The Decoy (14 page)

He nods, clearly impressed by the depth of her knowledge.

'Those places are a bit like going on one of the rides at Disney,' she continues. 'It looks scary, it may even feel scary the first few times, but deep down you know it's all pretend.'

He stops. 'Exactly. That's exactly my point, Claire.'

'What is?'

'You're not looking for some cartoon dungeon-master who's going to beat the shit out of you. Not really. You're looking for someone who's going to hold your hand as you jump together into the abyss.'

'That's right,' she says softly.

'Someone who's going to take you into a place where there are no safe words to yell when it gets scary.'

Behind them, a little way down the street, a pedestrian stops when they stop. And a white van with blackened windows, cruising at walking pace 500 yards behind, pulls unobtrusively into the kerb.

'You mean death, don't you?' she says.

'I mean
trust,'
he says. 'When you trust someone completely, there are no safe words.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

He likes her apartment, he says. It's just the sort of place he'd imagined her living: unpretentious but with impeccable taste.

She excuses the faint odour of paint by saying she's just redecorated.

At the Chinese supermarket on 49th he had gathered ingredients: ginger, five-spice powder, cardamom seeds, fresh beansprouts and, from the huge aquarium that gurgled at the back of the shop, a live crab, its huge front claw bound with tape. On the way back, in the cab, she'd watched apprehensively as the carrier bag containing their dinner tried to scuttle across the seat.

He fills a pan from the cold tap in her kitchen and shows her the painless way to kill the crab, heating it up slowly with the water. Occasionally it bangs its claws against the sides, like an old boxer lashing out with bandaged fists. After a few minutes the room is filled with a thin, high whistle. It's the air escaping from the shell, he says.

While the crab is cooking, Christian takes a step forward and gently takes her chin in his hand. He turns her face towards him. She catches a faint hint of his scent, an unfamiliar, foreign-smelling cologne. Then she feels his thin, hard lips brushing against hers. She kisses him back, letting her body respond to him as well, arching against him, the material of his suit rough against her bare arms and legs.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'I think the trout just swallowed the fly,' Connie murmurs. 'Or should that be the other way around?'

'Looks like they both swallowed something, anyway,' Frank says. He adjusts the contrast on the monitor, cursing it under his breath.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Take off your clothes,' he says.

On the stove the crab blunders around the sides of the pan, making it rock.

'No,' she says, looking at the floor. 'Not yet, Christian. I'm sorry, but not yet.'

'I don't think he'll resort to force when you say no to him,' Connie had said. 'I think he's got more self-control than that. This killer picks his moment, he controls events rather than reacting to them. But we'll be standing by, in case.'

His green eyes are unreadable now, their depths as dark as jade. 'Not on the first date? I didn't take you for someone who lives by rules like those.'

'It isn't that. All this — it's happening so fast. I'm confused. And I've made mistakes before. I've been let down.'

'As have I. But I'm clear about you, Claire.'

'I need more time,' she says. 'Just a little more time.'

'Of course,' he says. He kisses her again. 'As much time as you need.'

He lifts the crab out of the scalding water; shows her how to smash it open with a hammer to scoop out the poisonous brain.

'It was… interesting,' she says.

Frank and Connie look at her sceptically.

'What can I say?' she shrugs. 'He's charming, intelligent… quite intense, of course, but I think he's probably less confident than he appears… What?'

They're looking at her like two parents who disapprove of their daughter's date.

'How did he seem when he dismembered the crab?' Connie asks. 'Was he excited at all?'

'Sure. So was I. We were hungry and it was delicious. He's actually a pretty good cook.'

'I'm concerned about this,' Frank says to Connie.

'You must understand, Claire, that one of the dangers of this operation is that you might get too involved,' Connie says. 'The moment I see that happening I'll have to call the whole thing off.'

'I'm not getting involved,' she says irritably. 'I'm just saying that, if he's a killer, he's a pleasant, charming killer, that's all.' She feels a slight pang of guilt, remembering the way she had let her body react to Christian's kiss. Or had that just been proof that she was playing her role to the hilt?

'Show her the tape,' Frank says.

