By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  The highway snaked round the mountain edge above the choppy sea, dipping inland at one point as the terrain fell away into a valley, then twisted back to cling once more to the cliff edge, with the Pacific crashing against rocks below.

  Once through Big Sur Valley, they headed for Nepenthe, with Herk straining to read the occasional, small, painted signs off to the right, with tracks to wooden houses perched on the edge above the ocean.

  ‘Coordinates would have helped,’ he muttered.

  ‘Just before the Los Santos Inn, Tom said. They’re doing the food. Not well signposted. The owners he rented from don’t like passing trade dropping in.’

  He swerved onto a track suddenly, causing the car and caravan behind to brake sharply and honk in complaint. The surfaced road looped left and right round tall, bushy conifers blocking the view from the track until it splayed out in front of a two-storey wood and glass ranch house of considerable size, sitting within yards of the drop down to the sea.

  A dark-haired woman with a white apron came out to welcome them in broken English, telling a youth in jeans and white shirt in Mexican Spanish to take their luggage. They had been allocated adjoining rooms on the first floor, both with heart-stopping views from plate glass windows across the Pacific. Herk said he’d go off to recce the route to the Cerigo resort, while she stayed to sort out emails and shower.

  Her room was a calming beige with one wall of pale, sandstone blocks, a rustic contrast to the ultra-modern king-sized bed and open bathroom at the end. This is heaven, she thought. Seven-star accommodation in the middle of a wilderness with a moving swell of water of the Pacific Ocean stretching beyond the horizon for five thousand miles. Comfort and isolation.

  For the first time, the prospect of success seemed a real possibility. She collected a bottle of water from the fridge and went out contentedly to the small terrace to smoke. She contemplated a pine tree, rooted a yard from the precipitous hundred-foot drop, whose parasol branches framed the ruggedly beautiful coastline beyond.

  After a leisurely bath, she put on white jeans, a red, low-cut, cotton top and flip-flops and went downstairs. Outside on the patio, comfortable armchairs and sofas were arranged round a roaring log fire set into a massive stone surround. Chip Nathon, leaning against a pillar of a wooden pergola laden with purple bougainvillea, raised a martini glass in greeting. She requested a spritzer from the youth, now attired in a white waistcoat for his evening duties as waiter.

  Two other couples arrived, film executive friends of Tom Bateson’s from LA, so the conversation skimmed and skittered until the sunset brought all chatter to a halt. Tire moved across to stand beside Herk as the giant ball of red turned orange and moved slowly down towards the sea. Faintly in the distance the sound of drums marked the passage of day’s closure.

  ‘Let’s eat out here. We can smoke.’ Chip’s voice broke into her reverie, his tension betrayed in a hard undertone. He indicated a table set for two near the fire. Herk stayed where he was staring out into the darkness, stars appearing singly and in shoals overhead.

  ‘Is he a bodyguard?’ Chip whispered loudly enough to be heard across the room.

  She shrugged and mouthed: ‘Photographer.’

  Another vodka martini appeared and he ordered a Chardonnay for Tire without asking, with a bottle of Cabernet to follow. He smiled tightly, made fulsome compliments about her appearance in a half-hearted manner, and then said in a rush: ‘What a relief to see you, can’t tell you. Look, sorry to dump this on you, but I got no one else I can talk to. That thing we were talking about last time. Paul Stone. It’s worse, much worse.’

  Tire put on her most sympathetic smile, stopped moving her leg to avoid his knee and put a hand across the table. The words tumbled and burbled out, at times without much connection, but she gathered the gist – that both he and Stone had lost heavily in a joint investment in South America. ‘Can’t tell you how many tens of millions,’ he mumbled, adding viciously: ‘His fault since he must have known it was dodgy from the get-go. I took him at his word since I thought he knew what he was doing. And on top of losing, I think there’ll be repercussions here, which I seriously don’t need.’

  She toyed with her chicory salad and pushed a piece of quince round her plate, before saying, with a perplexed look: ‘I thought he was a near genius with money.’

