The Killer in My Eyes (9 page)

‘Then do you mind closing the door and waiting outside while I get dressed?’

Jordan did as he was told, feeling like a small boy caught peering through a keyhole. He took refuge in the other bathroom, the one next to the guest room. He switched on the light and looked at his face in the mirror. He was forced to admit that Lord and Hardy had done a good job on him. His eye was swelling up and his mouth and nose were dirty with half-congealed blood. He turned on the faucet and washed himself. The cold water felt good on his swollen face.

He took off his shirt and used the clean part to dry himself. As he went back along the corridor towards the living room, he heard the hum of a hair dryer. He opened the closet where he had put his backpack that morning, and from it he removed a clean shirt. As he changed, he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman in the bathroom. He couldn’t remember ever seeing such a stunning creature. Closing the closet, he put the backpack down on the couch next to his helmet.

At that moment, the woman appeared, wearing a blue robe. Her dark hair was still a little damp. Her large liquid eyes were the most incredible hazel, almost golden.

‘Now then, are you going to tell me why you’re here?’ she demanded.

‘I live here.’

‘Strange, I thought I’d just rented the place. Maybe there’s some detail I missed.’

Jordan felt the same sense of inadequacy he had felt a while earlier in the bathroom. ‘Let me rephrase that. I
used
to live here.’

‘Are you Jordan Marsalis?’

‘That’s right. And you must be Mrs Guerrero . . .’

‘Not exactly, but more or less. My name’s Lysa.’

Jordan shook the hand she held out to him. It was warm and soft, a tactile sensation that was complemented by the delicate vanilla scent she gave off.

‘I was told you’d be here in three days.’

‘That was the idea, but I decided to come earlier because the agency told me you’d be leaving today.’

‘I was supposed to, but then . . .’ Jordan made a vague gesture with his hand. ‘Well, things don’t always work out as planned. I’m sorry I startled you. I’m really embarrassed.’

‘Do you always get a nose bleed when you’re embarrassed?’

Jordan lifted a hand to his face, and when he took it away it was stained with blood. The wound had started bleeding again. He walked to the kitchen door and looked around for something to stem the flow.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve had a really bad day.’

‘I’d already guessed that. Sit down on the couch. I’ll be right back.’

She left him for a moment, and when she came back she was holding a dressing-case that looked more like a first-aid kit. She put it down on the couch next to Jordan and took out some yellowish cottonwool.

‘Don’t worry. I used to be a nurse. Anyway, I don’t think I’d manage to make it any worse.’

She stood in front of him. Again, he smelled that vanilla scent of hers. She gently touched his nose and eye, then put her hand under his chin and lifted his head.

‘This is going to burn a little.’

Having applied the haemostatic agent, she stepped back.

‘All done, the blood’s stopped. Your nose isn’t broken, you’ll be pleased to hear. That would have been a pity, it’s a nice nose. There’ll be a bruise, but it should match your blue eyes.’

Jordan felt as if she was looking deep inside him, searching out his secrets.

‘You look like a man who’s had more than just a bad day,’ she went on.

‘Yes. Someone I knew was murdered today.’

‘I watched the news on TV. They said Gerald Marsalis, the Mayor’s son, had died. Was he a relative of yours?’

Gerald is history. It’s a name that doesn’t belong to me any more
. . .

‘He was my nephew. Christopher Marsalis is my brother.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Jordan stood up and picked up the helmet and backpack. ‘Well, I think I’ve disturbed you long enough. Good night, and thanks.’

He was on his way to the door when Lysa’s warm, calm voice stopped him. ‘Listen, I feel guilty about sending you away in that state. If you like, you can stay here tonight. You know the apartment. There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms and we won’t bother each other. Tomorrow you can decide what you want to do.’

‘Won’t your husband mind if I sleep here?’

Jordan always looked in people’s eyes. He could tell when a person was lying or telling the truth, revealing their state of a mind or trying to hide it. And yet he couldn’t have given a name to what he saw now in Lysa’s eyes.

‘Considering you’ve already seen me
half
naked, I think finishing the job might help to avoid any further misunderstanding.’

Lysa opened her robe. Beneath it, she was completely naked. Time seemed somehow suspended. Jordan had the impression that, if Lysa had let the robe fall to the floor, it would have stopped in mid-air, as if by magic. Then the moment came to an end and Lysa disappeared again inside the garment. When she spoke, her voice was as defiant as the expression on her face.

‘As you see, I’m Mrs Guerrero
and
Mr Guerrero.’

Jordan searched frantically inside himself for words appropriate to the situation.

Lysa seemed to read his mind. ‘You don’t have to say anything. Whatever you might say I’ve already heard at least a hundred times.’

She bent to take a bottle of pills from the dressing case and went and placed it on the granite worktop in the kitchen.

‘Good night, Jordan. If it hurts at all, take a couple of these pills.’

In silence, she walked along the corridor towards the bedroom. Jordan was alone, and the room where they had just been together went back to being a simple living room.

From the floor below, music drifted up. It was the same track as before, that song full of longing and regret. It struck Jordan as the perfect soundtrack for that moment. As he listened to the lyrics, with a new interest in their meaning, he wondered how many times Lysa had looked at the sea and felt herself dying inside for something that had been denied her.

