(1998) Denial

by Peter James

  Shit, I forgot to collect my shoes from the repairer! Black suede. They would have gone perfectly with her outfit, and now she would have to do a fast rethink. Damn. Damn. Damn.

  Someone had pulled the day away from beneath her like it was some big rug. Happened most days, time just ran out on her, work piles got bigger, lists grew longer, more and more phone calls did not get returned. But tonight she was going to forget all that. Tonight she almost wasn’t afraid of the echoes of her footsteps that taunted her up the stairwell. Tonight she was thinking about Tony (the Hon. Anthony!) Rennison. Hunk, serious intellectual, shy, funny.

  And he liked her.

  And she liked him, big-time.

  Suddenly Tina, who had always acted old for her years, was a kid again. Two weeks ago, before she’d met Tony, before he’d asked her out that first time, she had been thirty-two going on forty-two or maybe even fifty-two.

  Short, with boyish brown hair, she had a pleasant face, plain but not unattractive, but in the way she dressed and carried herself, she exuded an aura of confidence. It made people instinctively trust her, had seen her rise to head girl at school and now editorial director of Pelham House, one of London’s most aggressive publishers, where she had transformed the fiction list and was in the process of turning round the once-ailing non-fiction.

  But tonight she was a schoolgirl, with butterflies in her stomach that were fluttering harder with every step she took nearer her car, nearer home.

  Nearer her date.

  Her Golf GTI, exhaust broken, was in its bay in the far corner, rear end sticking out beneath the giant heating duct that in the darkness looked like some lurking prehensile beast. The Golf welcomed her arrival with a sharp beep, a wink of its lights and the sound of its locks thudding open. She was a little surprised when she opened her door and the interior light failed to come on.

  Inside, she clunked her seat-belt buckle home. Then, as she put her key in the ignition, the passenger door opened and a massively tall figure slid into the seat beside her.

  A male voice, laconic and confident, right next to her, inches from her face, said, ‘Remember me?’

  She froze.

  ‘Thomas Lamark.’ He sounded as if he was rolling an ice-cube around in his mouth. ‘Remember me?’

  Oh, Jesus, she thought, her brain cells colliding inside her head. The car reeked of cologne. Givenchy. It was the same perfume her date wore. Was this him, playing some joke? Except the voice was different. This was a calm, deep, controlled voice. There was a cold beauty in it. Chilling. An almost poetic resonance. Her hand scrabbled for the door handle.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember you.’

  ‘You should remember my name. Thomas Lamark. You turned down my book.’

  There were no people around up here. It was nearly eight o’clock. The attendant was in his booth, five storeys below.

  ‘Your book?’ She couldn’t see his face: she was talking to a silhouette, a tall, lean silhouette.

  ‘You turned it down.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I – it – your name doesn’t ring a bell. Thomas Lamark?’

  ‘You wrote me a letter. I have it here.’

  She heard a rustle of paper. Then she heard him say, ‘“Dear Mr Lamark, Thank you for sending your manuscript, The Authorised Biography of Gloria Lamark, to us. After careful reading, we regret we are unable to consider this for publication on our lists. We hope you will be successful with it elsewhere. Yours sincerely, Tina Mackay, Editorial Director.”’

  There was a silence. Tina wondered what chance she had of opening the door and making a run for it.

  ‘This regret, Tina. Is this real? Do you really regret this?’ Then he added, ‘I need to know. It’s very important to me.’

  There were other cars up here. Someone must appear soon, she thought, hoped. Just play for time. He was a crank, that was all, just a crank.

  ‘Would you like me to take another look at it?’ Her voice came out small and crushed.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that now, Tina.’

  ‘We use outside readers. I – we get so many manuscripts, it’s impossible to read every one myself. I get sent two hundred manuscripts some weeks.’

  ‘This wasn’t important enough for you to read, Tina?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Oh, I think it is, Tina. What you are saying is it might have been important enough for me to write it, but it wasn’t important enough for you to read it. It’s the biography of my mother – Gloria Lamark.’

