Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire

by M. J. Lawless

  “Of course, the offer’s bullshit,” he snorted through the phone as both of them listened. “But that’s just the start of negotiations. From what you tell me, Nathan, Felix is already preparing to knife me in the back.”

  “I’m afraid it looks that way.”

  Daniel shrugged at this. “Well, I saw that one coming. We can work out the details—as well as how threats against you” this directed to Kris “could determine a jury’s reaction if it comes to trial.”

  He had not seemed as in control of himself for a long time, thought Kris as she and the lawyer sat listening to him issue instructions. She realised just how badly he had been wearing himself thinner and thinner over the previous months as he travelled the globe, looking for deals that would give him the upper hand. Now that he was finally pushed into a corner—literally hemmed in by the confines of this correctional facility—he appeared better prepared to fight.

  “Francis is going to walk free, isn’t he,” Kris had added at one point, dejected at how even this sense of justice would be denied her.

  Nathan hesitated. “We will still be pursuing that case, but the defence... they have a lot of effort going into dragging out the process, as well as digging up the dirt on you two.” He paused again, blushing slightly with embarrassment. “I’m afraid... I’m afraid you two have not exactly pursued a conventional lifestyle. That may not go well with a jury—not even in California.”

  Daniel nodded. As his eyes glanced towards Kris, she could see his pained expression. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly into the phone, but he shook his head.

  “No, don’t apologise. Unfortunately the world doesn’t always work out the right way. I’m more concerned, though, at you being on your own in San Francisco. Roth knew exactly what he was doing when he bought out those slimy bastards. He’s showing me just how vulnerable you are, putting additional pressure on me.”

  Kris wanted to tell him that she wasn’t vulnerable, that she would be strong for him, but the look in his eyes stopped her. “I want you—no, I need you to go back to London. It’s not safe here for you now. Please, go to Elaine, give her the message I told you, and stay there until Nathan sends for you.”

  “I don’t want to go,” she began to remonstrate. “I should be here, with you.”

  He shook his head, slowly. “You can’t do anything else for me here. I’m sorry, I know that sounds brutal, but it’s true. And if I spend all my time worrying that something... should happen to you.” His eyes flashed with anger. “It’s no good. I won’t be able to think straight and I need to plan for this.”

  And so, much against her will, and somewhat bitterly, she had returned to Europe. Realising that Elaine Christiansen herself was away from London, Kris had immediately booked another ticket onto Lisbon. That flight was much shorter after the many hours spent on a plane from the west coast of America, but it was enough to almost exhaust her.

  Thus it was with great relief that the she saw the taxi pulling into the narrow cobbled street in Alfama where she had her apartment. The sun was blazing high in the clear blue sky above them as the driver took her suitcase out of the back of his car and carried it to her door. She thanked him and handed over a generous tip before entering her apartment and stepping onto the cool, tiled floor away from the heat outside.

  She had been away almost a month and immediately she felt a sense of relief and security as she walked along the long corridor that led to her bedroom and studio. Only a month, but it felt like an age. At the same time, as she breathed in the scents of home, the permanent undertone of linseed and turps that sparkled with bittersweet freshness in the air, she felt rejuvenated. She needed this.

  Dropping her bags, she rubbed at her shoulders and along the line of her bra. Her breasts were aching more and more, and though she knew it wasn’t the case she felt as though she was putting on more weight each and every day. She needed to be still for a while, to remain in one place. Merely thinking this, however, demonstrated to her how futile the thought was and a deep sigh escaped from her lips.

  She had often pondered how rootless Daniel appeared. Living with him was, so often, a whirlwind of luxury, but it was also almost completely transient, a motion from one five-star hotel to the next that could become exhausting to her after a while. Everything was fleeting and impermanent, and for a brief moment she wondered if that was why he was responding much better than she had expected to prison: now discipline was enforced upon him—the man who had made such a thing of disciplining her when she first met him.

  As soon as this idea occurred to her it left her feeling somewhat sad. Why had it taken prison to bring him the possibility of rest? Why hadn’t marriage to her done that?

  Immediately she pushed down the thought. It was part of her paranoia: it was not so much that marriage would change Daniel, as in make him another person. More that the man he had become in the decade since the tragic death of his first wife would eventually be erased by what should have been the consummation of all his hopes with his second. Finally, perhaps, he could leave behind all the ghosts that haunted him, that drove him on mercilessly.

  She paused by the bedroom, smiling at the memories of how many times she had lain there with Daniel, their bodies sweating, the scent of each of them clinging to the other as he penetrated her again and again. She also smiled at the thought that for this night at least she would be sleeping in her own bed, something so simple that was a greater luxury to her at the moment than all the best hotels in the world.

  Letting her fingers slide along the door, she entered her studio. Most of the paintings she had been working on had been included in her exhibition in London, which already seemed an age ago. A few sketches remained on the wall, as well as the various objects she had collected over the months in the flea and street markets. One, however, caught her attention.

