‘He can’t reach us here,’ she said. I still didn’t believe in the gravity of her voice. I felt as if I were just listening to her from under water.
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who can’t reach us here?’
Justine began to tell me her story.
‘My first novel Death is a Woman has been published recently to huge critical acclaim. The heroine, who also narrates the story, conforms to the male stereotype of the ideal woman. The trouble is I’ve made her too ideal: a male fan of my writing has become utterly obsessed by her. Ironically, he has got the narrator (the heroine) muddled up with the author (me). He thinks she is me. A typical case of literary mistaken identity.
‘I can hardly get touchy about a bad reading. The only problem is that he’s dangerous. He has written letters to me via my publisher and agent. They are obscene. But it’s even worse than that – he has started to watch me, follow me around. I never catch sight of him. The only reason I know he’s doing this is by the calling card he keeps on leaving me. A white ribbon. I’ve found them attached to trees in my garden, to the handle of my car, even my front door. What I don’t understand is how he has found out where I live. I have told everyone who knows me not to let out my address to anyone.’
Her story was sounding to me more and more plausible. Regarding the fact that he had found out where she lived, my immediate conclusion was that Juliette had informed this madman of her sister’s address. One way of avenging herself on Justine would be to make sure she was kidnapped by a dangerous lunatic. I would not put her hatred past anything. I was probably Plan B.
‘Why don’t you move? Change your identity?’ I asked.
A bee landed on her dress, thinking she was a flower, and she brushed it away.
‘Believe it or not, I’ve already tried that once. It hasn’t worked. He somehow found out my new address. I’m fed up with those kinds of games. Even I am beginning to wonder who I am. I’ve also tried the police – but unless he actually causes me bodily harm they are legally unable to act. No, there has to be another way. That’s where you come in.’
The seriousness of her position was finally getting through to me. I was lost in admiration for her self-possession.
‘I don’t want any violence, you understand. But it has to be a stranger. I mean you have to be. He has been following me for months and he would immediately recognize any of my friends if they tried to tail him.’
I stared into her invulnerable eyes. I knew that coming to her rescue would be the only worthwhile act of my life. Even in the full glare of the sunlight, her skin remained pale. Even the sun was unable to touch her. Whoever this man was, whatever kind of monster, I would track him down.
‘We will have to set a trap for him,’ I said.
She nodded, ‘I will ring you tomorrow.’
We said goodbye in the rose garden. She kissed me on the cheek, but lingeringly and I realized that this was symptomatic of her appeal – she managed to convey distance and intimacy at the same time.
I watched her walk out of sight behind the roses. Sweat was now pouring down my body. I walked slowly through the garden to the northern exit. It was only as I was passing through the gate that I noticed that a white ribbon had been tied to one of the black metal bars, hanging straight down in the still air, as if someone had drawn a white line, with chalk, across the summer’s day.
thirty-one
The passing of the next day seemed hardly bearable as I waited for Justine to call. I dreaded to leave the flat in case she rang. I smoked opium almost continuously in order to dull the pain of waiting. My entire flat filled with its sweet succulent smell, and not even the light breeze of stale desiccated London through the wide open window could stir its smoky haze. The days passed and still she didn’t phone. I ate nothing but fruit and dry biscuits, drinking strong Turkish coffee in order to stay in contact with some kind of reality. In the misty heat I did not bother to dress, but wandered around my flat naked, drawing a bath of cool water whenever the mood suited me.
However, even in the most depraved moments of solipsism, I still felt in control. I was choosing to live the days in such a manner, get through them, eradicate them from my consciousness.
The days merged in a continuum of the real, the dreamt and the hallucinated. I experienced a series of intensely erotic fantasies that involved Justine, Juliette and myself, in all combinations and positions. The visions had been so exquisite, so physically pleasurable, so corporeal, that I sometimes doubted if they had only been dreams.
But that night, when London had grown quiet outside, I started to have a vision of a different kind. A nightmarish hallucination from which I could not wake up.
As I lay reclining on the sofa, I noticed the smell first. It was the smell of excrement. Strange splashes of black paint suddenly began to appear on the wallpaper. They started to move: scores of cockroaches were scuttling over the walls in uneven lines. I leapt to my feet, only to feel my naked heels sink slowly down into a soft liqueous coldness. I looked down to see that I was standing in a morass of creamy maggots. They were crawling over the flat weave of the Persian rug in a lurid viscous slime. My palace of aestheticism had been transformed into a fetid pit.
Only when I heard the tight whirring sound of insects’ wings start up did I look above me. Neon-orange moths were fluttering out of the eyes and open mouth of the portrait of Justine. On seeing this, I felt with the strong fake belief of a dream, that the real Justine had never existed. Justine was an impostor: she was just an empty shell of living insects. Justine, like her picture, wasn’t real at all, she was another fabrication, another picture of death.
The phone rang. It dragged me – still panic-stricken – back into the semblance of reality. The room fell still and the hallucinations and frightened thoughts vanished into the stagnant air. I picked up the receiver: my hand was shaking.
