With no tie and rolled sleeves, Haig still seemed polished and impregnable. It wasn’t the uniform that made him this way; it was the man himself. Haig made the plain clothes look lean and efficient, as if they weren’t clothes at all but a pelt. He lowered himself easily to sit on the garden bed’s edge; when Sissy came up to him, he scratched behind the cat’s ragged ears. His other hand rested lightly on the haft of the fork. He looked up at the sky.
“ ‘I come into a region where is nothing that can give light.’ Do you know Dante?” he asked. “Il Sommo Poeta. Am I saying that right?”
Oscar noticed that Kace hadn’t moved. Business was yet to be done.
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not Italian.”
Haig rolled his eyes. “Oh, I know. You were adopted. I know you ran away from home at fifteen to try and find your real parents, then slunk home to Sandro and Vedetta, poor things. They did have a child, did you know? A boy. Only lived two days.”
Oscar was shaken. His mother had told him that she and Sandro had been unable to conceive. There was no grave for an infant. Yet into his mind sprang the recent memory of his father’s sleeping hands clutching an invisible infant. “You’re a wealth of information,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even.
Haig shrugged. “You know, you remind me of Dante, Mariani. He was a journeyman, like you. A soldier, a poet, a diplomat—”
“And an exile,” Oscar finished.
Haig gave a pleased nod. “Yes! Poor Dante. Never seemed to know which side to choose.”
Oscar’s heart cantered. This was the second mention today of sides, and for the second time he felt lost and stupid.
“What are you doing here?” Oscar repeated.
Haig leaned, picked a sprig of mint, rolled it between a tough thumb and fingers and sniffed them. “I know you don’t think much of me, Mariani.”
“Why do you care what I think?” Oscar asked.
Haig seemed to consider this. Overhead, a silent armada of black-winged flying foxes arced through the evening sky. “There are times I am doing something, and suddenly, of all the people I know or have known, who comes into my mind? Oscar Mariani!” Haig laughed. “And I wonder: what have I done to upset him? I mean, Mariani knows me so well. He and I are closer than most friends. He’s been inside my personnel folder, inside my house, even inside my telephone. Why doesn’t he like me?” Haig turned to the female detective. “You like me, don’t you, Kace?”
Kace was silent a moment, then replied, “You have your moments.”
“See?” Haig said. “And I treat her like shit. Much worse than I ever treated you.”
Oscar could see that despite Haig’s cheerful demeanor his stare was hard: it was focused on Oscar like a gem cutter’s, about to strike a blow that would save or destroy a rough diamond.
“You’re corrupt,” Oscar said. “You have people killed. And you don’t answer questions.”
Haig became silent and still. “You could only prove one of those,” he said quietly.
Oscar could see that the knuckles of Haig’s hand that gripped the pitchfork had become almost white. A man as strong as Haig could throw the tool like a javelin. There was no need for Kace.
“There’s a party tonight, Mariani. You’ve been invited.”
Oscar blinked.
“What’s it to you?”
“Don’t go.”
With that, Haig stood. In one easy move, he lifted the fork and threw it into the ground just a handspan from Oscar’s toes. He pulled on his jacket.
“Remember your Dante,” Haig said, walking up the side of the house and disappearing into shadow. “ ‘No one thinks of how much blood it costs.’ ”
Kace pushed gracefully off the incinerator to follow Haig. As she passed Oscar, she leaned toward him and whispered, “Better load your gun.”
Then Oscar was alone.
His legs were trembling.
The water on the gas ring was steaming. Oscar washed. Then, naked and shivering, he paced.
Don’t go.
Fucking Haig. In his own backyard!
Don’t go.
Warning him off. Telling him what to do.
Don’t go.
Oscar went to the bedroom and flung open his wardrobe to look for his suit.
Chapter 20
Chislehurst was a beacon, a sarsen placed high to touch the sky, and lit from within by a thousand warm lights. It perched at the very top of the Heights, its five manicured acres commanding views in all directions—or perhaps commanding all its surrounds to look upon it. Oscar steered the car between massive bluestone gateposts. The driveway was a silver river twinkling with pleasure craft—two dozen limousines and a similar number of sports cars. At its terminus, the drive opened and curved under a wide portico with white columns that glistened like icicles.
