No Cure For Love
Authors: Peter Robinson
Also by Peter Robinson
Caedmon’s Song
Before the Poison
INSPECTOR BANKS NOVELS
Gallows View
A Dedicated Man
A Necessary End
The Hanging Valley
Past Reason Hated
Wednesday’s Child
Dry Bones that Dream
Innocent Graves
Dead Right
In a Dry Season
Cold is the Grave
Aftermath
The Summer that Never Was
Playing with Fire
Strange Affair
Piece of My Heart
Friend of the Devil
All the Colours of Darkness
Bad Boy
Watching the Dark
Children of the Revolution
Abattoir Blues
SHORT STORIES
Not Safe After Dark
The Price of Love
Peter Robinson grew up in Yorkshire, and now divides his time between Richmond and Canada. He is the author of the number one bestselling DCI Banks series, and has also written two collections of short stories and three standalone novels. Peter’s critically acclaimed crime novels have won numerous awards in Britain, the US, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world.
No Cure for Love
was Peter’s second standalone novel. Originally published in 1995, it is now available in the UK for the first time. Visit Peter Robinson’s website at
www.inspectorbanks.com
.
First published in Canada in 1995 by Penguin Canada
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Eastvale Enterprises Inc. 1995
Foreword copyright © 2015 by Michael Connelly
The right of Peter Robinson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without
the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Ebook ISBN 978 1 473 61093 4
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
For Sheila
Foreword
by Michael Connelly
Authenticity. I think it is the most important aspect of both writing and reading. As a writer, you want your characters, your places, your dialogue, your message to crackle with authenticity. As a reader you want the story in front of you to be so real that you are nodding your head in agreement as you read without even realizing it. You are submerged in a world that might be wholly alien to you but it nevertheless holds true to you. You think this is how it is. This is true because you are there.
So it is no surprise then that the most important aspect of writing is one of the most difficult. Getting it right. And this may be sacrilege to say, but research is not the answer. Fifty words of authentic description can’t do what one word of telling detail does. One line of dialogue is completely undone if it suffers from what I call the writer-behind-the-words syndrome, the malady that occurs while reading when you see the writer at work behind the prose.
So it is no wonder that writers tend to stay in their comfort zones. That is, the places they know, the accents they’re used to, the slang they need no interpreter for, the world they have written about before. I’ll raise my hand right here and admit I am one of them. I can’t say that I have strayed too far from the groove that I have been in for a long time. I talk about it, yes. Talk about the big challenge almost every time it is time to start a new book. And then . . . you get where I’m going.
The reason I bring all of this up is that the ‘Big Challenge’ is out there for all of us but only a few of us meet it. In this book, you witness it happen. Peter Robinson is an Englishman by birth and a Canadian by home, and this is a terrific Los Angeles novel by any measure. Before reading it, I remember asking myself
Why did he do it
? After I finished reading it the question was
How did he do it
?
I first read this novel almost twenty years ago. I was impressed with it then but I am even more impressed with it now after a second reading. Because now I know better what a feat this was to pull off. Back then I said to myself this guy Robinson really did his research. Now I know that research is the easiest part. It takes an author with amazing empathy, a snare-trap ear for dialogue and a clear eye for the telling detail to make something like this work. And
No Cure for Love
works.
But on top of that – getting away from who wrote it and from where – it is that rare book that entertains, enthralls and also teaches. Somehow this story from back then has something to say about right now. In a world that increasingly is fascinated with fame and all media spirals into celebrity-centricity, it is always good to step back and take a look at the dark side of all of that. From that angle this novel transcends its time and place and becomes important. How does it do that? You guessed it. Authenticity.
Michael Connelly
Los Angeles, 2015
And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.
– Tennyson,
Maud, IV, x.
Contents
Part One
1
14 December
My Darling Little Star,
Thank God I have found You again. When I lost you I entered the darkness. Lost in the dark silent Room with only the Hum of my Machines and my Memories and Images of you.
I told myself you could not have known what I feel for you. Love strikes me Dumb. I see all that now. Thank you for giving me another chance, thank you for seeking me out. This time there will be no mistaking my Love. This time I will prove myself to you again and again until you feel the Power of my Love and come to me. I won’t let you go this time.
You think you do not know who I am, but you do.
They
took you away and Seduced you and stole you from me, just as the others did before.
They
have tried to blot out your Memory of me. And I failed you, Sally. Yes, I did. But everything is clear now. The months I spent Lost and Wandering in the dark Room have made everything bright as Day, the Visions I bore witness to have made my Purpose clear, they have revealed our Destiny. Now I watch you on the Screen and I know you are speaking only to me.
As I labor to prove myself to you, you will remember me and you will come to me. Then, my love, will we lie together and I will bite your Nipples till the Blood and Milk flow down my chin. We will hack and eat away the Corrupting Flesh, the Rank Pollution of Tissue and Sinew, and go in Moonlight shedding our Skin and spilling our Blood on the Sand through the Mirrors of the Sea where all is Peace and Silence and no one can harm us or tear us apart ever again Forever and Forever.
Be Strong, my Love. I have much to Plan and Execute before we can be together as Fate intends. My mind Boils and Seethes with the Burden, the Weight and the Glory of it. All for you. Let me prove I am more than equal to the Task.