“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“It’s all right,” said Lisa. “We may as well be honest with each other. I didn’t love Miles. That much is true. But I liked him. He was a kind man and he treated me well. I’ve reached a point in my life where I value kindness. I was lucky that he chose me.”
She speaks about it so passively, thought Matt. “He chose me.” As if it were an arranged marriage, and she had no say in the matter.
“How did the two of you meet?”
“At a conference in Shanghai about a year ago.”
“A year?” Matt looked surprised. “You hadn’t been together very long, then?”
Lisa played with her napkin under the table. “No. We were married for nine months. It all happened very quickly. Our romance. Miles was a brilliant man and very considerate toward me.”
“But not toward everyone?”
“He was in his later years. I think, when he was younger, he was probably a bit more ruthless, a bit more ambitious. He had a first wife, before I was born, and children. I don’t think he treated them very well. But by the time we met, he had mellowed considerably.”
Matt thought about Andrew Jakes. What a crappy husband he’d been to his mom, how he’d abandoned him and Claire without a shred of remorse, but how in later years he’d transformed into a doting partner to Angela.
“People change, I guess.”
“Yes, they do. But the past can’t be changed, and justice can never be outrun. We must all make atonement for the wrongs we do. We must all pay the price.”
It was such a strange thing to say, Matt wasn’t sure how to react. Was she saying that Miles Baring somehow deserved what had happened to him? Surely not. Her grief for her ex-husband seemed genuine, and she spoke of him with obvious affection and respect. But then what “price,” what “atonement,” was she talking about? Perhaps they’d both had too much wine.
Either way, Matt was grateful when the maid returned to clear away the plates, bringing decaf coffee and a slab of bright green pandan, a sweet Balinese rice cake to break the awkward silence. Sipping their coffee, they talked about other things, each of them evidently enjoying the other’s company. Lisa asked Matt a lot of questions about his childhood. She seemed fascinated by Andrew Jakes’s abandonment of his mother, and openly disbelieving that he, his mom and Claire could have gone on to have such happy lives afterward. Yet when Matt quizzed her about her own childhood, she was reluctant to talk. She grew up in New York but wasn’t particularly happy there. She had a sister but they’d lost touch a long time ago. That was the most he was able to get out of her.
Noticing Matt rubbing the back of his head, she said, “I’m sorry about that clobbering you took. I’d really like you to stay here while you recover.”
“What about the guards?” asked Matt, half jokingly. “Will they be watching me pee the whole time, or do you trust me to go by myself now?”
Lisa grinned. “I trust you. You’d be here as my guest.”
“Are you sure you don’t want your privacy?” Matt asked, more seriously now. “I’d be happy to find a guesthouse or a local hotel. I wouldn’t want to intrude. I mean, obviously technically I am an intruder…”
Lisa laughed. “I’m quite sure. I’m not planning on leaving here anytime soon. And I could use the company. And who knows? Perhaps, together, we’ll unravel this mystery, find the missing link that connects these terrible murders…if there is one.”
“Well, if you’re really sure,” said Matt, “I’d be delighted. Thank you.”
“Good.” Lisa Baring smiled. “Miles always used to say that two heads were better than one.”
THAT NIGHT AS HE LAY IN bed, Matt stared at the ceiling fan spinning around and thought how his life seemed to be spinning equally fast. How on earth did I wind up here, in a luxury villa in Bali of all places, the guest of quite possibly the most interesting, attractive woman I’ve ever met? And how ironic that a sadistic killer, the man who murdered my father and raped that woman, should have played Cupid.
He ought to call Danny McGuire in Lyon and inform him of developments. And he would. But not quite yet. Matt Daley wanted to keep Lisa Baring to himself for a little while longer. To figure out what made those intelligent eyes so sad in the peace and tranquillity of this magical island.
Think of it as a vacation, he told himself as he drifted off to sleep between soft Egyptian-cotton sheets. A long-overdue vacation. Raquel, the divorce, Danny McGuire, and everything about life on the outside felt wonderfully far away.
For the first time in months, Matt Daley fell asleep happy and excited at the prospect of what tomorrow might bring.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MRS. JOYCE CHAN. INTERVIEW COMMENCING, NINE A.M.”
The plump Chinese woman blinked at Inspector Liu nervously. She was afraid of policemen generally, but of this one in particular. He carried himself with importance and kept frowning, tapping his left foot against the leg of his chair in an irritated manner. Joyce knew she hadn’t done anything wrong, but that didn’t necessarily matter when it came to the Hong Kong police. If they wanted a scapegoat and chose her, there was nothing she could do about it.