  The sculpture was polished until it’s wood appeared burnished gold. In the centre was the tear-shaped eyelet that she remembered her father carving carefully into it, working the material with his large, calloused hands, the contrast between his rough digits and the delicate object remarkable to her even when she had been a young girl. The wood was dome-shaped, and a third of the way down, above the opening, a piece of quartz had been set and polished. Touching it, feeling the transitions from warm wood to cooler crystal, brought back a thousand memories, many of her father but also of Daniel who had hunted down this prize when she had thought it all but lost.

  With her fingers resting on it, she turned to the light. In many respects, the greatest work of art was framed by the window, the view looking down the high-piled and ancient streets of Alfama towards the river, a darker swathe of blue-green against the purer cerulean of the sky.

  For a while at least she was home.

  Two days later, she was travelling in a taxi from Heathrow to Daniel’s final school, Lincoln Hall Academy, to make her appointment with Elaine Christiansen. She had sent a message from her phone to let the headmistress know when she would be arriving and as the taxi pulled up at the school gates she could already see Elaine waiting for her.

  Smiling nervously as she got out of the car, carrying only a small handbag with her, Kris wondered what Elaine’s reaction would be. The older woman’s face was somewhat stern, lacking the warmth and kindness that she had displayed to Kris when last they had spoken, but that was as much due to the worry she obviously felt towards Daniel and his new wife.

  “Terrible, terrible,” Elaine said as she led Kris through the corridors towards her office. About them, teenagers went about their business and Kris had a fantasy for a moment of Daniel as a young boy wandering these same pathways.

  “I can’t believe what happened—and Daniel! In prison!” Elaine had opened the door and beckoned for Kris to enter, gesturing not towards the seat near her desk but comfier ones around a small table. “Of course, I’ll do whatever I can to help, though I don’t know what that will be.”

  Sitting down, Kris waved away an offer of coffee. “Th
ank you,” she replied. “Actually, after all that’s taken place, I must admit that I’m glad to be back in Europe. It was getting very scary out there.”

  “I’m sure!” replied Elaine taking a seat across from her. “And to think... what that man tried to do to you!” She grimaced at this, then looked at Kris with careful concern. “And the baby?” she asked. “Is it okay?”

  Kris nodded, one of her hands moving reflexively to her abdomen. “Yes, it’s fine, though I shall need to settle down myself, take better care of checkups and that sort of thing.”

  Elaine nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said at last. “All this travelling around won’t help, either. Do you know if it’s a he or a she yet?”

  Shaking her head, Kris told her: “No, I don’t want to know. All I want is that it’s as safe and as healthy as it can be. Boy or girl, we’ll love it more than anything.”

  Elaine smiled briefly but sympathetically. Her eyes were moving, searching Kris’s face, and finally she turned to what was really on her mind. “What I don’t completely understand is why you’re here. I’m very, very glad to see you, and I want to know as much as you can tell me about Daniel, but I still can’t think of why he sent you to me.”

  Kris paused for a while, unsure of what to say for a few moments. “His message was actually very simple,” she said at last. “It was just three words. His instruction was to tell you: ‘Logan sent me’. That was it.”

  As she said those words, Elaine blinked a few times and sat completely still on her chair.

  “Logan sent you,” she whispered at last.

  Kris nodded. “In any other circumstances, I would have thought it complete nonsense. I still remember sitting in this very room, and you telling me not to mention the name of Daniel Logan. I won’t say that I’ve never thought of it since, but that name seemed to belong to the distant past. What does it mean?”

  Elaine paused and looked at Kris. “It means,” she said very slowly, as though weighing her words, “that he is in great trouble.”

  Confused, Kris stared back at her. She did not need to travel all this way to London to hear that—she was very much aware of how much trouble Daniel was in. But why did he drag up this name now?

  “As you are aware,” Elaine continued, “I’ve known Daniel for a very long time. Longer than just about everyone else in his life. He was not so very old when he was first brought here, one of our boarders. Yet though he was young he had already managed to bring himself into disrepute with countless other children’s homes. He was a fighter, always a fighter, dear, sweet Daniel.” Her eyes shone slightly as she cast her memory back.

  “I’m probably the nearest thing he has to a mother since his own parents died. I knew very little about them, though I tried to find out a few details while Daniel was in my care. And he discovered much more, of course, once he had become more successful and had the resources to pursue avenues closed to me.”

  “I understand that,” Kris interrupted, slightly impatient at this diversion. “But I still don’t get it. Why that message, that name?”

  By way of reply, Elaine gave a sigh and went to one corner of the room, pulling aside the carpet there. To Kris’s considerable surprise, when the material came back she saw a safe buried in the floor.

  “Daniel had me put this here. He wanted me to keep a few... valuables for him. I can’t actually remember the last time I opened this, and I bloody well hope I can remember the combination. Apparently it’s pretty much unbreakable. You’d have to dig it up and take it away with you.”

  As she spoke, her fingers moved across various numbers and then rested on a pad that, Kris presumed, recorded her prints. With that there was a click and the safe door was open at last.

  “I dread to think of the value of the materials I hold in here—most of it in abstract, admittedly. Encrypted keys to some bank accounts and...” she paused for a moment, reaching down and retrieving something. “Yes, here it is.”

