The Decoy (12 page)

'Then there's the fact that he left while it was dark. He didn't even close the drapes. Stella's killer spent time with her. Remember the Polaroids?'

'Maybe he was concerned that the struggle had been heard. For all he knew she had a pimp waiting.'

'OK. But why do something like this in the first place if he can't do it the way he wants?'

'This may have something to do with it.' Frank lifts up the corpse's arm. 'Take a look at that.'

On the palm of the girl's hand something has been written.

The psychiatrist peers in closer. It's been written in black ink on the dark skin, so it takes her a few moments,
'www.pictureman.com
. It's a web address.'

Frank nods. 'Looks that way.'

'What makes you sure it's connected to the murder? Some people write things on their hands to remember them.'

'True. But if she is a hooker, anything written on her palm would rub off pretty quickly.' He makes an obscene gesture to make his meaning clear.

'Has anyone checked it out? It's a hardcore site, right?'

'No. No, that's the strange thing. When you type in that address, the computer tells you it doesn't exist.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Afterwards, Connie takes Claire to a coffee shop, buys a coffee and pours two sachets of sugar into it.

'Drink this,' she says. 'It'll stop you shaking.'

Claire has to hold the cup in two hands to get it to her mouth.

'Images on the screen,' Connie says. 'They're never quite the same, are they?'

Claire nods.

'You acquitted yourself well today,' Dr Leichtman says gently.

Claire finds her voice. ' "Acquitted?" As in, "Miss Rodenburg, you are free to go?"'

'You're always free to go, Claire. Nobody can force you to do this.'

'Is that why you wanted me to come with you?

To see if I'd be scared?'

'To see if you were ready.'

She feels a sudden quickening of her pulse.

Connie says, 'As you know, I've had my doubts about this operation. And I'd like more time to prepare you, much more time. But we haven't got it. Once a killer's timescale
—
his intervals between killings —
becomes accelerated, it never reverts. He's going to kill more often now.' The psychiatrist nods. 'Tell Christian tonight you'll be back in town tomorrow.'

Her friend hasn't showed.

That's what you'd think if you saw her, waiting on her own at a table near the bar, trying to make her Virgin Mary last all evening; just another young professional waiting for her date. Perhaps a little prettier than most. A little more daringly dressed. She hasn't come straight from the office, that's for sure.

She's managed to get a table with a view of the entrance, and she scans the door anxiously, waiting.

But when he comes, it's from behind her, pulling up the chair next to hers. She wonders how long he's been there, watching.

He's wearing a dark leather jacket, a fine black cotton polo-neck and khaki pants. He twists the heavy ring on his little finger once as he sits down.

'Claire,' he says. 'How wonderful to see you.' His gooseberry-green eyes lock onto hers. For a moment she has the sensation that he can see everything, that he knows everything, that he can see the wires taped to her skin and the betrayal in her heart.

'Hello, Christian,' she says.

===OO=OOO=OO===

All afternoon Connie's been making Claire rehearse her cover story one last time.
Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?

But Claire has been preoccupied with a rather more practical matter. When she was working for Henry, she used to do each assignment in a different voice or accent. For practice, as much as anything else.

Now she can't remember if the Claire whom Christian Vogler last met was American or English. The cover story is flexible enough to accommodate either, of course. The problem is whether he'll spot the inconsistency.

She's gone for American. Either it's the right choice, or Christian doesn't recall her that well.

'You're even prettier than I remembered,' he says, and leans forward to kiss her cheek.

His leather jacket brushes against her, soft as a cobweb, and she remembers Bessie, a vegetarian, telling her that to get leather that soft they use the skins of unborn calves.

'Thank you,' she says. How would her character react? 'Though actually I'd prefer it if you didn't lie to me, even if it is for the sake of a compliment.'

Too much, she wonders? But Vogler is smiling at her prickliness.

'It isn't a lie,' he says. 'I don't lie about things that matter.'