Chislehurst was built when the state itself had been just five years old and boasted a mere sixty thousand citizens. The building, commissioned by an English auctioneer who had made his fortune selling land for the growing river city, was neither an Edwardian triumph nor a bastard child; it was its own unique self. It looked from the outside like a strong stone beast, its tower complete with crenellations and narrow, arched windows.
Oscar parked the old sedan behind a long dark-blue Mercedes, locked it, and chuckled at the prospect of a thief choosing it over anything else parked on the drive. He buttoned his black suit jacket against the cold and stepped onto a path of neatly swept flagstones that climbed alongside the drive toward the mansion’s entrance.
If driving into the Heights had been a step back in time for Oscar, walking into the wide marble hallway of Chislehurst was a plunging leap. He felt as if he had suddenly stepped from a long, wearying train trip onto a platform as solid as rock, at once alien and familiar and utterly, achingly beautiful. The floors of the hallway were marble in burnished white and warm black. The walls were paneled in silky oak and walnut, and were so high and set so far apart they gave the sense not of walking within a house but of strolling through a wooded glade across a forest floor dappled with new snow and shadow.
Oscar stopped in the entry vestibule. On one wall was a hall stand big enough for King’s College, and two dozen umbrellas were slotted neatly into it like carbines.
“Yes, sir?”
A tuxedoed man, as wide as a commercial oven, stood behind a timber lectern that looked perilously threatened by the weight of his well-manicured hands.
“Oscar Mariani.”
The giant opened the leather-bound book and checked names on the cream pages.
“Very good, Mr. Mariani. May I offer you a tie?”
The man placed on the lectern a small wooden box, which he opened. Inside were several bow ties—fixed-length blacks and ready-tieds.
Oscar took one of the ready-tieds and clipped it under his white collar. He wondered if the tie detracted from the scabbing wounds on his face. The giant was no guide: he nodded as if he’d never seen a more pleasing example of the urbane gentleman and opened one of the beveled-glass-and-waxed-timber doors leading within. Music swelled, riding on waves of laughter and a drawing undertow of warm conversation. Oscar stepped inside.
The ballroom was a huge oval a hundred and thirty feet long. Chandeliers depended from vertiginously high ceilings, and a thousand tiny flames set in candelabra of silver and crystal glowed like new copper coins tossed into the air of summer sunlight. This shifting light, born a thousand times and reflected a thousand times more in crystal and cut glass and polished silver, seemed to move with the music. The ballroom’s circumference was twelve sections of thirteen-foot-high folding doors, now neatly stacked away in banks retained by rods of polished brass. Above this perimeter and the mezzanine and an oval balcony floor was the delicate white sky of the vaulting domed ceiling. Twin staircases, set on opposite sides of the vast room, rose like the living curves of ox horns to a mezzanine floor held aloft, it seemed, by delicately curling balustrades as fine as wire. And through this forest hall of mar
ble and wood and the shifting, golden air moved people. Men in black tuxedos and crisp white shirts moved at ease, looked for all the world like the marble floor had sprung upward into mirror-shiny shoes and sharply creased trousers; women glided in gowns of silk charmeuse, satin more liquid than water, velvet so dark and rich it drew the light and held it like a warm secret.
Oscar moved through the crowd like a ghost. He tried to catalog the faces but was quickly overwhelmed. A pretty girl in a black-and-white waiter’s uniform offered a tray of drinks, and he took a glass of scotch. He followed the lush patterns in the mosaic marble floor to the broad master staircase. Guests parked in groups on the maroon carpet. He followed the smooth rail up to the next floor and spotted a gap near Nouveau balusters that gave him a vantage from which to watch the elegantly moving sea of people below. In the center of the room hung a chandelier as large and brilliant as a firework frozen in ice.
He sipped the excellent scotch, and the alcohol bloomed in his stomach. His phone rang. It was his own desk number.
“Neve?”
“Where are you?” she asked. “I hear music.”
“Party.”