Inspector Liu was in a bad mood. But it had nothing to do with Joyce Chan. In fact, he was very much hoping that the housemaid from the Barings’ mansion might finally provide him with the breakthrough he so desperately needed in this case. With Lisa Baring being so stubbornly uncooperative, Inspector Liu had made precious little headway in catching Miles Baring’s killer, a failure that was starting to embarrass not just Liu himself, but his superiors. Indeed, it would not be stretching the point to say that Inspector Liu had come to hate Miles Baring’s widow, with her arrogant, Western beauty and her refusal to submit to his authority. Any sane woman would have been grateful for police protection, under the circumstances. And any genuinely grieving woman would have wanted to stay and help the police catch the man responsible for her husband’s death, not to mention her own violation. The fact that Lisa Baring hadn’t done these things, but had fled to a compound in Bali, outside of Inspector Liu’s jurisdiction, further hardened the detective’s heart against her. Lisa Baring was listed as the sole beneficiary in her husband’s will. That gave her motive. By her own admission, she was present when the murder took place. That gave her opportunity. Of course, she hadn’t raped herself. But did she know more about her “attacker” than she was letting on? And if so, was she afraid of him, or protecting him?
Inspector Liu would have dearly loved to force Lisa Baring to return to Hong Kong and answer these questions herself. But short of arresting her, for which he had no grounds, his hands were tied.
That was where Joyce Chan came in.
“How long have you worked at 117 Prospect Road, Mrs. Chan?”
Sweat trickled down the maid’s fat cheeks. “Long time. Mr. Baring buy house, 1989. I working there two year later. Long time.”
“And what were your duties?”
Mrs. Chan looked at Inspector Liu blankly.
“Your job. What was your job?”
“Oh. I in charge all the maids on bedroom floors. Level two and three. They change sheet, keep it clean. I organize.”
“I see. So you were a supervisor. You did not clean yourself.”
She nodded eagerly, pleased to have provided a correct answer. “Supervisor. Yes. Only sometime I clean for Mrs. Baring. Special thing.”
Inspector Liu’s ears pricked up, like a deer scenting danger on the wind.
“What sort of ‘special thing’?”
Mrs. Chan’s hands shook. She mumbled, “Private thing.”
Belatedly, Liu realized that the poor woman was terrified. He tried to reassure her. “You’re not in any trouble, Mrs. Chan. This is all very helpful information, I assure you. It may help us to catch the man who killed Mr. Baring. Do you understand?”
She nodded dumbly.
“What private cleaning did you do for Mrs. Baring?”
The maid squirmed. �
��Mrs. Baring have a friend. Sometime visit in the day.”
“A friend? You mean a man?”
Joyce Chan nodded. “After, she like me make everything clean. Only me.”
Inspector Liu could barely contain his excitement. This was more than the kind of conjecture the tabloids were running wild with. This was hard fact. The lovely Lisa Baring was having an affair!
“And did you ever meet this man? Mrs. Baring’s ‘friend’?”
Mrs. Chan shook her head no.
“But you saw him, presumably. Can you describe him to me?”
“Never see him.”
Inspector Liu frowned. “You must have seen him. You said he visited during the day. Who let him into the house? Did he drive there? What kind of car did he have?”
But the maid only repeated more firmly, “Never see him. Never. Only missus tell me afterward, come and cleaning everything.”
Inspector Liu grilled Mrs. Chan for a further thirty minutes, but the well of revelations appeared to have run dry. Yes, Mrs. Baring had a lover, but she had not asked for any “special” cleaning on the day of the murder, or in the week leading up to it. She had dismissed the domestic staff early that day and asked not to be disturbed, but apparently this was not uncommon. According to Joyce Chan, Mr. and Mrs. Baring often requested to be left alone together.
After Joyce Chan left the interview room, Inspector Liu sat thinking for a long time.
It was time for another chat with the helpful American from Interpol.
MANY PEOPLE DESCRIBED BALI AS A paradise. But for Matt Daley it was more than that. Bali was a place of magic, of healing, of transformation. It brought him back to life.
When Lisa Baring first asked him to stay, Matt assumed he’d be at Villa Mirage for a few days until his head fully healed. He’d find out everything he could about the night of the murder, and about Miles and Lisa themselves: Was there something about them that had led them to be targeted? Some link with the other victims that he hadn’t seen before, that might help them trace the killer? Then he’d report back to Danny McGuire at Interpol and head to Los Angeles to deal with his mounting problems back home.
But as he and Lisa spent more and more time together, something strange started to happen. Matt found himself caring less and less about the case, and more and more about Lisa. Though he didn’t dare ask her, he was pretty sure she felt the same way. Here in the idyllic surroundings of the villa, days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and the pair of them barely left the property at all. Domestics were dispatched to the local farms and villages for food. Books and other luxuries were ordered online. It was the longest period Matt had spent confined to one property in his entire life, but he didn’t feel trapped. Quite the opposite in fact. It was liberating.