The woman’s voice on the other end spoke softly.
‘Hello?’ It was her voice.
‘Justine,’ I said.
‘No. Juliette.’ The room lurched to the side.
The sisters’ voices sounded identical. I realized that I could not tell them apart. Reality wavered, shifted and took a step back.
‘Juliette,’ I dully repeated. I could not keep the dead weight of disappointment out of my voice.
Juliette, however, was indifferent to this. She did not take it personally. I was only her means to an end. Instead she laughed and said like a taunting schoolgirl,
‘So you’ve tracked her down. That was quick work. But she hasn’t phoned you, as she said she would? Naughty girl. I told you she liked to play games.’
I quickly told her all the details of the conversation I had had with Justine. Juliette, after all, was supposed to be on my side.
‘So you think that I gave this zealot her address do you? You should be a bit cleverer than that. I may hate her, but she is also my twin sister. I would never do any thing to endanger her life. She is my other half.
I remembered the photographs I had found in Juliette’s bedroom and the knives painted on to the lovers’ naked bodies and wondered if she were speaking the truth.
‘Do you think that this man who is obsessed with her is really dangerous?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I do know that when someone is obsessed they can do dangerous things. They are capable of anything. I have read his letters and they are definitely obscene. Unrepeatable, in fact, and I don’t blush easily. All I can say is if Justine is approaching complete strangers in the London Library something serious is going on. But as far as we are concerned, it may be a blessing in disguise. It will give you a chance to get to know her.’ She paused and then added, ‘Don’t worry. She’ll phone. Probably just when you’ve given up hope.’
thirty-two
After speaking to Juliette on the phone my spirits rallied slightly. But in the bathroom I caught sight of myself
in the mirror and a stranger stared back: an unshaven man with over-focused eyes. I quickly shaved, washed and put on a silk shirt and jeans. By now it was late evening and picking up a light novel I lay down on the sofa and began to read.
A while later I had the idea of phoning Waterstone’s for a copy of Death is a Woman. To my surprise, at that late hour, someone answered the phone.
‘If you like, Sir, you could come on down right now and collect it.’
I was loath to leave the flat in case Justine phoned, but decided as it was a short journey to take the risk. I took the phone off the hook in the hope that if she did ring, on hearing the engaged tone she might try again.
Waterstone’s on Kensington High Street was standing in utter darkness when the taxi dropped me off. But the anonymous face of the bookseller was waiting just inside the doors for me. I followed him into the black interior of the store. The walls were lined with books. He went over to the shelves and picked a book out and handed it over to me.
‘You’re lucky, Sir, this is our last copy.’
The cover of Death is a Woman was garish: the title was in embossed gold. A half-naked woman with a heavily made up face sat astride a chair in black stockings and gold stilettos. Her face looked uncannily like Justine’s. I opened the book up. All the pages were blank. Astonished, I looked up at the bookseller for an explanation, but without saying a word he turned and walked back towards the shelves. Reaching up, he started to pull down all the books, row after row, on to the floor. They were of all categories: the Classics, Romance, Mysteries. As they fell, the books opened up their covers, like birds taking flight, revealing that they too were full of blank pages. Their shiny pale pages, devoid of print, glimmered in the shadows of the shop as they lay on the floor. The bookseller turned to face me again, his face obscured in the darkness.
‘You won’t find the answers you’re looking for in books,’ he said to me.
Just at that moment I was woken up by the sound of the phone ringing. I had fallen asleep on the sofa. The novel I had been reading was perched precariously on my nose. I looked at my watch: it was two o’clock in the morning. I picked up the receiver, the book falling with a crash to the floor.
‘It’s Justine. Meet me tomorrow evening. At Nancy’s Steps. London Bridge.’ She hung up.
At six the following evening I was walking along the South Bank of the Thames. The cool breeze of the water took the edge off the dirty heat of the city. I wondered what kind of macabre joke Justine was playing by choosing Nancy’s Steps as our rendezvous. It was the place where Dickens murders Nancy in Oliver Twist. The steps were wide and the bottom step slipped imperceptibly into the reflecting water of the river.
Justine was sitting on the penultimate step, her naked feet dangling in the water. The water distorted her pale flesh, making her feet look deformed. The large brim of a white linen hat concealed her face, as if a giant butterfly had landed on her head. Her white pinafore dress was blowing lightly in the breeze.
I climbed down the steps toward her. She looked up and saw me but instead of acknowledging me, immediately turned round again. I heard her say quietly and coolly, just under her breath.
‘Sit down a few steps above me but act as if you don’t know me.’
I did as she said, and looked out on to the fast flowing river which seemed potent and imperturbable. I listened.
‘He’s watching me now. But from a distance. He mustn’t guess that we know each other. That would spoil everything. I am going to put my hat on the step beside me. Under it is a letter from him. I want you to read it.’