There's a pause while they order drinks. She touches the back of her head, idly stroking the unfamiliar bristles on the nape of her neck. The hairdresser she went to that afternoon had begged her not to have it cut short, insisting that it would never grow back the same. But she had been adamant, and eventually the hairdresser had done as he was asked. Clumps of damp hair fell around her eyes like snow.

Short hair, like his wife's. A tiny detail, but who could say which tiny detail would be the one that made the difference?

Frank, sitting in the hairdresser's waiting area, had watched her in the mirror, his hard eyes softened with what might have been pity.

As the hairdresser trimmed and snipped, Claire had the feeling that she was crossing at last from Connie's field of influence to the policeman's. From ideas to action.

No more read-throughs or rehearsals.

Show time.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'This is… strange,' she begins hesitantly.

'Strange? In what way?'

'To meet like this… in the flesh, so to speak, having already been so… intimate.' She meets his eye. 'Kind of like waking up next to a stranger and having to talk about breakfast.'

Claire's backpack, casually propped under the glass table, feeds audio and video to the watchers. Outside, in the surveillance van, Connie, hearing one of her own lines fed effortlessly into the script, nods appreciatively.

Frank's right. The girl can act.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Christian's eyes don't leave hers. 'And is that something that happens often? Waking up next to a stranger?'

'Oh, no. I just meant… well, yes. Sometimes.' She lowers her gaze. 'More in my wild youth, perhaps.'

'You don't seem that wild to me.'

'Appearances can be deceptive.'

'Not yours, I think.'

Her character gets a little riled at this, at the assumption that he has her neatly boxed up and filed away. 'Oh? And what does my
appearance
tell you?'

He reaches out and gently turns her head sideways, so that he can study her in profile. She can't help it: she flinches, just a little, at the touch of his fingers. He doesn't seem to notice.

'I see someone… beautiful, but unhappy,' he says. 'That's right, isn't it?'

'Don't get the wrong idea,' she says tartly. 'I'm not some desperate singleton looking for a man.'

'That's not what I meant.'

'I doubt if there's one person in this room who's done the things I've done.'

'"I have more memories than if I had lived a thousand years…?"'

'Exactly.'

'Sometimes,' he says, carefully, 'the things we fantasize about, we don't want in reality.'

'Sometimes we know what we really want, but we need some help to get there.'

'Most people would say that taboos are there to protect us.'

'You and I are different from most people.'

'That's true,' he murmurs.

She meets the green eyes full on. 'Our fantasies,' she says. 'We have our fantasies.'

After a moment he shakes his head. 'No,' he says. 'Those were yours, not mine.'

In the van outside, Frank and Connie look at each other.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Yes.
Your
fantasies. You wrote them.' She's puzzled, aware that a sudden change of mood has taken place, unsure why.

'Of course,' Christian says. 'You told me what you wanted, and I obliged. I'm a translator. I work in other people's voices, other people's styles, all the time. Baudelaire's, for example.'

'But you like Baudelaire,' she says, confused.

'Do I? Oh, he has some stylistic quirks that make him interesting to me on a technical level. That's why he fascinates me: as a challenge.' Christian Vogler takes a handful of pretzels from the dish on the table. 'You mustn't take all that adolescent doom and gloom too seriously.'

'I see,' she says, though in fact she's not quite sure what she sees any more.

'Listen, Claire,' he says, more gently. 'I wanted to meet you because, well, you're right when you say that we have something in common. Like you, I lost someone very close to me.'

'I know. I saw in the papers—'

'I'm not referring to Stella's death, not entirely. I had started to lose her even before that.' He sighs. 'Perhaps if she had lived we could have resolved our problems. It's one of the many questions I'll never be able to answer, now. But my point is that, like you, I know what it is to grieve. And I know how easy it is to let grief destroy you. You feel an overwhelming guilt for being the one who survived. You want to punish yourself… or, in your case perhaps, to find someone else who'll do the punishing for you. But there comes a time when you have to let go of your guilt and anger. Life goes on, but only if you let it.'

