Shadows on the Mirror

by Frances Fyfield

  Back in the chilly confines of his room in Holborn, Ryan rekindled the flames, forgot the humiliating interviews. On his desk, read briefly before he had left, was a slender report from District, slimline through lack of effort and a dearth of questions.

  ‘Diana Steepel. D.o.b. 18.10.1960. 13a, Olympia Mansions, West Kensington. Suicide Report.

  ‘On Tues, 15th August 1988, Ms Steepel was found by her neighbour who had forced the door of the flat to investigate a dripping tap. Subject had taken an overdose of sleeping tablets, plus large quantity of gin. One half-bottle remained. The flatmate does not drink, and was away for a fortnight’s holiday.

  ‘It is apparent Ms Steepel intended suicide. The pathologist says that the attempt would not have been successful through a combination of alcohol and Mogadon if the victim had not woken, probably nauseous, but unable through weakness to vomit effectively, and without any help at hand. Cause of death: asphixiation. No note, but victim known to have been severely depressed. No signs of violence or disturbance . . .’

  Perhaps a cry for help? Perhaps, but not likely. Ryan closed the file in disgust. Pleas for help were made with the clear prospect of rescue, and she’d deliberately chosen the time when her flatmate was away. She had not been seeking deliverance, Tysall’s brilliant graduate, who had defected to his ranks with all her brain cells intact, but not the rest of her, apparently. Tysall lived less than a mile away, in a straight line. She’d probably moved to be nearer him, then been abandoned, poor cow. Probably wanted to sleep for ever. He’d had the body and used up the brain. At least Annie, pretty and plump, love of Ryan’s own life, rebounding from him to be seduced by Tysall, was still alive. Back in her own home town, silent, only mentally scarred. Ready to marry the nearest worzel farmer if she hadn’t done it already. Anything to remove the mortal sins of two seductions and one abortion.

  At least I loved Annie. That bastard never loved anyone. Annie loved me too. Guilt surfaced in his mind, a kind of sudden heartburn distilled into fury and pain.

  Ryan marshalled all his reports on Tysall, including the last in a varied and tragic line. Three or four bankrupt companies, and Steepel, bankrupt life, pretty kid. Just as well Bailey encouraged Ryan’s empirical style of investigation and turned a blind eye to it. In the face of Bailey’s Nelsonian telescope, Ryan worked by instinct, found himself a bad man rather than a good suspicion. Tysall had emerged into woozy focus from all the rumour-mongering, tales told by disassociated witnesses and informants, information leaking from other investigations. The Fraud teams worked like that, names falling off carousels or found in the bran-tub with irksome regularity. From all this dross, company frauds, bent mortgage applications, other men’s double lives and sticky fingers, Tysall’s name was always appearing as director of that outfit or this, never in a big way, but always there, owner of a hotel with a tax-evading accountant, major domo of a now thriving computer firm which stole software ideas. He was like a growing blob of mercury on the desk: if Ryan touched, he slid away, and if he hit, the droplet broke into a shower of smaller drops, easily reunited. But having sensed the rotten core, Ryan was not about to give up. A man could not be that bad without somehow breaking the law. Simply a question of finding how he had done it and how to prove it, and all he had got so far was the thumbs down from Simeon Churcher and a writ for the Commissioner. And the tortured memory of Annie’s face transfixed with misery, the innocence which he himself had smirched finally turned into total disillusion. She might, just might, have got better without that. Might have written him off like any other girl, dusted herself down, got on with it. No chance now. Absently, Ryan bit his lip, and punched one calloused fist into his palm.

  It would have been better if his conscience had been clearer in other, more professional respects, or if he had been warned less often of the dangers of keeping secrets, instead of pretending to investigate fraud while investigating something else. There had been this wife, see? Mrs Tysall, who used Harrods like a corner shop – well, she would, wouldn’t she, nothing nearer. A brilliant looking redhead, weeping in the nick, stinking of frightened sweat and Chanel perfume, battered, bruised and bleeding. Twice, was it? Or more than twice, he couldn’t remember. Statement taken, not usual from such quality, ‘My husband tried to kill me,’ touch. ‘Why, madam?’ ‘I tried to go out . . .’ But as usual, be it the rich or the council house wife, allegation withdrawn within days. No proceedings, please. I daren’t. Besides, we’ve made it up. Me complain? Never. Silly me. And then the Tysall wife had disappeared, simply disappeared off the face of the earth, or at least the pretty complexion of Knightsbridge. Nothing to investigate: no one reported her missing, no power to ask questions and interfere with the civil liberties of the husband.