  A lump of risotto with a mushroom on top slid onto the table as Nathon angrily banged his fork down. ‘Huh, like my great-uncle Sam who went bust in ’29. That shit hot. Took my family three generations to catch up again.’ He slurped at his wine and wiped his chin on the back of his hand.

  Her brain was racing as she pondered her response. Speaking carefully and hoping she sounded naïve, she said: ‘Was he desperate for money in taking that kind of a risk?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ His eyes, buried in folds of reddened flesh, sparked with suspicion. When she returned a placatory smile and a graceful hand gesture that would have done credit to a Thai temple dancer, he nodded with tears forming in his eyes. ‘Female intuition. You are so like my Maybelle, I can’t tell you,’ he sniffed.

  There was a tense pause while plates were removed and the red wine poured. Lost in his irritation and anguish, he held her hand in his increasingly sweaty grip, which made her stomach and conscience churn, and she fervently hoped Herk wasn’t watching. With relief she saw the main course being brought across and he started to talk again.

  ‘I reckon he might be completely bust,’ he said, pushing a forkful of duck breast smeared with butternut squash into his mouth. ‘Lost a bucketload on oil and some central African deal went tits up. His own fault, mind you. Asking for it, doing business with these kind of places. Plus he was hit badly with Swiss and Venezuelan currencies going bronco.’

  She lifted the quail leg from her plate, holding it delicately between her finger and thumb, dipped it into ginger sauce and munched on the tempura batter.

  ‘You thought he was losing the plot last time we spoke. Mentally, I mean. And getting involved in some kind of drug testing.’

  Wondering whether she was pushing too hard, she concentrated on eating for a moment. When she looked up, he was focused on his plate shovelling food into his mouth as if his life depended on it. Wiping his mouth on his napkin and waving to the waiter, he said: ‘Yeah.’ He lit a cigar and leant back.

  ‘Some damn fool notion about blotting out memories. I could never make head nor tail of it, though I know the medics didn’t like it. One of them told me it would roll psychiatry back to the bad old days of lobotomies. That’s when I began to think his circuit board was seriously overloading. If he gets the Drug Admin boys on his back he’s got trouble.’

  A movement to her right made her glance over to where Herk was standing on the sea terrace, gesturing he was going upstairs. She nodded imperceptibly and suddenly felt sick of this charade with Nathon. But needs must.

  ‘But you’ll be alright, won’t you?’ she said, not entirely insincerely.

  He smiled grudgingly and sighed. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘And what about Paul Stone? Is he coming to the party tomorrow?’

  ‘Christ, no,’ Nathon guffawed. ‘Not his scene at the best of times since he’s not in charge. Anyway, Harman tells me he went to ground in the lodge in the north of Scotland days back and refused to take any security with him. Said he had work for them elsewhere. Baby boy sounded edgy. Not that he cares about his father, but he was clearly worried about him going off the rails. I had the impression the cash flow had stopped. These resorts can’t be too profitable the way he runs them, so he needs his old Pa.’

  The evening dragged on with two mountainous portions of chocolate mousse with whipped cream being presented, then cognac and more cognac. She manoeuvred herself into a position where her seat was beside a palm tree. She hoped it liked the alcohol she poured surreptitiously into its roots every time he looked away.

  Finally she excused herself, arranging to meet next morning to see round the holiday resort comple
x ten miles down the road, and fled upstairs. There was silence from Herk’s room but she banged around just to let him know she was back and on her own. As she lay down to sleep the words ‘needed elsewhere’ ran round her head.

  CHAPTER 45

  There was a gentle, rhythmic splash of waves breaking against the shore and a perfect blue sky overhead. Tire stretched and climbed slowly out of bed, made herself a coffee and wandered out to the balcony to see if she could spot any sea otters swimming among the tangled bed of brown kelp floating offshore.

  The thought nagging at the back of her mind from Chip’s conversation at dinner took three cigarettes before it clicked into focus. ‘Security guys needed elsewhere.’ Doing what? Or more to the point whom? The hair on the back of her neck prickled and a chill rippled down her spine. She walked across the balcony to look into Herk’s room, which was empty with the bed tidy but clearly slept in.

