by Peter James
Now, with her left hand she pushed the buckle hard down on the floor so that the spike lay flat and, with her right hand, gripped the front of the dead man’s loafer, and brought the heel down hard, like a hammer.
On the first blow, she hit the floor wide of the mark. On the second she hit her knuckles and, with a stifled cry of pain, dropped the shoe and the belt. Then she wound the belt around her fingers as a makeshift guard, and tried again.
The metallic ping told her she’d struck the right spot. She brought the heel down again. THWACK. Missed, struck the floor. Then again. PINGGGGG. It found its mark. Then again. And again.
After several successful hits, she checked the spike. It was warm. That was good. She knew from all she had learned about engines that the warmer metal got the more pliable it became.
Thomas stood just a few feet away, watching her through his goggles. What on earth was it doing? Kneeling on the floor hitting a belt buckle with the heel of a loafer?
Whatever was going on inside its pea-brained mind was OK by him. He didn’t care, it could do what the hell it liked.
He retreated as silently as he had come in.
The light came on, detonating an explosion of fear inside her.
Turning in shock, Amanda closed her eyes tightly against the searing glare, dropped the shoe, unravelled the belt and clamped her hands over her eyes.
Silence.
Fearfully, she removed her hands slowly and then, gradually, opened her eyelids, letting increasing amounts of the glaring light in.
Now they were wide open, darting around the chamber, her muscles tensed, ready to fight the bastard with anything she could. But not ready for what she saw.
On the floor, just four feet behind her, she saw a tray of food, with a fresh jug of water. There was an apple on the tray. A pizza. Her red plastic latrine bucket had been replaced with a yellow one, the orange plastic washing bucket with a green one. There was a fresh towel. The old tray had gone.
The light went out again.
Chapter Seventy-four
‘Michael, I’m scared. I don’t like this game. Can we stop playing it, please?’
Michael sat at his desk in his study at home, staring at the square black speakers either side of his Aiwa sound system.
‘Keep away from me.’
It was ten twenty p.m. He’d been home for over an hour and a half, just sitting here in his den, drinking a mug of coffee, playing the tape over and over, trying to think things through.
Trying to come up with something that made sense.
Beamish at the radio station said the call was untraceable. It had been one of hundreds that had come into the switchboard this evening. There was no logging system. In fact, as his producer had wryly pointed out to him, total anonymity was one of the advertised gimmicks of the show. Anyone could phone in; their identification was never checked.
And Beamish was angry with him. He wasn’t a man to express his feelings, but Michael could see the signs plainly enough in his face. And yes, Michael could scarcely blame him. A domestic row live on air. Great. Beamish, afterwards, had asked quietly if he had any idea quite how much damage to his credibility as a psychiatrist this little public row might have caused.
He didn’t have any idea, nor did he care right now.
‘I thought you loved me, Michael. I thought you loved me.’
What is this about, Amanda?
He rewound the tape. Paced around the study. Sat down on the edge of his Parker Knoll recliner armchair, sipped his tepid coffee.
‘I thought you loved me, Michael. I thought you loved me.’
I do love you. God, I love you more than anything on earth. I love you more, even, than – He stared, guiltily, at Katy’s photograph in the frame on his desk. She was lying down on a picnic rug in a field, in striped leggings and a loose black shirt, giving him a great big warm grin.
He hadn’t rung Lulu. He’d promised to call her if he heard anything, but what the hell was he going to say to her? That Amanda was sounding scared of him, that that was why she’d disappeared?
He picked up the phone, began to dial Lulu’s number, then hung up. If Amanda had phoned him, then quite probably she had phoned Lulu too. More than probably, he thought. Certainly.
Maybe she’d kept Lulu in the loop on this all along. Told her to pretend she didn’t know where she was to keep him off her back.
Had Lulu been lying?
That seemed so improbable. And yet . . .
She had phoned him on the radio station, live on air.
Why?
Back to Saturday night here. Their meal. Amanda’s concern about the car across the road. Their lovemaking. Amanda looking out of the window, worried again. Sunday morning, just an incredible, wonderful morning. Their visit to the stock-car race-track had been relaxed, happy.
So what had poisoned her?
He could think of nothing that he had said or done that could have given her any reason to behave like this towards him. He turned his thinking to her mental state. What she had said in the phone call bore the hallmarks of paranoia. Was she suffering from some paranoid psychosis triggered by the stress of a new relationship? Or was she on drugs? Cannabis, crack, ecstasy and amphetamines could all cause this kind of psychosis.
One behavioural pattern of paranoids was to read hidden meanings into innocent remarks, and to misinterpret things. Compliments in particular could be seen as veiled criticisms. If you told a paranoid woman she looked beautiful, she could take this as meaning that she had not previously looked beautiful. If you told her you loved her, she might take this as a ploy to get more out of her.
Paranoids tended to display labile moods, normally stubborn, sarcastic or openly hostile. But there had been no anger in her voice.
It was more like fear.
He thought about the physiological effects of a neurological condition. That was one possible cause of a sudden personality change. Was she suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy? Or a brain tumour?
