Sextet (28 page)

‘Oh, I can’t bear this,’ she would say, letting one of King’s letters fall from her hands. ‘Take me upstairs, Tomas. I want to be with you.’

Being with him was a euphemism. The instant the door had closed and they were alone, he had seen her face light; she might not admit it, but he had known that she responded as strongly as he did to promptings others might have judged perverse or transgressive.

‘So he finally went over the edge,’ Angelica was now saying, still frowning off into space. ‘But what I don’t understand is, how come he was always so well informed? How come he knew where you’d been? Where Natasha had been? I mean, that wasn’t guesswork. He must have been following. He must have been
watching
…’

Court turned his back to Angelica. He leaned up against a table; he could hear his wife’s voice very clearly. ‘He must have been
watching
, Tomas.’ She closed the bedroom door, and, beginning to tremble, turned to face him. ‘How else could he have known that? He must have watched you with that boy. In a
parking lot
? Tomas, how could you do that? It makes me
ache
. I can’t bear—you
let
him? What did he do? Is it different when a man does that to you? Did he do it more than once? How long did it take him? Tell me…’

Her husband had told her. Her response, agitated and disguised, was immediate; he had been able to feel the electricity in her hands when, bolder than the boy had been, she began to touch him.

‘But what I can’t figure out,’ Angelica was saying. ‘I can’t figure out why it
stopped
. I mean, why would he give up so suddenly? Like this has been going on five
years
, and then he ups and kills himself? How come?’

Court passed his hands across his face. He stared at a pale wall hung with watercolours. For three of those five years this new charged relationship with his wife had continued; then he had made a very foolish mistake—he had admitted, under close questioning from his wife, that for the last two and a half of those years he had had no other sexual partners; he had neither wanted nor needed them; he had desired only her, and had been faithful. She had wept in his arms with apparent joy; her bedroom door had been closed to him thereafter.

Separation had ensued; divorce had swiftly followed. In the period since the divorce—and it was nearly two years—he had remained celibate, if not in the strictest sense, at least in the sense of having no other sexual partners. He was beginning to see that this too was an error; when it was admitted to his wife, here in this room, a week ago now, her lovely eyes had darkened with an expression of sympathy and disappointment. He had reacted as he always did: angry yet filled with longing for her, he returned to TriBeCa and lay there alone in the darkness, listening to those tapes, finding some release as he communed with ghosts and took his wife by proxy.

‘You still keeping all those King tapes?’

Angelica voiced the direct question suddenly, as if even while speaking she had been able to follow his thoughts with unerring accuracy. ‘You still listen to them the way you used to do?’

Colouring, Court kept his back to her.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘the police have most of them. I never listen to them now. I’m over that.’

‘He had you hooked.’ There was a malicious triumph in her voice; in this weakness of his she also exhulted.

‘Night after night you used to listen and reread the letters. I told you then, it wasn’t healthy.’

‘I can remember what you said.’

‘It was all lies anyway. Filthy lies.’ She spoke with sudden venom. ‘All those lies about Natasha. She isn’t like that—never has been.’

She paused, as if waiting for confirmation of this statement. When she received none, she gave a sigh.

‘Accurate about
you
, though. Chapter and verse. Where you’d been, who you’d been with…’

‘Accurate in some ways.’ He turned and gave her a pale steady look. ‘And those tapes told Natasha nothing that I hadn’t already told her. You might remember that, Angelica.’

‘You’re honest with her, I give you that.’ She paused,—eyeing him. ‘She won’t take you back, you know.’

‘Then I shall have to find a way of taking
her
back,’ he replied evenly. ‘Believe me, I will. And when I do, I won’t be consulting or informing you, Angelica.’

That angered her; he saw the blood creep up into her neck and suffuse her face. Her expression became set.

‘She’s free of you now.’

‘I wouldn’t count on that.’

‘She’s free of King as well. She can start a new life. He’s dead; he has to be
dead
. Not one call, not one letter, in nearly five months. They found that body. They found the ID with it.’ Her voice had risen. ‘I have to
know
, is it
finished
? Is he dead, or isn’t he?’

