by Rennie Airth
Then she found herself remembering the feeling she had had the day before when she’d woken up and remembered Rose was dead. How it seemed the world had shifted in its orbit, how it wasn’t the same any longer, everything was out of sync, and she wondered if that was how Rose had felt when they took her up into the mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and showed her where the plane had crashed and asked her to identify Matt’s body, and what she had said to Grandpa later: ‘I think I went crazy for a while.’
Hanging next to the photograph was a painting, a print rather, which Addy remembered having seen with Rose the last time she visited New York. They had gone to an exhibition – at MOMA or the Whitney, she couldn’t recall which – a display of works meant to fool the eye. She struggled for a few moments trying to remember what they were called … it was something like ‘Trump’ – oh, no, Jesus, not him! Trompe, that was it, a French term, trompe l’oeil: paintings designed to deceive the viewer, and Rose had liked this one particularly. It looked like a window in the wall that opened to show the Grand Canal in Venice at sunset. But it was an optical illusion. It wasn’t what you thought it was. Rose had found they had a print of it in the museum shop and bought it.
Had something like that happened with her and this man Moreau or Charon or whatever he was calling himself now? Had she thought she was looking at one thing and found out too late it was another? Had she …?
Addy stopped dead. It was like her mind had hit a brick wall. The feeling was close to physical and she clutched her head, which all of a sudden was bursting – though not with what she’d been thinking a moment ago.
Now it was a new idea, just one that seemed to hammer at her temples: a single shattering thought.
‘Oh, Jesus … oh, no!’
TWENTY-FIVE
Kimura blew on his hands and then buried them in his coat pockets. Although the day was clear and sunny, a cold wind had got up and the air was filled with stinging bits of ice from the crusted snow covering the ground. He was keeping his distance from the girl who was walking some way ahead of him, head bowed, staring at the path in front of her. He had noticed she wasn’t following any particular route in the park, just wandering about, and the opportunity was there for him to approach her, but so far he had held back.
How could he frame the question he wished to put to her? His English was so poor. How to explain his need for an answer? He would have to admit his guilt, acknowledge that it was he who had broken into the house and assaulted her three nights earlier. How would she respond to that? He had no way of knowing, but once he had put the question to her, there would be no turning back. What if she simply decided to report their conversation to the police?
He could prevent her from doing that of course, but at what cost? He knew the girl was innocent – she had no part in this – as innocent as the young woman he had loved, and whatever happened he wouldn’t raise his hand against her. Yet he hesitated. Although he continued to believe that some unseen power was directing his steps – that he would eventually track down his quarry – the day had begun with an evil omen.
Unwilling to trouble the elderly couple who had given him shelter for anything more than the room they had provided, he had gone out that morning to have breakfast at a nearby café and on his return had noticed a stack of newspapers standing on the hall table ready for disposal. On top of the pile was yesterday’s edition and the headline had caught his eye: Knightsbridge Killings: Two Americans Dead. There was a photograph of a woman under the headline and when Kimura read the name printed beneath it, he froze.
Rose Carmody. There could be no doubt. The murders had taken place at the same address he had gone to. She was the woman he had come to London to find. Could it be the Devil’s work? Kimura was ready to believe it.
He had taken the paper upstairs to his room and read the report carefully. According to ‘police sources’ there was no apparent explanation for the double-murder, with no motive for either having been discovered. At the very end of the story was a line to the effect that Mrs Carmody’s niece had been with her aunt when the attack occurred. She must be the girl who had been in the house when he broke in: his last remaining lead. If anyone could point him in the right direction now, it was she.
He knew then there was nothing for it but to return to the house in the mews. Even if the police were in the vicinity, he had to discover if the girl was still there. The longer he delayed it, the more likely it was she would disappear. According to the newspaper report she lived in New York. How long would it be before she returned home?
His decision made, he had set off at once, crossing the same great park he had navigated a few days earlier – he had since learned it was called Hyde Park – returning to the broad busy road where the department store was so as to be able to follow the same route he had taken to the mews on the fateful evening of his arrival, but more cautiously this time, alert to any sign of police activity in the area, and had reached the entrance to the narrow cul-de-sac without incident.
There he had paused for some minutes, delayed by the sight of a small van that was drawn up outside a house at the end of the mews. Kimura had waited while the driver delivered several packages to a man who had come outside and then backed his van up to the entrance and driven off. About to enter the lane, he was halted by a further development. The door to another house had opened and a young woman had come out into the street. She had a white woollen cap in her hands and as she raised it to her head he recognized the dark curls she was about to cover and realized it was the young woman he had assaulted, the one he had come to find.