He rang Lulu’s home number. She answered almost immediately, sounding sleepy. He held back from saying he’d spoken to Amanda, instead he said, ‘Lulu, sorry to call so late.’
‘S’fine. Any news?’
‘Listen, tell me something. Amanda doesn’t have any history of epilepsy, does she?’
‘God, no, not that I know of.’
‘Would she have told you?’
‘Yah. Anyhow, she had a thorough medical recently, one of those BUPA check-ups for a key-man insurance cover we took out. I filled in the forms with her. I’d have seen if she’d written down anything like that. Why?’
‘She rang me tonight, when I was live on air on the radio. She doesn’t sound right.’
‘She rang you?’ The surprise in her voice sounded genuine.
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God! I’ve been going out of my mind. She’s all right? She’s OK?’
‘I – I’m not sure.’
‘Where on earth is she?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Tell me! What did she say?’
‘I have it on tape.’
‘But she’s OK?’
He hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Listen, Lulu, you know her much better than I do, I’d like you to hear her. I –’
‘Can you play it over the phone? No, look, where are you? I could jump in a taxi. Just give me time to get dressed.’
‘I’ll come to you. Whereabouts are you?’
‘Clapham Common.’
‘Give me your address. I’ll be with you in twenty minutes.’
‘I’ll put some coffee on.’
‘I’ll need it.’
Chapter Seventy-five
The lawn needed mowing. He remembered now: in summer the grass needed cutting once a week. There was a man who came and cut it with a machine. The same man who did the flower-beds and fixed things that went wrong in the house and drove them around in the Bentley
which, like the white van, Thomas had put into a multi-storey on contract parking. The garage was a bit full right now, with Terence Goel’s Ford Mondeo (lucky Dr Goel didn’t have a bigger car) and what was left of Amanda Capstick’s Alfa Romeo convertible (lucky she didn’t have a bigger car).
He was going to have to make some space for Dr Michael Tennent’s grey Volvo, otherwise he could foresee it causing problems when it arrived. And these weren’t the kind of problems he needed.
I’m not a fucking car-park attendant.
Someone had thrown tinfoil into the fish pond. The lagoon, his mother like to call it. Vandals must have been in the garden. This pissed him off. He shone the torch onto the water and the tinfoil glinted. Above it, the tiny Baroque folly that was the island in the middle stood like a silhouette.
Night. Dark now. Eleven o’clock. A woman’s laughter on the other side of the garden wall. The long grass was wet, but it was a dry night. Stars up there shimmering through the prisms. Someone was barbecuing. He smelt burning olive oil and grilling meat. Lights on in his neighbour’s house, in a second-floor window. The woman’s laughter chipping away at the silence of the night. It was quite late to eat, he thought.
The neighbours in the house on the right were Swiss. They lived mostly in Connecticut, and only used next door a few weeks a year. They kept a Filipino maid to look after the place. In the house on the left, a retired stockbroker. He travelled a lot too.
The tinfoil in the water wasn’t tinfoil.
He remembered now that his mother had sacked the man who cut the grass, just before she’d –
Sometimes it was easier not to think that word. Died. That put a certainty on it that he did not like. It was still possible that she’d gone away for a little while and would be coming back. Sometimes, walking around the house or strolling around the garden like this, he really felt that she was still around. Not her ghost, nothing like that, just herself. Any moment she would call out his name.
What was the thing doing with the shoe and the belt buckle? This needed more investigation. He made a mental note to check this out. But not right now. Now there was the tinfoil that was not tinfoil on the surface of the lagoon.
And now he remembered that this man who came and cut the grass, and who fixed things in the house and who drove the Bentley, and who had been fired by his mother, this man had also fed the koi carp. He should have been feeding them but there wasn’t any food, and he’d forgotten to get any.
Now they were dead and floating on the surface.
He stood right at the water’s edge and pointed the beam of the torch down. Their eyes looked back at him. Their stench hung in the air – he could smell it now, here, away from the barbecue smells.
I should have remembered to feed you.
This was all Dr Michael Tennent’s fault. He had been distracted. You killed my mother, Dr Michael Tennent, and now you’ve killed her fish. Would you like to kill me now? Would that complete your trinity?
He went back inside the house, closed the side door from the kitchen, locked and bolted it. Then he stood still and listened to see if he could hear any sound from the thing down in the shelter.
Of course he couldn’t! Thirty feet underground, encased in concrete. It could hit belt buckles with shoes all night. It could detonate a small nuclear device and it wouldn’t make any difference. Nobody would hear it.
He could do anything he wanted to it. So much choice. He wondered what it would be like to try out his choo-choo on it. That thought made him redden. As if his mother was in the room with him now, scolding him, reminding him. ‘You do understand, don’t you, Tom-Tom? About not being quite right in the head? You do understand that, don’t you?’
It was easy to forget things. It was important not to complicate his life. Take one thing at a time. He had forgotten the fish and he had nearly forgotten why he had brought Dr Michael Tennent’s bit of fluff here.
He had not brought it here for its body to give him pleasure, he had brought it here to punish Dr Michael Tennent. There would be no point in trying his choo-choo out on it until Dr Michael Tennent was watching.