Court gave her a long, still look. He wondered if she were aware of the duality of her own question; he thought not. She wanted to believe King was dead because, for some primitive reason, some reason buried deep in her mind, she believed that if King were dead, Natasha’s marriage would similarly be dead. It was himself, he thought, as well as King that she wanted to eradicate from Natasha’s future.

‘The indications are that he
is
dead,’ he replied, ‘as you’ve been saying, and as I told Natasha.’ He paused. ‘But I don’t believe he is. I believe he’s very much alive…’

‘Biding his time?’ Angelica leaned forward.

‘Precisely.’

‘But they found the body…’

‘They found
a
body,’ Court corrected.

Giving her what Colin Lascelles would have described as one of his Prospero looks, he crossed the room. With a sigh, seating himself opposite her and speaking quietly, he began to tell her the story.

‘I didn’t tell Natasha this,’ he began, ‘but I know the place in Glacier where they found the body—and I know it well. I went there, Angelica. I went there last July first, with Jonathan, while he was staying with me in Montana. We went with a bodyguard, because I’d promised Natasha I would do that, and we took a back-country trail. It takes you through the mountains and on down to Kintia Lake…’

‘You camped.’ Angelica nodded. ‘I know, Jonathan loved it there; he told me.’

‘We were away three days. It’s a very beautiful part of Glacier and it’s remote—hardly anyone uses that trail. Even in high season you can walk all day and not see a single person. We had…’ He hesitated, looking away and seeing the place in his mind’s eye as he spoke. ‘They were three of the best days of my life. We walked, we fished, we had cook-outs—it took me back to my childhood. We slept out under the stars; we didn’t even need the tents. We had three days and nights of perfect weather and absolute peace, and I was glad of that—for Jonathan.’

‘He’d spent months cooped up here in this city,’ he continued. ‘I wanted to show him that there’s another America; a place where he could breathe pure air, where he didn’t have to worry about telephone calls, or what the mail might bring. A place where he didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.’

He paused. ‘At the end of those three days, we went back to the ranch, and then, months later, when the body was found, I discovered we hadn’t been alone in Glacier. We’d been watched and followed—and someone went to considerable lengths to ensure I knew that. Do you know where they found the man’s body, Angelica? What was left of his body?’

‘By some water, in scrub. Right under this great wall of rock—that’s what you told Natasha.’

‘Yes—and that was accurate, up to a point. What I
didn
’
t
tell her was where that rock wall was located. The trail we took goes over it, Angelica. They found that body by the lake shore, not two hundred yards from one of our overnight camping sites. The body had been smashed up by the fall and left there to rot; and I’m certain that wasn’t accidental. It was a place where I’d been happy, where Jonathan had been happy—and anyone watching him there could have seen how happy he was. So they took that place and they polluted it. They’ve certainly ensured I’ll never go back there.’

‘Ah, Jesus.’ Angelica made one of her superstitious little signs. ‘He’d followed you there, then.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that, as you’ll see in a minute. Wait a while. Look at the chronology. In October, the rangers patrol the park before the snows come, and it’s closed for the winter. That’s when the body was found; by which time, it had been lying there, they think, for around four months, in the heat of a Glacier summer. There are bears in Glacier, Angelica. You can imagine; there’d been decomposition, animal interference, some bones were missing. The only way they’re going to make an identification is through dental chart records. It could take months, longer, before they find a match—if they ever do. At the moment, they’re going through the records for missing persons state by state—it’s slow, and it may well lead nowhere. Meantime, shortly after the body was found, I was contacted. You know why? Because someone had gone to considerable lengths to suggest an identification for that body. Someone wanted to suggest, to the police, to me, to Natasha, that the body was Joseph King’s. Now, you know how careful King is, and how ingenious. How do you think he did that?’

‘There was a rucksack,’ Angelica said, with some eagerness. ‘They found a rucksack near the remains, and in the rucksack…’

‘In the rucksack, Angelica, or in what was left of the rucksack, was something that wouldn’t decay, or rot away—something that would be preserved, and could communicate a message however long it had to lie there. There was a plastic box. A very ordinary plastic box; the kind you might use to pack sandwiches in. Only this one, of course, had rather more unusual contents.’

