cut it up.’ He gave an angry gesture. ‘Cut it up into these neat squares, each one about a quarter of an inch. It was very precise. Natasha’s face was on one little square; Jonathan’s was on another. And they both had crosses on them, gouged across their faces. When I saw that…’

  He turned away, feeling his breathing start to tighten. He could feel King’s presence in the room acutely now. He felt the old helpless instinct to open doors, search closets, look for a man who was not there—and stay by his son’s bedside in case he came through a locked door or a barred window.

  ‘Don’t get upset,’ Angelica said, to his surprise. In this respect, of course, they were at one, he thought, turning back to look at her, and seeing on her face an expression not of hostility, but sympathy.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said again. ‘It could be him; it could be. I don’t see that this proves otherwise. He’s crazy. I always said he’d kill himself one day—so maybe he did. He jumped, but he had to leave one final message…’

  ‘You could read it that way, and Natasha does.’ With a sigh, Court returned to his chair and sat down. ‘But you see, I haven’t explained about the permit.’

  ‘The permit? I don’t see…’

  ‘Think, Angelica. They issue those permits for a reason. If someone doesn’t come back and check in, the rangers raise the alarm and send out a search party. They have to do that: someone could be hurt, or lying injured somewhere…But that didn’t happen in this case. You want to know why there were no alarms, no search parties when that permit wasn’t handed back in? The answers are all there in the record books at the rangers’ station. On Independence Day, the day the permit expired, the day Jonathan and I left Glacier, a man calling himself Joseph King rang the rangers’ station. He apologized for not returning the permit, said it had slipped his mind, but he was perfectly safe and had left the park. Now, why do you think he did that, Angelica?’

  Angelica hesitated. ‘So you’d know he was alive? Dead men don’t make phone calls?’

  ‘Partly, perhaps. But it’s more than that—don’t you see? He didn’t want search parties. He didn’t want the body found too soon. The sooner it was found, the easier it would be to identify, so it suited him just fine that it lay there for over four months. That’s what I think, anyway.’

  ‘But if he placed that call…’ Angelica frowned. ‘That must mean he’s alive after all…’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. It means someone calling himself Joseph King placed the call. It might have been King himself; it could have been some friend. Think, Angelica.’ Court rose again, with an impatient gesture. ‘He wanted there to be doubts and uncertainties, don’t you see? How many ways can you script this? I can think of at least five ways, straight off, and they’re all equally plausible.’

  There was a silence. Watching her, he saw the realization slowly dawn. She rose to her feet and looked at him uncertainly.

  ‘Then if it isn’t his body, whose is it?’

  ‘I don’t know; no-one knows. It could be his—it could equally well be someone else’s. Some walker; some hitchhiker he picked up; some vagrant, even.’

  ‘But that would mean he had killed someone—not just talked about it, not just threatened, but actually done it. Oh, Jesus, I see now…’

  ‘It’s possible, Angelica. I think that. For what it’s worth, the police also think that way, and so does the agency.’

  ‘That bastard. That son of a bitch bastard.’ The blood rushed into Angelica’s face. ‘So we just have to go on waiting—that’s his idea? Waiting, the way we always did? That’s what we have to live with? Jumping every time the phone rings, having traps on the line, checking the mail, checking the locks…’ She drew in her breath, pressing her hand against her chest. ‘That’s what we have to do—go on living with the bodyguards, looking over our shoulders every minute of every live-long day, waiting for that bastard to resurrect?’

  ‘It would amuse him to play Lazarus.’ Court turned away to disguise his unease. ‘So, yes, I’m afraid that’s exactly what we have to do. We go on being careful; we go on being vigilant—for as long as it takes.’

  He moved away, feeling suddenly exhausted. He looked around this pale dull room where his wife had chosen to live for the past year; his longing for her presence intensified. He began to wish that he had never had this conversation, necessary though it was. He began to wish that he was alone, and that of all the words Angelica could have used, she had not used the word ‘resurrect’. That word made him deeply uneasy.

  Angelica made a strange and ugly sound—a harsh, rasping intake of breath. Turning to look at her, he saw that she was trembling; the force of her animosity came off her like heat.

  ‘I’m going to fix him, and this time I’m going to fix him good. There’s something I have to do—it won’t take long. I’ll be back…’

  She hastened from the room. Court looked at his watch. It was past eleven. Should he leave now, or stay? His wife would have only just left the theatre. She would be on her way to have dinner with Jules McKechnie, possibly alone, possibly with others; it might be hours before she came back.

  He began to move about the room in an irresolute way, trying to find in it some trace of the woman he knew and loved. Its neutrality and its tastefulness appalled him. The room was white on cream on beige—a thousand permutations of colourlessness. Natasha had hung some of her own paintings, he saw—and his wife’s taste in paintings was not his.

  Since the divorce, she had begun to collect eighteenth-and nineteenth-century watercolours; the vaguer and washier they were, the more she liked them. Court stared at what might have been a seascape—a wash of indigo, a wash of yellow-white, some inky hieroglyphs that might have been trees, or birds, or ships.

  On the opposite wall, she had hung some of her own artist mother’s oils—paintings he had always refused to give
house room. Natasha’s mother, now dead, had been a flower-child of the Sixties, and like many children of that particular decade, never grew up. Her amateurish paintings, large and violently coloured, were all depictions of monstrous flowers, close up. Their stamens, sepals and pistils had a moistly sexual insistence; Natasha said they were powerful and reminded her of the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. To Court, who loathed O’Keeffe’s work too, but could see its strengths, this proved how curiously blind his wife could be. She could see so much sometimes, yet she could also be, or affect to be, myopic. ‘I will get her back. I will take her back,’ he said to the throaty flower in front of him, and he began to see ways in which that might be done, if he was careful, if he scripted them correctly.

  It was unbearable to remain in this room any longer, he found; its quiescence and opacity oppressed him. He could still hear his own voice, explaining uncertainties to Angelica, and the air here was filled with uncertainty, ambivalence and doubt. Also, he could now smell burning, a peculiarly unpleasant burning smell too, like hair singed. He could hear, faintly, the sound of rustling and crackling.

  He could not bear the jealous hours of waiting, he decided. He would prefer not to know how late it was when his wife returned; he would prefer not to stay here and speculate as to her activities. He went out into the corridor and paused by the entrance to the small bedsitting room which was Angelica’s. Here, the smell of burning was stronger; he could glimpse, through the open door, the cluster of crucifixes and saints’ pictures and religious knickknackery with which Angelica adorned every space in which she lived.

  ‘I cursed him,’ she said, appearing in the doorway from nowhere, and startling Court. ‘I cursed him—and this time I cursed him real good. I got through. I could feel it; I could feel him, like some fish wriggling on a hook…’

  ‘Yes, well you’ve cursed him plenty of times before,’ Court said coldly, ‘and without conspicuous success.’

  He looked at Angelica’s flushed face; a vein stood out on her temple; her heavy body was giving off heat like an electric plate. He tried, as he had often done before, to tell himself that Angelica was an ugly, overweight, vindictive virgin of fifty-five, whose sole redeeming feature was her love for his son. She was without powers, he told himself, and he was the last person in the world to be impressed by the mumbo-jumbo of her semi-Catholic, semi-pagan prayers, curses and jinxes.