  ‘Gloria Lamark?’ she echoed, her throat constricted with fear.

  ‘You’re never heard of her?’ His scorn was corrosive.

  ‘I – look – why don’t you let me have it back, and I – I will read it.’

  Then his tone changed, suddenly, into utter charm and, for a brief moment, her hopes rose. ‘You know something, Tina? I wish I could do that. I really do. You have to believe me that I’m sincere about this.’

  Tina saw a glint of something metallic. She heard a click and a slap. Then silence. ‘What was that?’ she said.

  ‘It was a coin. A very special coin that belonged to my late father. A gold twenty-mark coin from the state of Hesse-Darmstadt, minted in the year 1892, the last year of the reign of King Ludwig the Fourth. I just tossed this coin. Heads and tails. One and zero. Binary. You can put the whole of life in a binary code. That’s how computers work, you know that, Tina? On and off. Everything on this planet is as black and white as that. There is a great beauty in simplicity. If you’d read my book you’d know that.’

  ‘I – I’ll read it.’

  ‘No, the moment’s gone. Everything in life has a moment. Did you ever think about that?’

  ‘Nothing’s ever too late.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. This conversation. This is all much too late.’ He tossed the coin again. ‘Heads,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea what heads means?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You would have if you’d read my book.’

  Chapter Five

  What on earth did I ever see in you?

  Once Amanda would have died for him, but now, tonight, she was staring across the restaurant table at a virtual stranger.

  His name was Brian Trussler; he was forty-six. He had a lean, hard, street-wise face, and thin fair hair cropped short, except for a handful of strands left long to cover his bald dome. He was wearing a tired-looking grey Armani jacket over a black shirt, and a loud tie. He had a wife, Linda, two young sons, Adam and Oliver, three smart cars and a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

  Although he was not handsome in any conventional sense, Amanda had always been jealously aware of his ability to attract women. When she had first met him, seven years back, he exuded a sense of energy she had never felt from any human being before. He gave the impression that, if he wanted, he could move mountains. It had been that energy, together with a degree of starstruck awe, that had instantly attracted her to him.

  They had begun an affair, in a room at the Halcyon Hotel after lunch at the Caprice, on their first date. She had ended it in the Caprice seven years later. Two months ago. Almost to the day.

  He seemed to have aged since then. His hair had lost its lustre, his face had grown florid and was lined with broken veins, as if years of heavy boozing had taken their toll. He looked like he was going to seed.

  She was aware that if she had still been in love with him she probably wouldn’t have noticed. There had been a time when she had loved every hair on his body, and couldn’t imagine life without him. And she would still have been in love with him if he hadn’t let her down.

  If he had been honest with her . . . if he had kept his word . . .

  Not a million ifs, only a few, just the ones that mattered.

  She was surprised at her lack of feelings for him now. She’d been dreading this meeting, and wasn’t even sure why she had agreed to come. Perhaps because she felt sorry for him – he’d been distraught, phoning her ince
ssantly, bombarding her with e-mails, faxes and flowers, pleading with her to change her mind. Or perhaps it was because she needed to see him one more time to be absolutely sure.

  And now she was absolutely sure. It was a huge relief. Finally, after seven years, she was free of the feelings that had enslaved her. She could pass the Caprice without any sudden pang. She could listen to ‘Lady in Red’, without being paralysed by an intense yearning for him. She could wake up in the morning without a deep pain inside her because it was Saturday morning and she wouldn’t be seeing him until Monday evening. And instead of his phone calls being the highlight of her days, they were now an intrusion.

  And, seven years on, the message that her mother, her sister, Lara, and her best friend, Roxy, had all been trying to drum into her head had got through.

  Brian Trussler, you are a complete fucking shit.

  He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. ‘Amanda, don’t do this to me,’ he said. ‘I love you so much. I totally and utterly adore you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said flatly.