  ‘Seen the wife recently, have you?’ Ryan had asked with his irritating wolfish grin, determined to needle that imperturbable face while pillaging Tysall’s office under warrant for documents to show to Malcolm Cook. Charles smiled back, replied with bored dignity. ‘She lives elsewhere, Mr Ryan. No business of yours. Have you finished?’

  Ryan paused, smoked and slumped. He hadn’t told Malcolm Cook about the Tysall wife saga, or about the other evidence of dismembered female lives, didn’t trust him enough. Cook might have guessed, not entirely, and it was important he did not yet know that Ryan was not really pursuing a fraudsman thief, while Ryan knew he was chasing the tail of something worse. A psychopath possibly, a murderer almost certainly. Whatever Tysall was, it was dangerous. They didn’t know the half of it.

  Ryan piled and bound the reports, flicking back the last for a quick squint at Steepel’s picture, taken from the flat, must be returned to relatives, but not if they failed to ask. Odd time for her to die. He’d spoken to her by phone the day before, thought again how strange it was with the educated ones, how it was they couldn’t bring themselves to put down the phone on you even when they didn’t want to speak. Too polite. His mind jumped over the photograph. Redhead, lovely curly redhead. Mrs Tysall, dead according to his instincts, redhead. With a great gulping need for life, gasping for the stuff, even as he had seen her, grasping at life, bruised but not beaten. Women like that don’t disappear, not until they die.

  Pity for them. Put out a general alert for all red-haired women of suitable age to steer clear of this bastard. Stay away, or number your days, he thought, while I think what the fuck to do next. Fraud, he supposed. A waste of time, he thought, with Tysall at large.

  Charles Spencer Tysall was home early. No longer was he forced to work all hours, although the days when he had done so were still fresh in his mind as an exercise in stamina he never wanted to repeat. Speculation, clever investment in desperate companies forced to sell for less than their capital assets, sold at monumental profit or kept for more, all of that had ensured a measure of security, and he was nothing if not flexible in talents of management and acquisition. He liked to dabble, and the businesses he retained as director were varied enough for all his tastes. And they worked. Everything worked if you were creative about the means. There was his menage: Ted Plumb, the ex-detective, one or two tame lawyers, what more did he need? Somewhere in twenty years’ achievement he had also laid hands on the Porsche, the Knightsbridge flat, the Paris house in the same sweep, and had mislaid one wife, or that was how he explained it.

  Poor Porphyria. She was called Elisabeth, but he had always called her Porphyria, the only thing he had never really owned in forty-five years, never known or entirely subdued. Since Elisabeth’s departure he had seen her in the streets, pursued her auburn image across counters and roads wherever sunlight had fallen on hair, and finally he had found her. Not her, perhaps, but certainly her graven image. She would live in this house with him, stay still without rebellion. This new Porphyria would learn from the old, would surely know better than risk Charles’s style of combat. Wherever she was now, Madame Tysall the first must still bear the scars, and Charles shook with the memory of his own anger.

  Unhappy reflections shuddered away
. Charles changed from his immaculate suit into cords and rough silk shirt, then sat in his leather armchair with the cold bottle of Sancerre at his side. Knightsbridge rush-hour hummed softly below the second-floor windows of the mansion flat, sounds dimmed to pleasant indifference by the double-glazed windows. The room was lined with books and marbled paper. The carpet was rose red, Charles’s choice, not that of the dear departed who enjoyed neither that colour nor the olive Chesterfield which complemented it. Not a visible hair of woman or dog, nor a single speck of dust on the floor. All trace of her was expunged. He had even told Ted to destroy the wretched puppy she had loved so much it had become her inseparable companion. Now there was simply the red carpet, at home with the black speakers which relayed the spindly Mozart sounds softly into his ears. Above the marble fireplace a gilded Georgian mirror showed Charles’s dark-skinned face, green eyes below thick-arched brows as black as the raven-coloured hair, a mouth chiselled rather than sensual, the chin cleft. Truly a very beautiful man, with the broad shoulders and long legs of a dancing prince. Such a beautiful man, reminiscent of every dark hero in paperback romances. Slim-hipped, strong brown fingers, arresting face, full of hidden authority, with that luminous power of masculine saints depicted in sacred portraits, mesmeric eyes and the charm of the devil. Penetrating gaze, sensitive, perfect manners, superbly cast and presented for the diplomatic role of a Pontius Pilate.