  Chewing her lip, she leant over the balcony to look down onto a patio table below where a blue jay with a dark, peaked hood of feathers was searching for crumbs. Turning on her heel, she went into her room to find her mobile phone; flicking through her contacts she found the Marinello Gallery and rang the number. An assistant told her that the owner was not available and wouldn’t be for several days.

  In a quandary she pushed for his personal number, only to be politely rebuffed. After a moment’s hesitation she asked about Jimmy Black, their artist. Was he still away? There was a long silence and the voice finally said, in a stilted tone as if reading from a script: ‘I’m very sorry to tell you his tenement was burnt down yesterday and several people are dead.’ The connection was ended.

  Holy Christ. A stab of guilt was followed by a choking cloud of dread and then pure rage ran through her body, tingling down to her fingertips and toes. She’d get the bastard if it was the last thing she did. Fifteen minutes prowling, stamping and banging her fist on the stone wall did little to clear her head. The mobile rang as she was aiming for a cold shower. Thinking it was Herk, she didn’t read the incoming number.

  Before she could speak, a harsh Scottish voice snarled: ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were asking about Jimmy Black.’

  ‘Who are you?

  ‘Never mind that. What’s your interest in him?

  ‘Is he OK?’ she said, her heart taking a jump.

  ‘I’m saying nothing till you tell me why you’re asking about him.’

  Thinking rapidly, she decided to take a chance. ‘Who I am isn’t important. But I think he’s in danger.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ The voice oozed contempt.

  She didn’t reply, wondering if he was one of Stone’s heavies. Maybe not, if he had connections to the art gallery. There was an impatient growl at the other end. A different approach was clearly needed, so she softened her tone.

  ‘I’m a writer and I just came across some information that suggested he might be at risk.’ She took a deep breath.

  ‘More.’ The roar did not brook argument.

  ‘How do I know you’re not one of the ones threatening him?’ she said.

  ‘Because,’ the menacing voice said slowly, as if talking to an idiot, ‘I’m a friend of Ricky’s and the bastards that tried to get Jimmy killed my nephew. So if you’ve got information I want it. Now. And I’ll sort them, never you fear.’

  ‘Is he alright, Jimmy?’

  ‘He’s fine and under my protection. So anyone coming for him will have me to deal with. My name is Wally Strang, by the way. I’m kind of well known round these parts.’

  ‘Oh, thank god,’ she said, sagging onto the bed. Jimmy safe and a heavyweight ally.

  In the ten-minute conversation following, she was circumspect in what she told him, since there was little substantive proof implicating Harman Stone directly and Wally sounded arrogant and reckless. He might be a force to be reckoned with in Glasgow, but that wouldn’t mean much outside. Only an agreement to meet up with him in Glasgow in two days’ time stopped his insistent questions. In return, he said he intended to move Jimmy completely out of harm’s way into a safer house tomorrow.

  Glancing at her watch, she dashed for a shower and was out of the door and downstairs to meet a waiting Chip at the front door. He was standing beside a sleek black Chrysler with a chauffeur behind the wheel. He motioned her into the back seat and she waved to Herk, who was behind in the jeep.

  The fifteen-minute drive north was uneasy with Chip constantly glancing at her, almost speaking at points and then looking embarrassedly out of the window as his nerve failed him. Tire’s head was buzzing with too much excitement for small talk to be easy. When his hand slid across the seat several times, she diverted his attention by pointing out to sea at otters she thought she had seen, even whales spouting south, until the driver said flatly it was the wrong season for whales going to Baja.

  Why were they going to this damned resort, she wondered? It would be a waste of time except for Herk to take a couple of shots of it for the book, which was rapidly sorting itself out in her head. They should be on their way to Glasgow and then on to the north-west. All she had wanted was information out of Chip and his obvious interest in her was beginning to make her feel ashamed. Maybe they could cut Tom’s party and return today. Once Chip had gone back to his office she’d discuss it with Herk.