  He stared at her and drummed his free hand on the tablecloth. His eyes were bloodshot, and she wondered whether he looked so bad because he wasn’t sleeping. He’d told her he couldn’t sleep for thinking of her, and that had made her feel bad. She didn’t want to hurt him.

  He was breathing heavily. ‘I’m prepared to leave Linda.’

  Linda was pretty, with short dark hair and a sad expression, as if she had known something was wrong in their marriage. Amanda had never felt malice towards her, only envy and, at times, a terrible guilt.

  She shook her head. ‘No, you’re not prepared to leave her, Brian. I’ve heard you say that so many times.’

  ‘This time I am.’

  Was he capable of distinguishing the truth, any more, from the web of lies in which he lived? Amanda asked herself. She had met him when she was a twenty-two-year-old fresh-faced graduate from film school, and had applied for a job as an assistant at his production company. At the interview she’d been awed to meet the man in person – she’d seen his credits, sometimes as director, sometimes as producer on countless successful television dramas, The Bill, London’s Burning, Cracker, Frost, Casualty. But she’d not seen his true face.

  He was a crook. On his company’s own series, he ripped off everyone with whom he came into contact. If the BBC gave him £250,000 an episode, he would make it for less and creatively account the difference. He bribed people and took backhanders.

  He wasn’t interested in making anything of quality or winning awards, or prestige, he was interested solely in milking the system of as much money as he could. He had a reputation for churning out safe, reliable police procedurals and hospital dramas. It didn’t bother him a whit that, creatively, American imports like ER and NYPD Blue kicked them into touch.

  And in those early, heady days, it didn’t bother Amanda either. She was meeting stars, she was involved in making prime-time dramas with good ratings, she was twenty-two, she was madly in love with one of the gods of television, and she had a career break to die for! Brian had told her that his marriage had been over effectively for years, he was going to leave his wife, and – huge carrot – he was on the verge of giving Amanda her very own series to produce.

  Four years later he had not left his wife, and had not given Amanda her own series, so she dumped his job, and took a more challenging one at 20–20 Vision. Yet she had found it impossible to break with Brian. Determined to try, she had spent a miserable three months without him, but after a boozy lunch they had ended up back in bed together.

  She watched him now, sucking hungrily and edgily on his cigarette. ‘You’ve had seven of the best years of my life, Brian. I’m twenty-nine, OK? My biological clock’s ticking. I want a life, and you have to be fair to me. I want a husband. I want children. I want to spend my weekends with the man I love.’

  ‘Let’s start a family right away,’ he said.

  The waiter brought their coffee. Brian ordered a brandy. She waited until the waiter was out of earshot.

  ‘Great,’ she said, reproachfully. ‘Your wife’s seven months pregnant and now you want your mistress pregnant as well. What planet are you on, Brian?’

  He looked at her balefully. ‘Are you seeing someone else?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked relieved. ‘So – is there hope for us?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Brian, there isn’t.’

  Chapter Six

  thursday, 10 july 1997. 3.12 a.m.

  from: tlamark@easynet.co.uk

  Usenet Newsgroups.

  Fan Clubs.

  Posting to alt.fan.Gloria_Lamark.

  I am deeply sad to announce the death of my mother, Gloria Lamark, on Tuesday 8 July, at her home in London.

  The funeral will take place at Mill Hill Cemetery next Wednesday, 16 July at 12.00. This will be followed by refreshments at 47 Holland Park Villas, London W14.

  All her friends and fans are welcome.

  It is recommended you arrive early to avoid disappointment.

  Details of a memorial service to accommodate those unable to fit into the church will be announced later.

  Don’t forget to check out the Gloria Lamark Website!

  http://www.gloria_lamark. com

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I have a secret,’ the old man said, then fell silent.

  There were often long gaps between his sentences, and Michael Tennent was used to this; he sat in his comfortable chair, holding his patient’s file and straightened his back a little. Katy used to tell him his posture was lousy.

  Katy.