She nods. In all their rehearsals they'd never considered this.

'I brought you something,' he says, and he pulls a little book out of his jacket pocket, pressing it into her hand. 'Here.'

For a moment she thinks it's another book of poetry. Then she sees it's one of those slim volumes of New Age philosophy, the ones you saw piled next to the cash register in bookstores. She looks at the title.
The Little Book of Loss.

'That book helped me a lot, when Stella died,' he adds.

'Thanks.'

'You're welcome.' He signals to the waiter for another drink.

She tries desperately to think of some way to salvage this, to get the operation back on to the script. 'So you don't want to hurt me,' she blurts out.

'Claire. Oh,
Claire.'
He reaches towards her, stroking the short blond hair on her neck gently with the back of a finger. 'Don't you see? I want to take the hurt away.'

'"Why do we say 'good grief when something happens to us?"' Claire reads aloud. '"Is it because deep down we know that grief
is
good, that wounds hurt most when they heal?"'
The Little Book of Loss
flies in an arc through the air, joining the empty pizza boxes in the trash basket. 'Christ! Who
writes
that stuff?'

'It didn't go too badly, I thought,' Connie says. 'For a first attempt.'

'Maybe you should write one of those books,' Claire says sweetly.
'Dr Leichtman's Little Book of Positive Thoughts'

'Hey, Claire,' Frank says. 'That's enough.'

'Let's face it, Frank. This isn't going to work.'

'Let's look at the facts,' Frank retorts. 'Has Christian Vogler eliminated himself as a suspect?'

'No,' Connie says firmly. 'He specifically mentioned that he'd been having problems with Stella. That's new information.'

'So maybe he's just being careful. After all, we know our killer's ultra-cautious. It's entirely consistent that he'd be reluctant to incriminate himself.'

'Were you ever a detective?' Claire says. She knows she's being a bitch, but she's still high on adrenalin and anger. She wants applause, she wants to get out there and drink and dance and fuck.

Frank ignores her. 'So what is his game? Perhaps Claire isn't his type after all.'

Connie says slowly, 'Maybe it's a test.'

'What sort of test?'

'He wants to see how determined she is,' Connie says. 'If she can be put off by a paperback of platitudes. You're right, Frank, our killer's clever; he wants to be absolutely sure she's for real before he makes his move. Like a trout nosing a fly before it takes it.'

'Claire?' Frank asks. 'Does that make sense to you?'

She sighs. 'Run the footage again?'

Frank goes over to the machine and rewinds the tape. She watches the video one more time. 'Well….'

'What is it, Claire?'

'When I came out of there I was pretty pissed off, so I wasn't really thinking about it as a piece of theatre. But now I look at it again… you know, you can always tell when an actor strikes the wrong note. Even if it's nothing you can put your finger on, you just know.' She nods. 'When I look at this tape, I can see it. Christian's
acting.'

'Which means', Connie says thoughtfully, 'we're going to have to be a bit more subtle than we anticipated.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Back in the horrible dank apartment, she fires up the laptop Dr Leichtman gave her. The snake, which seems to be nocturnal, writhes in a complicated knot pattern against the glass of its tank.

She has no idea if it's a boy or girl. But, privately, she's started calling it Connie.

Welcome to Necropolis.

She clicks on the chat room. It's crowded tonight: at least a dozen names, most of them unfamiliar.

Victor's there, hanging around on the sidelines again, jumping from conversation to conversation, his contributions short and sarcastic.

For the first time she thinks of his behaviour as being like that of a big cat, prowling. What's he hunting for? she wonders.

Her fingers clatter across the keys.

>>Hi, Victor. How's it going?

>>Hey, Claire. Thought maybe you weren't coming back.

>>Looks like you've had plenty of company in the meantime, though.

>>None of them as fascinating and beautiful as you.