Instinctively he had drawn back out of sight and as he did so he noticed there was a car approaching from behind him, driving slowly along the street. It was a police vehicle with lights on top and he had reacted in the only way he could by walking towards it in an innocent manner, looking straight ahead and paying it no attention. When he had finally glanced round it was to find that the car had stopped at the entrance to the mews and one of the two uniformed policemen inside it had got out of it, cap in hand. As Kimura watched, he had placed the cap on his head and stood where he was. A second later the girl had appeared and they had exchanged a few words, after which the man had got back into the car and driven away. The girl had then set off herself, walking down the street away from him.
Kimura had followed her at a distance and found she was leading him back to Hyde Park by a different route. Presently he had found himself treading the same path he had taken earlier that morning, though in the opposite direction, but not for long. She had soon turned off on to another and thereafter he had continued to trail her at a discreet distance as she wandered on, pausing now and again to look about her at the wide and largely unpopulated expanse of snow-covered parkland, even turning around to gaze back in his direction, as though uncertain where she was, and then, having seemingly regained her bearings, carrying on in the same aimless fashion.
It was clear to him she was distracted, deep in thought, and he was on the point of steeling himself to approach her – it would serve no purpose to hang back any longer – when she stopped in her tracks once again and as though struck by an idea stood staring at the ground in front of her. Kimura hesitated. What should he do now? Continue on his way and when he caught up with her try to start a conversation? He knew how flawed his English was. How could he begin to explain to her who he was and why he wanted to speak to her? He had come to a halt himself, unsure what to do next, when he saw her turn around and stare back along the way she had come. He felt her eyes on him.
There was a bench close to where he was and he was on the point of sitting down there and waiting to see what she would do next when she moved again, but no longer in the direction she’d been going. She was coming straight back along the path towards him.
TWENTY-SIX
Movies were about images. That was what people remembered.
Addy had heard it said once by some famous director in an interview he’d given on radio. She couldn’
t remember his name, but he’d maintained they weren’t really about the plot or the dialogue or even the stars who appeared in them: they were about images and directors should never forget it. What people remembered when you mentioned this or that film was a moment, or certain moments, scenes that might have lasted no longer than a few seconds but were engraved on your memory, carved in stone. Like the sequence in Blade Runner, for example, when the dying replicant released the white dove he was holding and said all that had happened to him, all the marvels he had witnessed in his short life would be lost in death. That was what you remembered, and only then did you start recalling the story; or maybe you didn’t; maybe that single image was enough to stand for the whole movie.
The scene Addy remembered when the realization had struck her so hard in Rose’s house had been from an old and quite frankly crap movie whose title she had long since forgotten and which she’d viewed on television late one night. There were these men, soldiers of some kind, who were driving across a post-apocalyptic America in an armoured car through a world that was out of kilter – the sky was the wrong colour and rent by bolts of lightning, the sun was glaring, nothing felt right – and the explanation given was that the recent nuclear war had knocked the planet off its axis. It was why everything was cockeyed. And then at some point in the story the earth had shaken itself like a dog coming out of a pond – the whole planet had vibrated – and suddenly everything was back to normal: the sky was blue, the lightning had stopped and the sun was shining the way it ought to.
It was that single image of things righting themselves that had come to her as she’d stood clutching her head, trying to bring order to the thoughts that were suddenly rampaging around like wild things in there.
Was it really that simple?
The flood of fresh ideas – a whole new way of looking at this – was so intense that she’d had to get out of the house, which suddenly felt claustrophobic, and with no better idea in mind she had found her way up to Hyde Park which, with the help of a map she had discovered in the house, turned out to be only a few minutes’ walk away. The bracing cold air was what was needed to clear her mind and she’d gone back to the beginning, to the moment when she had received the letter supposedly from Rose, when things had started to go haywire, and began to put the pieces together. The more she thought about it, the crazier it seemed, yet the strange and unnerving thing was the further she went along that road the more the pieces seemed to fit.
Or was this just one of her fantasies?
Addy knew she liked making up stories about people she met or glimpsed, creating whole fictions for them, which she played out in her mind like books or movies. It was a habit from childhood, a game she and Rose used to play, something to while away the time on a long car journey, say, or when she was sitting in the dentist’s waiting-room and Rose had wanted to distract her. So was this just one of those fairy tales, because that was what they were? Was she trying to close her eyes to the painful truth about someone she’d loved and looked up to who had let herself down so badly?
Addy didn’t think so. It all fitted too well together, and as her fears hardened into a certainty she saw how she herself had been used – drawn into the plot without knowing it. How she’d been acting out a script, a drama written by another’s hand in which her own part had been clearly laid out, and if that was so, then she had to look at everything that had happened to her since the door to Rose’s house had burst open. Everything.
The realization brought her to a halt, and as she stood there, staring at the ground in front of her, hardly able to take in all the implications of this new discovery, she remembered something she had taken note of earlier in her walk. She’d been wandering about, not following any particular route, choosing paths at random, but stopping now and then to get her bearings, and it was then she had spotted a man walking behind her some fifty paces back, apparently following the same haphazard route she was taking. She’d thought nothing about it at the time, but now she wondered.
