The Decoy (20 page)

Harold puts the tiny incident out of his mind.

'I don't believe he did it,' she says.

Frank sighs. 'I've told you, Claire. Unfortunately your opinions don't constitute evidence.'

'The stuff about the picture trading at Necropolis—'

'Is hearsay, not testimony. You know that.'

They're in the apartment, getting her ready for another date with Christian. He's arranged to meet her in a restaurant, so she's being equipped with an array of surveillance devices in addition to the necklace: a transmitter pinned invisibly into the hem of her skirt and a tiny video camera in her bag.

Frank's on his knees, talking through a mouthful of pins, fixing the microphone in place. For a moment Claire's reminded of a parent, pinning up a child's school dress. She shakes her head and clears the half-memory away.

'I want to ask him about that previous girlfriend you found,' she says doggedly. 'I want to hear his side of the story.'

'That's not a good idea,' Frank warns. 'If and when we arrest him, we don't necessarily want him to know we know about that. Besides, how would you explain that
you
know?'

Connie, watching from the other side of the room, says, 'This has gone far enough.'

'What has?' Frank asks.

'I've made my decision, Frank. We're closing this thing down right now. I should have made this call two weeks ago.'

Frank pulls a pin from his mouth. 'This isn't your operation, Dr Leichtman. Strictly speaking, you don't have the authority to stop it.'

'And just what authority do you have for continuing?'

He doesn't reply.

'Look at you,' Connie says scathingly. 'What a pair you make. One of you gambling everything that Christian's guilty, one of you gambling everything that he isn't. Even if I can't make Detective Durban see sense, Claire, perhaps you will. Take that equipment off and let's walk out of here.'

Claire hesitates, unsure.

'Let's go,' Connie says. She walks to the door and holds it open, waiting.

After a moment, Claire shakes her head. The psychiatrist shrugs and closes it sharply behind her.

Frank, still fussing with his pins, says without looking up, 'She'll be back. This is tough on her as well, you know.'

Claire feels a sharp pain in her thigh. One of the pins has pricked her. A tiny berry of blood swells, plump and round, on her skin.

'Oops,' Frank says, smoothing it away with his thumb.

===OO=OOO=OO===

She gets to the restaurant early, so the cops can run a soundcheck on the equipment. She sits there, muttering to herself like a bag lady, reciting some monologue she learned long ago.

The waitress, bringing her a spritzer, smiles uncertainly.

Christian shows punctually at seven, his shoulders damp from the rain. 'This is for you,' he says as he sits down. He hands her a package.

It's a square box, a little bigger than a CD case and perhaps twice as deep. She opens it. Inside is a necklace, or, to be more precise, a torc, a solid neckpiece of thin silver. In the centre is a small design of some kind.

'My family crest,' he says. 'Look.' He shows her the signet ring he wears on his little finger, on which the same design is etched.

'But, my God,' she says, 'you can't give me this. It must be an heirloom.'

'Of course. That's why I want you to have it.'

She lifts the delicate crescent out of the box. 'It's beautiful.'

'You won't mind taking off that one you always wear?' he asks anxiously.

'This?' she says, fingering Frank's faux-gold monstrosity. 'I won't mind if I never see this again.'

He reaches up, unfastens the heavy chain and stuffs Frank's necklace in his pocket. He touches her bare neck, softly, with his fingers, before putting the torc on her. He has to bend it open slightly, like a stethoscope, to make the gap big enough. She feels the unfamiliar metal close around her neck like a collar and reaches up to touch it.

'But this is too precious,' she protests. 'You can't give it away.'

'I'm not giving it away. I'm giving it to
you
.'

'You know what I mean. Let me take it on loan.'

'No,' he says firmly. 'You either accept it or you don't.'

She understands from his voice that, if she accepts, she will be accepting more than a piece of metal.

'Next week I have to go to Europe,' he says.

'Oh.' She hadn't expected this. 'How long will you be gone?'

'Two weeks. Maybe more.'