  Charles sipped the Sancerre, not waiting for Maria, simply expecting her. When the entry-phone buzzed from the street he did not rise, but pressed the electric device by his chair, and sipped another mouthful. She would sense the nature of his mood from the fact that the door was not locked and he did not rise to greet her. She could sense his exact requirements by the fact that she found him seated, would know how limited her time. Maria knew his habits and never commented, would not have considered argument. She had the advantage of a regular call-girl. Now he had tied her up with Ted Plumb, bodyguard, bruiser and private law-breaker, they were both his creatures, suitably afraid of him.

  Into the room she slipped almost soundless, darker, smaller, slighter than he, a radiant Filipino, more smiles than words.

  ‘’Lo, Charlie boy. Happy today?’

  ‘Not particularly. Pleased to see you. I needed you.’

  ‘Oh good, Charlie boy.’

  He stood then and took off her coat. Maria giggled and squirmed a little as he ran his hands over the smooth-sided dress, shuffled off her high-heeled shoes, raised her arms to the fastening behind her dress, revealing the absence of underclothing around her small breasts. Charles turned to his bedroom, undressed more slowly, watching her stretch like a dancer on the silk cover, her black hair around her. The image of a skinned rabbit briefly crossed his mind, swiftly dismissed as he lay beside her.

  She moved to his side, ran her fingers across his flat belly, listening to his even breathing as she lay with her face against his chest. Then she bit gently, tickled his nipples with her fingers. He did not kiss her. Instead he fondled her neck, and pushed her head downwards. Without further prompting, she obeyed, one hand kneading the inside of one thigh while her mouth found her target, crouched above it, held in small fingers as she began a delicate circular motion with her tongue, slowly, then quicker, waiting for the imperceptible signs which would show his pleasure. Charles lay still, already removed to the evening ahead, admiring the cornice on the high ceiling, his thoughts absent from the work of her mouth apart from the automatic arching of his back and the moist sounds. As the sensation grew, he arched further, felt her pull back, pulled her head down savagely by the hair. And held it there, silently, throughout his own climax, and her choking, panicking struggle.

  There were times when Maria might have spat back, although she did not contemplate it now. What did it matter, beautiful clean boy. Better this fear, this coughing and mouthful of molten, waxy filth than all those sudden spurts of hate for the fat dirty uglies who actually tried to please. Sometimes, on a good day, Charlie boy was normal. Other days he would practise on her like a man tuning a violin, testing her body for sensation and himself for skill until she had arched three times and lay gasping like a fish filleted alive. Other times he wanted almost nothing, or made her crawl between his fine legs, like a harem-slave. So what? He always paid, always tipped and had never struck her – well, not hard. Not yet. She thought of Ted, Charles’s regular henchman, and her inept lover, so undemanding by comparison. She thought of Ted, and smiled at their mutual master.

  ‘On the hall table,’ Charles said drowsily, hands crossed behind his head, lazily watching her dress.

  ‘Thank you, Charlie boy. Next Thursday, yes?’

  ‘I’ll telephone if not.’

  ‘OK, Charlie boy.’ Consistent clients were hard to find. She scooped the notes from the inlaid table by the front door and left, high heels clicking down the stone corridor into a grateful silence. Once out of earshot, she ran. Maria never knew why she ran from Charlie boy’s flat, but she always did.