  Finally, they turned left off the highway at a discreet Cerigo sign and along a curving, gravelled track flanked by giant cacti and aloes. The long, one-storey wood and glass reception building looked an expensive architectural item. On both sides the grounds stretched out along the cliffs, with a dozen whitewashed hacienda-style villas almost hidden behind lush bougainvillea and plumbago tumbling over pergola dividers. More LA than Henry Miller country, Tire thought sourly, putting on her brightest smile for the tall figure in black jeans and white shirt coming out to greet them.

  Chip introduced him as Emilio, the manager, kissed her warmly on both cheeks before she could stop him, made his excuses and left, saying he’d see her at the party. A syrupy stream of a welcome, compliments and then sales talk followed as Emilio waved his bronzed arms around, exposing more of his tanned chest, and constantly put on and took off his sunglasses. Herk, standing with an impressive array of cameras round his neck, said he would wander off to take photographs, avoiding those areas that were occupied by guests.

  A dreary hour followed until Tire was almost screaming with boredom and irritation at the inconsequential trivia that poured out almost non-stop as they walked round the property. She had clipped her mini tape recorder on her shirt blouse to give the illusion that his pearls of wisdom were being saved for posterity, leaving it switched off. Butting in only twice, she learned he had never met Stone senior, although he very much hoped to rectify that soon. And he had met Harman Stone once, since he had only been manager for two weeks, having come up from LA.

  Mercifully, two sets of new guests arrived when she was on the verge of being very rude. Concerned that she had not seen Herk in a while she went off to look for him. On her second circuit she was beginning to get more anxious. He was nowhere to be seen or heard. Leaning against a rail as the ground fell straight down to the sea, she clenched her jaw and looked down the hundred-foot drop to the rocks and water below. Nothing was visible on the shoreline although there were several adjoining buildings halfway down the cliff edge, with a track leading to them. Damn. Had she missed that bit of the guided tour? She racked her brains. Hot tubs, sulphur springs. That was it.

  A discreet sign hidden behind tumbling passion flowers pointed to a boardwalk, overhung with green ferns, which led down stone steps and sloping gravel stages towards the baths. At the entrance was a rope bearing the notice ‘closed till 3 pm for cleaning’. She stepped over it carefully, listening intently. Only the waves and the squawking of seabirds broke the silence.

  She tiptoed quietly through the lavish changing rooms, grateful she had remembered to put on canvas deck shoes. Through a small gym, the d
oor to the hot tubs stood open. For no reason she could later recall she picked up a ladies’ pink dumbbell from a shelf, which weighed heavily in her hand and walked towards the door.

  The open deck had three huge, stone-encased, hot tubs. The furthest two were empty. The third and nearest tub was partially obscured by the half-open door and beside it she could see a camera strap lying on the ground. She pulled the door back slightly to see Herk’s body almost completely submerged with only half of his face showing, his eyes closed. Trails of blood were bubbling across the surface.

  A tall man stepped out from the corner, holding a long-handled brush, and for an instant she thought she had gone mad. He leered at her, exposing broken front teeth and said in broken English: ‘Anjep. I thought you would come looking for him. Hah.’

  Anger overtook fear and without pausing to think she hurled the dumbbell at him, which caught him under the chin and snapped his head back. It wasn’t heavy enough to do him major damage, but it threw him off balance and as he staggered to regain his footing he tripped over the pole of the brush, falling back against the iron barrier. He was tall enough for the rail to catch him just below his centre of gravity so she ran across, grabbed the brush end and pushed him over. Then she stood in appalled silence until a hoarse voice said: ‘Well, that makes it twice I owe you, then.’

  Collapsing onto her knees beside the hot tub, she held Herk’s face in her hands and bent her head to touch his forehead, tears streaming down her face. Sniffing furiously, she croaked with an anguished squeal: ‘That man?’ He was the one you killed in Spain.’

  ‘His bloody twin brother, so he told me. Now help me out of here. The sulphur’s beginning to get to me.’

  A luxurious towel was put to good use cleaning his cuts, which he insisted were superficial, and drying him off. She tried to shut her ears as he went off into a bathroom to force himself to throw up the sulphurous water in his stomach. Handing him a bottle of mineral water, which he drank gratefully, she said: ‘What now? I reckon we should scarper home.’