She did as she said, and I bent down as if to tie a shoelace, and slipped out the envelope from under the brim. The letter was written in clear rounded print, like a child’s. Even now, with the distance of time, I cannot bring myself to reproduce, the words, their meaning was so obscene. The content of the letter made it clear that he was intending to abduct her. The date that he was threatening to abduct her on was set at today.
‘There’s no one around here,’ Justine said. ‘Here and now is when he’ll strike. This is also our chance to trap him. Once you’ve left me alone on the steps he’ll make his move.’
I now knew what she was wanting me to say.
‘I won’t take my eyes off you,’ I said. ‘I’ll be watching from a distance. But not far enough to let him get away.’
I watched Justine put a hand to the back of her neck. A hot summer wind blew over her, as if an invisible hand was running its fingers through her hair. Reluctantly I stood up and climbed the steps, leaving Justine where I had found her. I had no idea from which position the man was watching, but the fact that Justine and I knew about him but he didn’t know about me, gave us the upper hand. There was a bench, not far away from where Justine was, on the other side of the walkway, half-obscured by a tree. Sitting on it I had a perfect view of Justine. I could even see, where the water was growing rough, the Thames beginning to splash the edge of her dress.
thirty–three
A young woman and her lover walked past me singing ‘Greensleeves’ in duet. An hour passed. The sun had disappeared and it was growing cold, but still I waited, Justine waited, he waited. The chill and the waiting had built up in me a numb nervous energy which I thought, if I were not careful, could verge on a sort of terror. Big Ben struck seven and the sun came out again.
An old bag lady, part of the detritus of London which kept on rising to the surface, sauntered over to me. The smell of abject poverty struck me first: she stank of urine, stale lager and cheap tobacco. What her eyes had seen had either been so terrible or so banal, it had washed all the colour out of them. She looked like one of the gargoyles from my dreams.
‘Would you mind not staring at me like that?’ I asked.
She laughed to reveal blood-encrusted gums where her teeth should have been. Her grey hair was long and straggly, witch’s hair.
‘I’m not the only one doing the staring now, am I? I imagine you’ve done some staring too, in your time. Not so long ago, either.’ She pointed to where Justine was sitting on the steps. My view of Justine was now obscured by the tattered crone’s body.
‘Pretty, ain’t she? Pretty as a picture. Often see her sitting there, scribbling away in a notebook. But you,’ she said, ‘You . . .’ She paused and imitated how I had been observing Justine, by sticking out her neck and putting her claw-like hand under her chin. ‘Just like that, you were. The Thinker.’ She laughed again.
I gave her a cigarette.
‘Thank you, Sir. But it doesn’t do to stare like that. It makes your eyes stick out. You look quite off your trolley.’
She ambled off, leaving my view of Justine clear again. The steps were empty. Justine had disappeared. Stricken by horror and disbelief, I stood up as if the action would bring her back. It was not possible in those few minutes, I thought. It was not possible in those few minutes. The seconds that took place between life and death, between swerving right and swerving left.
In desperation I looked around me and saw only the couple who had been singing in duet, now almost out of sight, and the old woman disappearing round a corner in the opposite direction. Hopelessly I ran up to the steps. A stone had been placed on the penultimate step. The stone pinned down a white ribbon that was fluttering in the breeze. He had come, he had stolen her away in broad daylight, all within twenty yards of me.
White clouds scudded across the grey sky. The stone of the steps was blank, unintelligible, even tombstones have writing on them. If I could stare at the steps long enough, I could superimpose her image on to the stone, graft her back on to the present moment with the pitch of my thought. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I wish the wind would stop blowing across my face like that, touching me like that.
thirty–four
I began to wander down the South Bank, forlornly hoping that I might catch a glimpse of her or find a c
lue to her whereabouts. The abductor could have taken her anywhere, be keeping her prisoner anywhere. I dreaded to think what was going through his mind. What would he want to do to Justine but try to break her, tame her as if she were a wild horse? Judging by his letter to her his obsession was sexually out of control. He was living in his own private world where the heroine of a woman’s novel had become the lynchpin of his reality.
The police station at Charing Cross was a modern building, concrete and square with brightly lit windows, but no one visible at them. It was as if the building were empty except for the concept of the law that it represented. This was the first time I had visited a police station and when I walked up the steps and entered, I was surprised by the silence, the inactivity, as if the machinery that operated the station was in another place altogether. Directly in front of the entrance was a white formica desk that ran across the length of the room. A solitary uniformed policeman stood behind it. Everywhere I looked was clear-cut and streamlined of complication. I should have foreseen then that they would have wanted a description of Justine, a form of her identity which I could not provide. I should have walked out again when I saw the artless white walls.
The policeman was looking down at his large open ledger. He had soft features, features that could be moulded only by him. It was only when I was standing in front of him, telling him that I wanted to report a missing woman, that he looked up. His eyes were dark liquid.
He printed out in his ledger her name carefully, in strong heavy lettering. I knew that, without appearing to, he had mentally registered my height, the colour of my eyes, my distinguishing features.
‘How long has she been missing?’ he asked.
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