'Is it a conference?'

'Some lectures. Does it matter?'

'Perhaps I could come with you.'

He smiles at her. 'Don't be crazy. You'd never get back through Immigration.'

'Oh. Of course.'

'So I'll see you when I get back.'

'Christian?'

'Yes?'

'When you went away before, when you were married to Stella, were you ever unfaithful?'

'Never.' He adjusts the tore. 'I told you. I don't do casual relationships.'

She says in a rush, 'The police thought that you and she… that you might have killed her, didn't they? That's why they put you on the news, to see if you'd crack.'

He waves at the waitress for a menu. She notes the way his eyes run, briefly, down the length of the girl's body. It's not a furtive look, just a frank assessment. When the waitress comes over, he doesn't give her a second glance.

'The police? Of course they suspected me. Statistically, the husband is always the most likely perpetrator. And they were too stupid and too unimaginative to pursue anyone else.'

'Did you love her?'

'Yes, I loved her. But I'm also glad she's dead. That's not a nice thing to say, is it?' He slides his fingers between hers. 'But if Stella was still alive, I wouldn't be here with you. Now, enough questions. Let's order.'

'There was something else,' she says. 'A girl called Birnes. Jane Birnes.'

He frowns.

'She said you were engaged to her.'

'Oh, of course.
Jane.
But that was a long time ago, and we were never engaged.' He laughs, amused by the thought. 'She was unbalanced. How on earth do you know about her?'

'A friend of a friend,' she mutters.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Shortly before they leave the restaurant, she excuses herself and goes to the restroom.

When she returns he says, 'Your dress is ripped.' She glances down at the torn hem. 'I caught it on the door. Shall we go?'

In the surveillance truck, Frank hears flushes, reverberation and the banal chat of two women bitching about their dates.

'She's dumped us in the John,' he says wearily.

'What about the camera?' Positano asks.

The technician plays with the focus. A woman's shoe comes into view and the sound of running water fills their headphones.

'The view from the trash can,' the technician suggests.

A hand picks them up, shakes them and drops them in a plastic refuse sack.

'That'll be the restroom attendant,' he adds helpfully.

'What do we do now?' Positano asks.

'Nothing,' Frank says. 'We know where they've gone.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Even though it isn't far to Christian's apartment, they're quickly drenched by the sheeting rain. Christian goes off to look for dry clothes and champagne while she walks around, touching things curiously. The apartment is vast and dark, filled with Moorish antiques, old leather-bound books, a few modern artworks — mostly female nudes — and shelf after shelf of French and Spanish literature. It smells the way he does, a musty scent of cedarwood and leather, overlaid with spice.

There are no photographs of Stella. She realizes he must have gone through the place removing all traces of her in preparation for this moment.

Indeed, there's a photo of Claire on a table, one she hadn't even known he'd taken, of her walking down the street, the other faces around her reduced to a blur.

She stops in front of a small marble sculpture, around ten inches high. It's a female nude, the polished stone as smooth as glass. The statue stirs something in her memory, some association she can't quite retrieve.

'Here,' he says, returning. 'Put this on.'

He hands her a robe, a long Arabic
djellaba
.

'Was it… your wife's?' she says, undressing. He watches her, uncuriously, as she steps out of her underwear and tries to wrap herself in the rough-textured cloth.

'Not like that,' he says. 'Like this.' He shows her how to arrange the folds of the robe, like a toga. For a moment he doesn't answer the question, then he says, 'Does it matter?'

'No,' she says. She catches a faint echo of another scent trapped in the rough weave, something lighter, more feminine than his.

'Good,' he says. He slips his hand under the fabric and cups her breast. 'Bend over.'

She rests her arms on the table in front of the statue. She feels him lifting the robe up to her waist, tucking it carefully so that it stays there of its own accord. A finger, wet with champagne, trails down the cleft of her buttocks, from the base of her spine to the start of her sex. She feels him linger on the puckered opening of her anus and tenses involuntarily. He laughs. She hears a chink as he slips his belt through the loops of his trousers.