Her tone cooled. “Really.” Then her words came quickly, eagerly. “The fax came through. From the hospital. Penny Roth’s record.”
“And?”
Neve couldn’t hide the grin in her voice. “She had a tenotomy when she was eleven. Some people with cerebral palsy, their muscles tighten and shrink. The tendons are cut to allow the muscles to stretch. That’s the surgery she had.”
“Where?”
“Both hips.”
Oscar felt stupidly excited. “Scars?”
“Yes,” Neve said. “It should leave a tiny scar.”
Oscar felt himself smile. The distinct scar from this kind of specific surgery would eliminate almost all doubt that the Jane Doe in Kannis’s cold room was Penny Roth. Something very solid to present to Moechtar.
Neve was animated. “I know her right hip was messed up, but we should go look at her left.”
“We’ll go in the morning.”
“Kannis’s isn’t far, I can go tonight—”
“No,” Oscar warned. The thought of Haig making himself at home in Oscar’s backyard chilled him. Haig had known about this party, and Oscar’s invitation. Maybe he had the Barelies’ line tapped, too. “Just do nothing. We’ll go in the morning.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket. He felt the smile still on his face. There was hope yet. He drained his scotch and took another off a passing tray.
He moored himself to the balcony rail. Chaume wanted him here. Haig wanted him to stay away. Neither made sense. His eyes, adjusting to the height and to the impossible, golden light, began to work and he started to search for her tall form and dark hair. Among the crowd, he began to recognize faces: local celebrities, entrepreneurs, high-level public servants, patrons of the arts.
There was the state treasurer, his smile as glossy as his scalp, laughing with the minister for economic development. And there was a former fashion model who had risen from the ashes of a universally maligned music career to marry a newspaper proprietor who owned half of Cadogan Square, London. And there, behind a fountain of lilies, was the daughter of a mining magnate who had inherited her father’s figure and his ruthlessness, yet had several journalists trapped in orbit. There alone was the jaundice-yellow owner of an island resort pouring a doleful stare at his much younger wife as she chatted with a catwalk-handsome waiter. And there, in a far corner near a marble bust that might have been Hadrian or Nellie Melba, were three figures that caught and held Oscar’s eye. One because Oscar passed his portrait every time he used the toilets on the fourth floor at police headquarters; the other two because he’d met them two days ago: the police commissioner was talking with Paul and Carole Roth.
Paul was laughing at something the commissioner said, while Carole stared into her wineglass as if it held a drowned spider. Still, she downed its contents in a swallow, whispered something to Paul that killed his smile like a bullet, and walked away through the crowd. Roth watched her go for a tenuous moment, then returned his attention to the commissioner.
Oscar threaded quickly among the guests, excusing himself, moving as quickly as he could toward the stairs. Carole drifted like a boat pushed and drawn on flood currents. On the ballroom level, visibility dropped to a few arm’s lengths. Ahead, he caught a glimpse of blue that might be Carole Roth or two dozen other women. Guests eddied around a table as long as a yacht holding bowl upon bowl of ice dotted with crystal punnets of glossy black caviar and blood-red Ikura. Ahead, he heard Carole’s voice, but her words were indistinct. He followed it like a scent. He did a short two-step with a stout man heading for the food, then slipped past the folded doors and into the hall. And stopped, eyes scanning.
“Oscar?”
Another familiar voice, directly behind him. He turned.
Sabine was frowning, inspecting him with the careful stare of a dog owner whose pet has suddenly revealed that he can play “Chopsticks.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I couldn’t say,” he replied, and cast his gaze through the tight press of black wool and satin.
“Do you know Anne Chaume?” Sabine’s eyes narrowed.
“She invited me.”
“Huh.” Sabine’s frown deepened, and her eyes ran over his beaten face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry, Sabby, but I really have to—”
“Hi, Oscar.”
Another voice. Oscar turned. Lambert Powter arrived holding two drinks.
“Lambert. Fantastic. I’ll catch you both soon.”
Oscar swiveled and slid away, leaving Sabine’s disconcerted stare behind him.