  Standing back up, walked back to the chair, a flat envelope in her hand. “This is what he wants, I think. You’ll need to take it back with you when you return to San Francisco.”

  Tipping up the envelope, Kris frowned as a passport fell out onto her lap. It was for a UK citizen, and appeared to be recent enough to include biometric details. It was when she opened it up, however, that she encountered her greatest surprise.

  “Daniel Logan,” she said. “Why... why does he have a passport in that name?”

  “Because that is his name,” Elaine replied. “Or, rather, more accurately—that is the name he was born with.”

  Kris’s nostrils flared. She was less shocked by that news than she would have expected only a week before, but what concerned her now was why Daniel had a passport in this name: what else was he keeping from her?

  “This looks legitimate,” she said. “But I’ve seen his passport, and I know it says Daniel Stone. Whenever we’ve travelled, that’s been the one he’s used.”

  “And that’s because Daniel Stone is his name. His official, legal name. He changed it when he was eighteen, as part of his attempt to leave his past behind.”

  “Why Stone?”

  Elaine smiled for a moment. “Christiansen is my married name. I was born Elaine Stone.”

  For a little while, Kris felt that another chasm was opening up beneath her, threatening to swallow her whole. “You said... you said you’re the nearest thing he has to a mother. You’re not... you’re not...”

  Elaine shook her head. “No, I’m not his biological mother. I never knew his parents. They died when he was very young, and from what I could find out at the time, and what Daniel discovered later, they were relatively poor, working class Londoners. Their death was tragic—and stupid. A gas leak in a faulty appliance, the landlord hadn’t fixed it. Daniel was lucky: they’d put him to sleep upstairs, and then they watched TV in their living room, slowly succumbing to a build up of carbon monoxide.

  “I’m afraid there’s no fairy tale about Daniel’s childhood. From what I can tell, he came from a very mundane family—his parents seemed to love him the same as usual, and were average in most ways.

  “No, what’s special about Daniel is that he is so thoroughly self-made. Hence his change of name. When he came to Lincoln Hall, he was already something of a loner—good with his fists and with a reputation for trouble. I could see, however, that he was also extremely smart. And I was flattered, incredibly flattered, when he asked if he could take my maiden name, and I was so pleased for him when he started university—that alone is quite a feat for children from a school like this. And I watched him, watched him grow and transform, becoming something quite remarkable as he flourished. I have never, in all my life, met such a man as Daniel.”

  “But why this?” asked Kris, waving the passport in the air. “Why does he need this?”

  Elaine hesitated. “I think... I think this was part of his security. I say that I watched Daniel grow into something remarkable, but I cannot honestly say that I’ve always been pleased by everything he’s done, especially after Karen died.” She frowned and paused again. “He came to me once, asking me for help—well insurance of a sort. He wanted me to keep some things for him, in case he ever needed them, in case things... went bad.”

  “But this, is this even legal?”

  Elaine snorted. “You know the answer to that, so please don’t ask stupid questions. Listen, Kris, your husband isn’t an angel, but I don’t think that he has ever thrown himself completely into criminal dealings. He’s not a drug runner, or sex trafficker, or anything like that. But I’m pretty sure that some of his business would not be looked on too kindly by some authorities somewhere. One day, he thought he might need a back door out of any difficulties. This was part of his escape plan.”

  “He never... he never told me about this, about any of it.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  Kris shook her head. In her hands, she opened the passport and stared at the picture. A man, solemn faced with dark hai
r, his eyes slightly mismatched, scars faintly visible in the light. There could be no doubt who this was. I may not tell you everything, but I don’t lie. How many other things had he not told her?

  “I don’t... I don’t understand.”

  If she had been expecting sympathy from Elaine, Kris was in for another surprise. As she lifted her head, she saw the headmistress looking at her sternly.

  “He needs your help. He may have kept some things from you, just as I’m sure he’s kept them from me. I certainly don’t know everything about Daniel Stone—or Logan for that matter. But I do know this: he is not some international criminal, though I am sure he has his moral failings as do we all. For God’s sake, Daniel knows that more than anyone. That’s why, I suspect, things have been so difficult for him over the past few months: he wants to change his habits, his business dealings, his partners even.” Elaine shrugged. “After so long, that can’t be easy and he has suffered for it, but before you judge him, you may wish to consider why Daniel has been so eager to clean up his life.”

  Letting the hand that held the passport fall into her lap, Kris let out a sigh and nodded. “I know,” she said quietly. “I do know. And I’ll do anything I can for him. Anything!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  For two weeks, Kris remained in Lisbon after she had left her meeting with Elaine. Part of her wished to rush back to San Francisco, to be as close to Daniel as possible but he had expressly asked her not to do this. The betrayal by Willard and others had left him increasingly nervous for her safety.

  Strangely, Kris felt less concerned about this than she would have expected. In many ways she was more vulnerable than ever before: she could feel her body changing now, and she was almost certain that she could feel her child moving inside her from time to time. Yet despite this—even because of it—and the transformation in her emotions that she felt pulsing through her veins, she was hardening inside when she thought of anyone who might hurt Daniel.