'Trust me,' he says.

She waits, apprehensive but aroused. The belt strikes with a lazy crack across her right buttock. Fire fizzes down her nerve endings, cascades of sparks that sizzle and shimmer in her head. Pain follows a moment later, a sting that makes her yelp. The belt falls again on the other cheek, and she wails again, louder.

He pauses, and she doesn't move, her head still buried in her arms. She understands that if he's angry, if he needs to hurt, it's not her his anger is directed at but the previous occupant of this robe, the one who left him when she died. He hits her again, and she sways to catch the next one, grunting as if she's being fucked. Another blow, and her cry this time is one of pleasure as well as hurt. She can feel the heat, but can't tell if the dampness on her damaged skin is perspiration or blood. She finds she doesn't care. She would never have believed it, but she is going to come from being hit, is going to climax without so much as a touch on her clitoris, but only if he doesn't stop, only if the fire and the pain keep coming. She tells him so, or tries to, and though the words won't come out right he seems to understand.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Jesus,' Frank mutters. 'This sounds painful.'

It's gone midnight, and there are too many people crammed into the truck parked outside Christian's apartment. The air is rancid with bodies and the smell of stale take-out.

The input from the necklace in Christian's pocket is turned up full. There's some hiss, and an occasional crackle of cab-controller interference, but the sound of leather hitting flesh is perfectly audible, as are the sounds Claire's making in response.

No-one in the van says anything. Frank pulls a tissue out of his pocket and dabs at his forehead.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Christian carries her to the big double bed and takes a mouthful of champagne. He encircles a nipple with his mouth and sucks on it gently. Bubbles nibble at her sensitive nerve endings.

Still holding the liquid in his mouth, he pulls away and dribbles some over her belly and thighs as he kisses his way slowly down to her poor, bruised sex.

First his tongue, slippery with champagne. Then, as he pulls all of her into his mouth, there's a sudden tingling, burning sensation as the bubbles nuzzle blindly into every crevice and fold. It's as if her labia has been invaded by a thousand tiny bees. 'Oh, Christ!' she says, grabbing his head. 'Christ!' She hopes his apartment either has good soundproofing, or that the neighbours are out.

She leaves at dawn, just as the city is waking up. It's a beautiful morning. Squirrels play tag up the trunks of trees, darting among the feet of the early-morning joggers.

She walks amongst them, lost in thought, a figure moving at a different speed to the rest of the world.

In the van, Frank pulls off his headphones and rubs his eyes. 'She's out of there. Let's go.'

Together with Connie, he walks to the door of Christian's building and presses the buzzer.

Christian's voice comes through the intercom. 'Who is it?'

'Durban.'

The door hums.

They go up. Christian is in his bathrobe, sipping black coffee.

'Hey, Chris,' Frank nods. 'How's it going?'

'OK.' Vogler looks tired. 'You get anything?'

'The way you handled the restaurant was perfect,' Connie says. 'Saying that you were glad Stella died.'

The decoy nods and takes another mouthful of coffee.

On the table behind him, a picture of Stella has replaced the one of Claire.

'For many actors, the most important part of Stanislavski's teaching is what he called "affective memory". It means reaching into your own past, remembering some powerful emotion or event, and using it to create a character.'

Paul pauses, as if for questions, but no-one speaks. The students are standing around him in a semi-circle. Occasionally one of them will do a posture exercise, centring themselves as they listen.

'Now I want you each to close your eyes and think of a time when you experienced a very powerful emotion. Don't think of it in the abstract, though. I want you to remember exactly what you were doing when you felt that way and what action you were engaged in.'

He has them do the exercise half a dozen times, until he's satisfied they understand what he means.

'OK. Now perform the actions you were thinking about. Leon, you go first.'

Leon, a tall, lanky student from Carolina, blushes a little, then starts to rush around the rehearsal space frantically searching for something. After a few minutes Paul stops him. 'What are you doing, Leon?'