‘Your father left because you were not right in the head. He couldn’t stay and look after you, he was too embarrassed, Tom-Tom. I sacrificed my career for you. Remember that, darling, remember that always.’
He sat down in the drawing room and stared at her photographs all around the walls. He reminded himself how big his debt to her was and that he must not squander this chance to repay it in frivolity.
He tried to think what tonight would have been like with her. They would have had dinner together, then watched a video, and maybe, if she was in a good mood, she would have let him watch one of her old films. They would have done this together, tonight, if it were not for Dr Michael Tennent.
He switched on the television, and saw, to his anger, that a Cora Burstridge film was showing. Punching the remote, he brought up the news on Teletext. There was an item on Tina Mackay. The police had no leads. They were widening their search, appealing for information.
They were showing Cora Burstridge’s films because he had killed her. They were putting Tina Mackay on the news because he had taken her. The realisation began to dawn on him that he was making news happen. He had caused television schedules to be changed to accommodate Cora Burstridge retrospectives. The power lifted him. No one had come to Gloria Lamark’s funeral, but he would see to it that her death went on affecting the nation for a long time to come.
I matter.
He had taken Tina Mackay three weeks ago tonight. They could widen their search all they liked. They could appeal to everyone on the planet for information. Fine by him. This wouldn’t have happened if he had released her. Suddenly he did not have a problem over what he had done to her.
He only had a problem with Jurgen Jurgens, of Clearwater, Florida, who had thrown at him a Karpov pawn attack that he had failed to spot. It had been so obvious. It had cost him a bishop to stay in the game, and that was a heavy price to pay.
He went to his den to deal with Jurgen Jurgens. As he sat down at his computer, he started thinking about his biography of his mother. There would be enormous interest in it, now that she was dead. He must send it off to another publisher. Perhaps to several publishers all at once, make a big splash this time, try to get an auction going. A bidding war!
Amanda Capstick was not on the news yet.
Which would hurt you the most, Dr Michael Tennent? To think that she did not love you any more, or to receive part of her body in the mail?
Chapter Seventy-six
Michael had formed a mental image of Lulu as a tall, power-dressed, horsy Sloane.
The creature curled up on the floor in front of the speaker, cradling a mug of coffee the size of a small chamber-pot, in ragged leggings, a baggy Oasis T-shirt and spangled flip-flops, was a tiny rotund ball of energy, with an impish face, huge saucer-like eyes and short, spiky black hair.
Her flat was cosy and cramped, the walls lined with posters of obscure plays and poetry readings, the floor piled high with videotapes, CDs and books and strewn with cushions. It felt like being in a nest.
Michael sat in lopsided armchair with wonky springs beneath a large sash window, open in the muggy heat of the night, that let in the roar of traffic from the busy thoroughfare of Clapham Common West. As they listened to the tape he watched her face, unable to stop himself cringing, as he always did, at the sound of his own voice.
‘Amanda? Where are you? Are you OK?’
‘Michael, I’m scared. I don’t like this game. Can we stop playing it, please?’
‘What game? Game? I’m not playing any game, Amanda. God, are you all right? Thank God you’ve called, I’ve been going out of my mind. Where are you?’
‘Keep away from me.’
‘Amanda, please, I don’t understand. What’s happened? Why are you upset?’
‘Keep away from me. KEEP AWAY! I thought you loved me, Michael. I thought you loved me.’
&
nbsp; Michael gave Lulu a signal and she hit STOP, those big saucer eyes fixed on him. Baleful. She said nothing for some moments, then she said, ‘Can we play it again?’
He picked up his own enormous mug, sipped the hot sweet coffee and nodded. On the wall directly in front of him was a poster that had just words on it, a quotation. Light green words on a dark green background. They said, ‘If you ever thought you were too small to make a difference, you’ve never shared a bed with a mosquito.’
He looked back at Lulu. In other circumstances, he’d have been amused.
They played the tape through twice more, then Lulu stood up and paced the tiny floor space, wringing her hands. ‘Her voice is wrong,’ she said.
‘You think so?’
‘It’s – oh, God – it’s her, but there’s something very wrong.’
‘In what sense?’
‘She’s frightened, Michael.’
‘I think that, too.’
‘I can’t put my finger on it. It’s not sounding natural. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Can we play it again?’
They listened once more.
‘It’s the way she’s responding – like – like there’s nobody home. It’s as if she’s on drugs or something, but she can’t be.’
‘What makes you so sure she isn’t?’
‘Because she took something once, about ten years ago when she was a student, and she freaked out. Had a really bad trip, I mean seriously bad, OK? She ended up going to see a shrink.’
‘I didn’t know.’
Lulu was animated when she talked, gesticulating with her arms, her face wildly expressive. ‘Acid. LSD, I think, it wiped her, big-time. She’s always told me how scared it had made her of drugs. Brian was into coke and other stuff and she told me he used to try to get her to take stuff with him and she always refused. She’s a very together, very determined lady. I know she’d never take anything again. Ever.’
‘OK,’ Michael said. ‘We eliminate that she might be on drugs.’