Connie puts a videotape into the machine. It's a blurred, grainy black-and-white picture, but Claire can tell what she's looking at: the apartment. The figure in the foreground is Christian, making coffee. The one exiting frame left is Claire.

'At twelve twenty-one you went to the bathroom,' Frank says. 'Now watch what he does.'

Christian turns from the stove and takes two steps across the passage. The image jumps. Another camera picks him up as he enters her bedroom. He opens a cupboard and flicks rapidly through her dresses. Then he goes to the bed and scrutinizes the drawers in the nightstand. He picks up the book she's left there and examines the spine.

He turns, as if listening to something, and moves towards the door. There's a laundry basket by the bed, and he takes something from it, holds it to his face, inhales and puts it back. Seconds later the first camera picks him up again, pouring coffee out of the grinder as Claire enters the frame again.

Claire shrugs. 'So? He was having a look around.'

'He was snooping in your bedroom. He sniffed your dirty laundry.'

'Believe me,' she says, 'I've had worse.'

'Listen,' Connie says. 'We're not showing you this because it proves he's guilty. Far from it. But once again Christian has failed to eliminate himself. All we're saying is, don't let your guard down. Not for a second.'

Her days have settled into a kind of routine.

In the mornings she goes to the gym, reads play texts at the library, goes to acting class, or sleeps. The police have got her a lunchtime job waitressing at a bar uptown as cover, but the work is hardly onerous. Most evenings Christian comes by and they go out, tailed at a discreet distance by plain-clothes colleagues of Frank's.

She wears a heavy faux-gold necklace with a miniature microphone in the stone and a transmitter embedded in the clasp. It's hideous. The people who want such things are usually rich men, Frank explains, spying on their mistresses.

Sometimes Christian e-mails her more fantasies. Occasionally, before he leaves her for the night, she'll change into the long T-shirt she wears as a nightgown, climb into bed and he'll read them aloud to her, as if he were reading a fairy story to a child. Except that these aren't fairy stories.

Dr Leichtman no longer pretends that one of these fantasies will suddenly betray Christian as the murderer of his wife. It's a longer, murkier game they're playing now, a game of watching and waiting.

Claire has got so used to the cameras that she forgets they're there. After she's walked through the apartment naked, or staggered through it drunk, or talked to herself, she'll suddenly remember and think, Some cop could have been watching that.

Sometimes her evenings with Christian leave her feeling edgy and frustrated. Then she'll relieve the pressure by going to the Harley Bar and meeting up with Brian as he finishes work.

Once, having drunk rather too many of Brian's bourbon-and-bourbon cocktails, she brings him back to her apartment. Only as she gets through the door, half-finished bottle in hand, does she suddenly say, 'Oh, shit.'

'What's up?'

'Nothing.'

What he doesn't know won't hurt him. And she can always keep the lights off while they're in bed.

He looks around. 'Nice place. It's, er, well—'

'What?'

'It's so tidy. Grown up. I'd expected something less
tame.'

For that, he gets pushed into the bedroom and ridden till he begs for her to stop.

===OO=OOO=OO===

She's with Christian at the theatre when she bumps into Raoul.

Normally she avoids the theatre, even as a subject of conversation, but Christian has somehow realized that it's a passion of hers. There's a new production at the Circle which is getting rave reviews. It's sold out, but he manages to magic tickets from somewhere.

Standing at the bar in the interval, she hears a voice behind her say poisonously, 'Of course, all that overacting always goes down well with
audiences.
They don't know any better, the sweethearts.'

She tries to turn away, but he's seen her.

'Claire, darling. Isn't it dreadful?'

She should have realized something like this would happen eventually.

'I'm enjoying it,' she says faintly.

'Really? I guess when you haven't worked for a while it must get hard to judge,' he sneers.

'This is Raoul Walsh,' she says to Christian, reluctantly introducing them. 'He plays a singing rat in a musical.'

'A singing mouse, actually,' Raoul says. His eyes narrow. 'Really, Claire, what on earth is that
extraordinary
accent?'

'I've heard the second half is better,' she says, to distract him. 'Wasn't that the bell?'