  In the silence, Charles showered, then returned to his chair, the cool Sancerre, the music and the unfashionable volume of Browning. Poetry was his unwinding. Reading Browning he would think of nothing else. Not even the new lover would come to know all he had ever learned and enjoyed from the Marias of his world. There would be her image in his mirror, one day soon, owned, as he owned the mirrors in every room, where she would stand before him even now. In the meantime, he would make do with a passion for poetry, turn his eyes to verse for the appropriate images for a lighthearted mood. Browning, underrated in twentieth-century terms apart from his affair with that suitably dutiful daughter, Elizabeth Barrett. Effortless poet, renowned for romance, cynical to the core, or so it seemed for all that. Charles read the poetic plays for early-evening soothing, the stray poems with his aperitif, and turned to ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, the oddest of them all, for light amusement.

  . . . at last I knew

  Porphyria worshipp’d me; surprise

  Made my heart swell, and still it grew

  While I debated what to do.

  That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

  Perfectly pure and good: I found

  A thing to do, and all her hair

  In one long yellow string I wound

  Three times her little throat around,

  And strangled her. No pain felt she;

  I am quite sure she felt no pain.

  As a shut bud that holds a bee.

  Good Porphyria, happy child who died so sweetly in the arms of a master, without pain. There was one imperfection in the mention of a golden head – he could not admire such flaxen hair – but even flawed, the poem always made him shake with quiet laughter, a familiar joke, but never stale. Soft, artistic hands against skin, his own curled around the neck of his wife, the disgusting vision of her bulging eyes and silent, resistant scream. One day, he was confident, the new and improved facsimile of the old would seat herself upon his lap, Porphyria-like, with graceful back towards him, her trust a feature of a perfect, faithful wife. Unlike the old, Miss Fortune would change her name. Her own, cheap title was not fit for an auburn swan. Soon she would see sense and stop avoiding him. Each has its fate, and he, of course, was hers.

  Charles looked at his watch. Ted Plumb had begun his observation today; no doubt he would finish at six. Unless she began to co-operate soon, he would have to get Ted to look at her house. Ted was a faithful hound, and did as he was told.

  Arriving home light-headed with exhaustion, Sarah found herself waiting for the dawn, the effect of tiredness so acute it made her wakeful, active, loathing the idea of sleep and all the exhaustion of waking into another day. Better stay awake at five in the morning, a perfect and precious peace, which reminded her she could cope with everything except fatigue. Even that was possible when grit-filled eyes watched the beginnings of light invading the windows, and the whole place clean and washed in that pale morning glow from the milky mist outside. Sarah shed her clothes, wandered naked as a baby
in her own rooms. Alive. She wanted to postpone sleep for the hour of idle happiness and the regret which was bound to follow the lack of it. In these hours, uninhibited by clothes, she had been known to clean floors, polish silver, scour cupboards in a happy awareness of timelessness and order.

  The wide crescent outside, full of early Victorian mansions, was an avenue of silent doors and swaying trees, her own for one silent hour. No hint of engine noise, one far-off trumbling train, yak yak, sleepily over the North London line, somnolent carrying of goods, too soon for human stock. Not even a motorcycle messenger or paperboy. Drawn to her large front windows, still naked, she watered the geraniums fading for water while she spoke encouragement. In the pinkening glow of five-thirty, she heard footsteps, ducked, and craned over the balcony, resting her chin on the cold iron curves of the rail, watching and curious. Down the park came the jogger, padding softly, breathing easily in sweat-stained black tracksuit, looking like a burglar returning home. Rhythmic pad-padding up the middle of the road without competition from machine or beast, a long, lithe body, moving with a smooth, slow sprint as effortless and elegant as a horse trotting back to the paddock having won the race without waiting for the cheers, owned by no one. His private time as well as hers: she ducked further below the ironwork in case he should see himself observed. There was a mild familiarity in those fine features which puzzled her in his quick upward glance. He had shimmied to a slow-breathing halt beneath her window, felt for the keys strung around his neck, passed a large hand through thick, sweat-damp hair before jogging up the steps to the front door, impervious or indifferent to observation. Sarah could not recall where she had seen him before. New flat dweller, perhaps, using the side door to this largish block, while she always used the door in the centre. She was sometimes ashamed of how little she knew of her neighbours, pleased they knew so little of her. Jogger in black had the look of some woman’s lover. May they go safely back to bed, where she, pursuing the freedom of restlessness, had been wakeful for half the night.