There was a silence. Court looked around the room, knowing he would continue, yet reluctant to do so. To speak of Joseph King, he always found, was to empower him. He could almost sense his presence now, and so, he knew, could Angelica. He saw her face tighten, and he knew she was remembering, as he did, various little packages Joseph King had despatched in the past—packages with suggestive and unpleasant contents.

‘Tell me,’ she said. She rested her large, square, ugly hands on her thighs. ‘Tell me. Was there a photograph?’

‘Yes. I’ll come on to the photograph in a moment. First of all, inside the box, there was a hunting knife; the kind you can buy in a thousand stores across America—a thin-bladed knife, the sort you use to debone animals. Then there were some shotgun cartridges, though no gun was ever found. And, just to make sure I knew that I’d been watched in Glacier, there was a T-shirt of Jonathan’s. He’d been wearing it the day we camped there by Kintia Lake; it went missing overnight, and we’d thought no more about it. He’d taken it on and off ten times that day—we’d been swimming, and we assumed it had simply been mislaid; it wasn’t. Someone had been down to our camp-site, while we were sleeping—and he wanted me to know that. He could have killed Jonathan then; that’s how close he was.’

‘That bastard.’ Angelica flushed with anger. ‘That bastard. I want to kill him…’

‘Wait, Angelica, that’s not all that was in the box. There was also a wilderness permit—they issue those in Glacier if you’re going to walk the longer, more dangerous trails, or if you’re going to camp out. That permit was in the name of Joseph King; issued for the same three days we were there. The home address was some street in Chicago that doesn’t exist, and never did exist.’ He paused, his voice becoming less steady. ‘And finally, Angelica, there was a photograph. Not one of the publicity pictures of Natasha that he’s used before, but a family photograph, of Natasha and Jonathan—a photograph I took, when Jonathan was still a baby, in the garden of that house we had years ago in California.’

‘A photograph
you
took?’ Angelica stared at him. ‘But that’s not possible…’

‘A photograph I took over five years ago now.’ Court gave a weary gesture. ‘Jonathan was about eighteen months old. Natasha and I had just finished work on
The Soloist
—you remember?’

‘I remember.’ She looked at him in confusion. ‘But I don’t see—how could he get hold of it? That’s got to be
before
we got any letters or calls from King…’

‘Exactly. The police have checked; I’ve checked; the agency has checked. I know exactly when I took that photograph; it was two months before the first of the calls and letters from King—so we have to re-date the start of his obsession. Except, for all I know, he’s got pictures I took even earlier, and he’s just waiting to produce them…’

‘But how did he
get
it? He stole it somehow?’

‘No, easier than that. That photograph was the last on a reel of family pictures I took. Jonathan was walking by then, beginning to talk—Natasha loved that house…’ He broke off, then after a pause, continued. ‘Anyway, I had it developed at the same laboratory in LA that I always used. They sent back the prints and the negatives, and I still have them—but, of course, for anyone working in that lab, it was easy enough to run off extra prints, and no-one would be any the wiser…’

He gave a sigh and rose to his feet. ‘So, they’ve now launched a new set of checks: who worked at that lab then? Where they are now? There were over thirty employees who could have had access to that film. It’s over five years ago. Most of them have since left the firm, moved out of state, married, changed their names, dropped out of sight…It’s going to take
months
, yet again, to trace them and question them. And it will probably lead nowhere. It will probably be another dead end.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘You know what he’d done to the picture?’

‘Cut it up? Like the others?’

‘Yes. He’d cut it up.’ He gave an angry gesture. ‘Cut it up into these neat squares, each one about a quarter of an inch. It was very precise. Natasha’s face was on one little square; Jonathan’s was on another. And they both had crosses on them, gouged across their faces. When I saw that…’

He turned away, feeling his breathing start to tighten. He could feel King’s presence in the room acutely now. He felt the old helpless instinct to open doors, search closets, look for a man who was not there—and stay by his son’s bedside in case he came through a locked door or a barred window.