He walked, riding crisscrossing streams of strangers’ words and laughter, listening for Carole Roth’s voice. The hallway rounded a corner, became narrower. Groups thinned to couples, couples gave way to waiters.
Oscar gritted his teeth. He’d lost her.
“Psst.”
Oscar turned.
Off the hallway was a boothlike alcove, half paneled in modesty glass and holding two leather-padded bench seats. An old hand-crank telephone with a brass-edged receiver hung on the wall. Carole Roth sat primly out of sight, with just her legs visible.
He slipped in and sat opposite her.
“No one actually says, ‘Psst,’ Mrs. Roth.”
“Don’t sit down,” she hissed. “I saw you following me. I’m sure other people could, too.”
“Relax,” he said. “We’re just guests, chatting.”
“You dress like a detective, not a guest.” In the two days since he’d seen her, Carole Roth’s eyes had sunk farther back into her skull. Her cheekbones seemed more angular, the skin over them disturbingly thin. The addled confusion she had been in at her house was gone, replaced by something fevered and manic. Her eyes darted over Oscar’s face. “I’ve seen you before.”
“I came to your house.”
Without breaking her stare, she reached into a purse as small as a medallion, pulled out a white pill, and swallowed it dry.
“Paul,” she said.
“Penny,” he corrected.
At her daughter’s name, she flinched. Then she shook her head once and repeated, “Paul.”
Oscar felt a shot of excitement.
“What about Paul?”
Carole Roth’s eyes grew wide. Tears welled above her lower lids, threatening to spill. “I don’t know.” She leaned over to him, closer and closer until her lips touched his ear; he could feel the heat radiating from her. Her voice was barely louder than a breath: “But I suspect.” Then she jerked back and stood in a sudden flurry. Oscar found himself on his feet, too. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “Nine. Come to the house.”
Then she was gone, lost in the colorful tide.
Oscar slowly sat. He thought for a moment, then reached for his cell phone to call Neve. This was good.
A man nearby cough
ed politely, and Oscar looked up.
Standing at the doorway to the booth was Karl, the tall, razor-thin driver who had led Oscar to Anne Chaume at the Roths’ house. Close up, his colorless face and platinum hair seemed unnaturally smooth and fine; he might have been twenty-five years old or fifty. Oscar saw that the man’s eyes, like Anne Chaume’s, were ice blue. Then he was surprised to see that he was only half right: one eye was blue, the other brown. The driver was a heterochromiac.
“Karl, isn’t it?” Oscar asked.
Karl smiled and nodded, and indicated the crank-handle phone on the booth’s wall.
“It’s Chislehurst’s original. 1880. This was only the second house in the country to have a telephone.”
“Very sensible to wait till there was someone else to call.”
“Would you mind?” Karl motioned for Oscar to follow.
Oscar trailed the thin man through the crowd. “You look like you’ve had quite the day or two, Detective.” Karl glanced over his narrow shoulder at Oscar; the effect of the mismatched stare was unsettling. “Help yourself to another drink if you’d like.”
Oscar did. It was good scotch. “Do you know why I was invited?”
“This is a birthday party, Detective. Not a crime scene.” Karl smiled. “Not everything has sinister reasons. I expect you took Ms. Chaume’s fancy.”
Oscar followed Karl past a wide fireplace, through a heavy door, and into a quiet hallway. On its tall walls hung a series of matching blackwood timber frames: photographs of Chislehurst through the decades, from its present-day garb, with verandas enclosed with glass and a dainty pavilion berthed alongside, dating back one hundred and fifty years, to a black-and-white picture of a treeless hilltop studded with workmen, barrows, and drays.
“What did you get her?” Oscar asked.
Karl stopped at a door. Oscar saw mild interest on the man’s strange face. “Such a personal question.”
“Is it?” Oscar said.
Karl watched him for a moment. “Nothing,” he said. “Ms. Chaume doesn’t need anything from the likes of me.”
He held Oscar’s gaze—and his expression said clearly, “Or the likes of you.” Then Karl rapped at the door, waited a few heartbeats, then pushed the door open to allow Oscar inside.
The Broken Ones Page 22