  Her photograph was still on his desk and she was still in his mind, part of her in his every thought. He wanted her out of it, and yet at the same time, perversely, he did not. What he really wanted was to be free of the pain, to be able to move forward. But always the guilt stopped that.

  The office was a long, narrow, attic room in the elegant Palladian mansion that had once been the London home of a tea-importing tycoon, and was now the Sheen Park Hospital. It housed the consulting rooms of six psychiatrists and four psychotherapists, as well as thirty private bedrooms for in-patients. It was approached via a rhododendron-lined driveway that wound for a quarter of a mile through well-kept parkland that stretched right down to the Thames. The view was denied to Michael and his patients. His office had just one small round window, like a naval porthole, set above head height, just below the eaves.

  The office was a tip. His desk, a couple of tables and a row of filing cabinets were pushed up against the walls, and almost every inch of their surfaces was covered in files, letters, medical magazines or books waiting for his review. Even the computer monitor had a pile of stuff on top of it that had been there so long Michael didn’t even notice it any more.

  He needed therapy himself, he knew, and that was ironic. He ought to be able to handle his grief. But the fact that he still had Katy’s photograph on his desk told him otherwise. One moment they’d been driving along a road, Katy crying, himself feeling a shit, and the next moment –

  Blank.

  Amnesia. The same defence mechanism that protected some murderers. You could do the most appalling thing to another human being, and when you woke up the next day, hey, you’d forgotten all about it.

  The notes on the index card were a blur. He lowered his head a fraction, hit the bottom sector of his varifocal lenses and the words sharpened.

  On the front page of the file was typed: Dortmund, Herman Baruch. b. 07–02–1907. Dortmund was dying of terminal cancer, colon cancer originally, but now his body was riddled with secondaries. Somehow he kept going: inside his skeletal body was an inner strength, some residue from the demons that had once driven him and which he was trying now to exorcise. He got through his daily life having retained a fragile sanity. It was all he could hope for. And, Michael thought, more than he deserved.

  But Michael was too much of a professional to let Dortmund’s past affect his jud
gement or his treatment. The man had been prosecuted at Nuremberg, but had escaped the gallows. Since then, tormented with posttraumatic stress disorder and guilt, every night for fifty-four years Dortmund had travelled to hell and back.

  Sometimes just looking at this man made Michael shiver. He tried to imagine what it might have been like to have been in Belsen in 1943, with Katy, but separated from her by a twenty-foot-high chain-link fence, women and children one side, men the other, smelling the death and decay, seeing the smoke rise from the ovens.

  These thoughts were unprofessional, Michael reminded himself, but how could anyone detach that from his mind? He looked back at Dortmund and revulsion squirmed through him. Even so a part of him felt sorry for the man. There were even moments when Michael liked him: in the presence of this former Nazi, he was reminded that we all have the potential to do evil, and that sometimes, although we condemn a man’s behaviour, we can still accept him as an individual. And this particular individual intrigued Michael.

  Dortmund was ninety. Liver spots stained his face, and his mouth curled down at the corners. His shiny pate pushed up through thin strands of hair, like a porcelain bowl nestling in straw. He never smiled.

  ‘I need to ask you . . .’ Dortmund said.

  ‘Yes?’ Michael replied, gently, encouraging him.

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Patient confidentiality? The Hippocratic oath, yes?’

  Michael hesitated. Not all doctors took that, these days, but he was too tired to go into details: Dortmund was an early bird. He liked to come in at seven thirty in the morning, almost as though he could retreat back to his lair before the rest of the world was up and about and avoid facing the world. Michael didn’t mind coming in early once a fortnight like this. It enabled him to get some paperwork done in the hour after Dortmund had left. ‘Correct,’ he said.

  Dortmund stared at him as if uncertain whether he was taking the mickey. Even after all these years in England, Dortmund’s grasp of the language was limited. Michael had found on many occasions that it had been dangerous to attempt to crack a joke. Jokes depended so often on subtleties of language. These eluded Dortmund.