But Raoul, once started, isn't going to let her get away so easily. 'And talking of funny accents, I saw that barman of yours the other night. What
bad
you been doing to him? "I wouldn't call sex with Claire rough, but when she finally got off me I discovered I'd just been circumcised."' He gets Brian's Australian twang note-perfect. Raoul's friends laugh sycophantically. Christian laughs, too.

He steps forward and clasps Raoul by the shoulders, as if he's congratulating him on his joke, as if he's about to pin a medal on his chest or kiss him on either cheek. Abruptly, Christian brings his forehead down onto Raoul's nose. Raoul folds like a marionette. From nowhere he has acquired a droopy moustache of blood. A woman behind them screams. Raoul, on his knees, salaams gently to the carpet. He chokes. Blood and mucus spray out of his mouth.

'Come on, Claire,' Christian says calmly. 'We're leaving.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Not a pleasant fellow,' he says in the street.

'Actors can be so bitchy,' she agrees shakily. She looks round. Two men have followed them out of the theatre. Seeing that she's all right, they fall back. Christian raises his arm for a cab.

'What did he mean?' he says calmly.

'Which bit?'

'About not working for a while?'

'Oh, that.' She thinks quickly. 'I had a brief notion that I might try to be an actress. Raoul and his friends soon made me realize what a stupid idea that was.'

Christian says, 'I think it's an excellent idea.'

'What is?'

'Acting. You need something to give your life a sense of direction, Claire. That waitressing you do isn't going anywhere. You should take a drama course, maybe get some one-to-one coaching. You've got the looks, and the voice. Fourteenth and Third,' he says to the cab driver.

'I can't afford coaching.'

'I'll pay.'

'Christian, don't be ridiculous.'

'What's ridiculous? I can easily afford it.'

'You don't know anything about me. You don't know anything about
us.
I could just take your money. It happens.'

'I know everything about you that I need to know,' he says. 'Total trust, remember? No safe words.'

'I'll see about classes,' she mutters. 'But I can't—'

He interrupts her. 'And why did he make fun of your accent?'

'My mother was English, and that comes out sometimes, and there's a bit of New York in there now,' she improvises.

'They say that's a sign that you have a good ear, don't they? And your French is excellent, too. You'd be a brilliant actress.'

They drive on in silence.

'What he said about that other guy,' she begins.

'You don't owe me any explanations, Claire. Until you decide you want to be with me, who you sleep with is your own business.' He looks out of the window as he speaks, and she knows that he's more hurt than he's allowing himself to show.

'What are you doing this weekend?' he says after a while.

'Nothing much, I guess.'

'Some friends have asked me to visit with them. They have a house down on the coast. I think it would do us both good to get out of the city.'

'OK,' she says. 'I'd like that, too.'

'I've got a lecture Friday at lunchtime. We could leave straight after that.' He pauses. 'Needless to say, I'm not suggesting a dirty weekend. That's still up to you.'

'Thanks.'

There are other words she finds herself wanting to say to him, other explanations she wants to make, but none are within the vocabulary of this character she wears, so she says nothing.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Listen, Christian. I need to explain something.'

'OK.'

They're in the apartment now, drinking wine. Playing on the CD player is some music of Christian's, something medieval.

'I told you I lost someone close to me.'

'Yes. Eliot. You told me his name was Eliot.'

'I've never really told you how he died.'

'I was waiting until you were ready to talk about it.'

'He was one of my teachers.' She stares into her glass. 'When it all came out he was fired, and his wife left him, and there was no chance of him getting another job. He ended up killing himself. It was… it was meant to be a suicide pact. I didn't have the courage then, and I haven't managed to find it since.'

He nods.

'Ever since, I've been like someone standing on the edge of the high diving board: too scared to jump, too uncertain to go back.'

'The
cunt,'
Christian says. She looks up, startled. She's never heard him swear before. He smacks one fist into the other. 'What a despicable, cowardly, self-serving
cunt.
Seducing one of his own pupils, that's bad enough. Making her do the things he made you do, that makes my blood boil. But to lay the burden of his guilt on you as well, that's simply
pathetic.'