I stand here on this cliff

my eyes embrace the sea
,

I dream the same old dreams

these dreams won’t let me be.

The surface of the waves

like craters on the moon

like twisting trails of snakes

or trees cut down too soon.

And this strange old heart of mine

now sets sail across the sea
. . .

I stand here on this cliff

look down upon the sea
,

I hear the mermaids sing
,

singing their song to me.

Their song is sweet to hear –

as honey on the tongue.

Their song strong as the wind

that blows down old and young.

There’s no glory or desire

that can tear my dreams apart.

There’s no grindstone known to man

Can crush this rock inside my heart
.

A man’s bare arm emerged from under the duvet and stretched across the bed towards the control panel in the wall that worked the stereo and the TV. A slight pressure of a finger on a button, and the music – the melancholy, slightly old-fashioned sound of a bandoneon and a string band – was cut off as it drifted towards the open window and out over the roofs of Rome.

Maureen Martini stuck her tousled head out from beside him. ‘No, let me hear it one more time.’

‘Darling,’ Connor Slave said, without taking his head out from under the duvet, ‘do you have any idea how many times you’ve listened to that song?’

‘Never as many times as I need.’

‘Don’t be selfish. And please don’t make me regret writing it. Just think how many times
I’ve
had to listen to it . . .’

At last Connor’s curly head appeared. He yawned and rubbed his eyes in a way that made him look like a cat. Even though music was his medium, he had an instinctive knowledge of movement, which complemented the intensity of his onstage performances. But in private, he could be a real clown. Much to her surprise, Maureen had gradually discovered that the mysterious planet called Connor Slave had a bright side. Sometimes, he made her laugh until she cried, especially when he imitated a cat licking its own fur.

‘Go on, do it!’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Please, just for a moment.’

‘No, you’ll have me prowling the rooftops next.’

Maureen shook her head, pretending to sulk.

Connor got out of bed and, completely naked as he was, walked to the window and looked out. She admired his slim, well-defined body – he could have been a dancer or a gymnast. His hair rippled as he lazily stretched his neck muscles. She looked at him, silhouetted against the light, and it struck her that that was what Connor Slave was: a silhouette, a shadow. There was a dark radiance about him, something enigmatic that went beyond appearances.

Maureen got out of bed, also naked, went to him and embraced him from behind, breathing in his smell. She laid her head on his shoulder, savouring the miracle of his skin against hers. There was respect and admiration between her and Connor, and sometime also a kind of shyness – they were at such different places in their lives – yet Maureen could not help quivering with pleasure at each embrace.

‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you,’ she said.

‘Go ahead.’

‘What’s it like, writing a song?’

Connor replied without turning around, his voice seeming to come straight from the sundrenched panorama in front of them. ‘I can’t explain it. It’s a strange feeling. First there’s something that doesn’t exist yet, or may exist already but is hidden somewhere in the darkness inside me, asking only to be found and brought out into the light. I don’t know what others feel. For me it’s something that comes without warning, and it’s only after it’s come that I realize I couldn’t live without it. It’s one of those things we think we control but that end up dominating us completely. It’s like . . .’

He turned and looked at her as if it was only now, letting his eyes come to rest on her, that he had found the perfect definition.

‘Writing a song is like falling in love, Maureen.’

Ever since their relationship had started, she had been reluctant to define it in any way, for fear that a noun or an adjective might give it a weight it didn’t have. Now, hearing those words, hearing her name as part of them, she under stood that what she had been feeling could finally be called love.

They stood there in each other’s arms, looking out at that picture-postcard view of Rome, the red roofs, the blue sky, the sun. Maureen lived in the Via della Polveriera, on the top floor of an old house that had belonged to her grandfather. The place had been renovated and turned into a large duplex apartment. From the terrace, which occupied part of the roof, there was an incredible 360-degree view of Rome. In the evening, you could even have dinner there without any other lighting than the reflection of the yellow floodlights on the Colosseum. As they stood there, wrapped up in each other, they both felt that nothing – not Italy, not America, not the rest of the world – could ever reach in past the borders of that room and invade their intimacy.

Maureen recalled that amazing day they had met. Connor Slave was in Italy for a six-concert tour to promote the release of this latest album,
Lies of Darkness
. The tour had been organized by an agency called Triton Communications, run by Maureen’s best friend, Marta Coneri. On the day he was due to perform in Rome, Marta had swept into Maureen’s apartment in the whirlwind way that was typical of her and insisted that she come to the concert.

‘Maureen,’ she said, ‘if I had an apartment like this, I don’t think I’d go out much either. But between
not much
and
never
there’s quite a difference. And this boy’s worth going a very long way to hear.’

Maureen knew she would need a really good excuse to deter Marta – and off the top of her head she couldn’t come up with a single one. So she had found herself sitting in a seat in the Teatro Olimpico, with an empty place beside her. Everyone who was anyone in Rome – or wanted to be anyone – seemed to be there.

Marta joined her just before the start of the concert, collapsing into the free seat to her right. ‘Good. My work is over. Now let’s enjoy the show.’