Could he be a cop Malek had put on her tail, someone to keep an eye on her and see that she was safe? Addy doubted it. He would have told her if he was going to do something like that, she was certain.
But there was another explanation, and it so happened it fitted all too well into the puzzle she’d been piecing together. Addy turned to look at the man. He had stopped beside a bench and appeared to be watching her. If she hesitated at all it was only for a second – her mind was made up – and she began at once to retrace her steps, walking rapidly towards him, muttering as she went.
‘Enough of this bullshit.’
Hideki Kimura.
She had known it was him the moment she looked into his eyes and remembered the same dark orbs that had stared into hers from behind the black mask. But watching him walk away now into the gathering dusk she still had no idea what was going on behind them.
They had spoken together, if you could call it that, but since Addy had done all the talking and only got an occasional ‘ah’ or ‘oh’ in return – just grunts really – and with no change of expression on his face, it had hardly been what you would call a conversation, let alone an exchange of views. Only once had he actually said something that she caught. It was right after she had introduced herself, when she had stood in front of him and said bluntly, ‘Mr Kimura, we need to talk,’ and he had replied, but with only two words.
‘Deep regret.’ They were spoken in a guttural voice and accompanied by a low bow.
For what? Addy had wondered. For having knocked her to her knees, practically pulled her hair out by the roots and then dragged her up the stairs? It had taken all her self-control not to tell him exactly what she thought of such a piss-poor apology. But she’d kept a hold on her temper. OK, so he was a man of few words, and even fewer of those were in English as far as she could tell. But just how much had he taken in of what she was saying? That was the important thing. Addy had no idea.
Eventually, when she could think of nothing more to say – when she had exhausted every possible means of explaining herself to him – he had risen to his feet and bowed once more. A last grunt and he was on his way, heading off into the gathering dusk, leaving her none the wiser.
Watching him go, Addy had fumed in frustration. What a moment to be left wondering whether she’d wasted her breath. She could only pray he had understood her.
Now there was nothing left she could do but return to Rose’s house and as she walked back, she went over everything she had said to him, wondering if any part of it had stuck. It was then that another thought occurred to her, one she hadn’t considered before. Like most of her other thoughts, it had to do with Rose and why she had behaved as she did. But this time Addy was on a different tack – now she found herself wondering in quite a detached way what her aunt might have done after she learned the truth about the man who’d deceived her. How would she have reacted?
She had reached the entrance to the mews and stopped there for a minute. The lights were on in all the houses except Rose’s and the one opposite, Sarah and Ben’s. She considered the teasing question she had put to herself, turning various possibilities over in her mind, quite cool now, quite ready to believe almost anything.
What if Rose had … yes, what if?
Addy stood rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed on the cobbled lane in front of her, not seeing it though, not registering the sight of the trodden snow that no longer showed white except in patches because a quite different picture filled her mind: an oh-so-familiar image.
Fuck it, she was right! She just knew it. And if it was true, then everything else came together.
There was no need to delay any longer. She hurried on. All she needed to do when she got to the house was turn off the heating and collect what she wanted from the bedroom upstairs, which included Rose’s MacBook along with an old shoulder bag belonging to her aunt that she thought might come in handy. Oh, and attend to one other small piece of business that would take no time at all – just a minute o
r two – but one that brought a bitter smile to her lips (though it might just as easily have drawn tears … oh, Rose!).
Now it was just a question of letting events take their course, she told herself as she switched out the last light in the sitting room and then locked the front door behind her. While she was talking to Kimura, she had formulated a plan, a crazy idea that had kind of crept up on her without her realizing it until she found it had its teeth in her and she couldn’t shake free of it. She had seen where this might be going and how it might end, and, for better or worse, all the pieces were in play.
According to the programme, which she’d checked on her phone, the performance at the Globe didn’t start until eight, which gave her plenty of time to return to Molly’s and take a shower and change. She might even have some supper before she went out, a suggestion Molly was sure to make when she heard what Addy’s plans were for the evening.
But before that, there was one last thing she had to do, and since she was within easy walking distance of Harrods (and remembered Rose telling her you could buy anything you wanted there), she walked the short distance down to the department store, where the great shop windows with their Christmas displays glittered like jewels in the darkness, and went inside to buy the one last thing she knew she would need.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The money was something to marvel at, and Charon let his mind play with the pleasing image as he walked without haste down the Strand. He was actually picturing it, not as a pile of banknotes – though if you were to stack the dollar bills up one on top of the other, they would reach a truly impressive height – but rather as the impregnable wall that he planned to build around himself. There would be no breaching it. With a billion dollars you could do almost anything: buy a castle, buy an island, and with the help of plastic surgeons buy a life so divorced from the one that preceded it that no amount of investigative work would ever succeed in connecting the two persons, the before and after. It was a dream he had had for some time – the perfect escape.