Danny McGuire had been attempting to contact him frantically, bombarding him with e-mails and calls, but Matt couldn’t bring himself to read or respond to the messages. He’d even stopped responding to calls from his sister, Claire, or the other occasional calls he received from home. Once he opened the door to reality, to life outside the bubble, the idyll would be shattered. And Matt wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Villa Mirage was a world unto itself, an infinitely dazzling miniature ecosystem. Matt and Lisa would work in the morning, Matt (officially at least) on his documentary and Lisa on the mountains of paperwork already being generated by Miles’s estate. Bali might have granted her a respite from the police and the media, but there were still trustees and tax attorneys and mortgage companies to be dealt with, not to mention the shareholders of Miles’s various companies. Luckily, Lisa had excellent secretarial skills. One of the few nuggets of information Matt had managed to glean about her pre-Miles life was that she’d once worked as a paralegal in a lawyers’ office in L.A.
But both Matt and Lisa soon began living for the afternoons, when they would take off and explore Mirage’s limitless delights together. Sometimes Lisa hired local guides to lead them into the thick jungle that bordered the villa’s grounds, a world bursting with exotic and sometimes dangerous life. As the guides pointed out potential dangers—a coral snake here, a green pit viper, or a two-striped telamonia spider there—and educated them about the breathtaking flora, Matt and Lisa listened entranced, like children released into a strange, tropical Narnia. Other times they went fishing in the lagoon, or swimming in one of the deep, volcanic rock pools hidden at the foot of the cliffs. Matt loved to watch Lisa swimming. She was a slight woman, but her slender body was strong and athletic and she fairly glided through the water with all the deft grace of a young otter. There was something else there too, when she swam. Joy. Delight. A lack of inhibition that he rarely saw in her at other times. One afternoon he asked her about it.
“I’ve always loved the water.” Standing on a rock, rubbing her damp hair with a towel, Lisa looked luminous. Her dewy skin glowed like a teenager’s and her eyes sparkled with light and life. “There’s a freedom to it. The silence. The weightlessness. No one can touch you there. No one can hurt you. It’s what I imagine death to be like.”
“Death? That’s a morbid thought, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” She laughed, wrapping the towel around her hips Turkish style. “Not to me. I’ve always seen death as an escape. It doesn’t frighten me.”
Matt had heard people say this before, and had always taken it with a grain of salt. How could anyone not be scared of dying? Surely it was humanity’s most basic instinct to want to survive. Clinging to life was like breathing, a fundamental fact of human nature, a flaw or a strength depending on how you looked at it, that all of us shared. But when Lisa expressed the thought, somehow it was different. He could see in her face that she meant it. There was a strange, fatalistic aura of peace right where the fear should be. He envied her.
“Lucky you,” he said, stuffing his own clothes into a rucksack to take back to the villa. “That must help a lot, I imagine. Coming to terms with Miles’s death.”
Since their first days together, when he’d bombarded her with questions about her marriage and her past and gotten precisely nowhere, Matt had stopped asking Lisa about the murder and her husband. By unspoken mutual consent, Miles Baring’s name was no longer mentioned between them. Hearing it now, Lisa looked stricken.
“Not really,” she said bleakly. “Come on, let’s get inside. I’m cold.”
Matt could have bitten his tongue off. He hated when this pall of sadness came over Lisa, and hated even more when he was the one who cast it. Back in the villa, they dried and dressed and took some hot, sweet tea out onto the veranda. Lisa had changed into cutoff jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Barefoot, with her still-damp hair slick against her face and her knees drawn up to her chest, she looked more like a teenager than a grown woman, never mind a woman who had lived through such tribulations. Matt realized with a jolt that at some point during his long, happy days at Mirage, he had begun to view his life in a new way, as before Lisa Baring and after Lisa Baring. It had happened almost without him realizing it, but he was in love with her.
Before Lisa, Matt had been lost. It wasn’t just Raquel’s decision to leave him, although that blow had certainly hit him hard. It was many things, things he hadn’t had time to process until now, here in the deep peace of the Balinese jungle. His failed career. His adopted dad’s death. Not being able to have children with Raquel. Never knowing Andrew Jakes, the man who had given him life but then abandoned him, apparently without a moment’s regret or remorse. Researching Jakes’s murder and becoming so obsessed with this documentary, Matt now realized, had been his way of detaching from the pain. But Lisa Baring had shown him a better way.
After Lisa, it was as if a weight he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying had been lifted off his shoulders. Matt felt hopeful, happy, alive. Whatever the future held, whatever the outcome of his work with Danny McGuire to track down this elusive killer, being with Lisa made Matt realize that there was a future for him, a future as bursting with possibility as the jungle
all around them was throbbing with life. Increasingly, Matt found himself hoping that his future included the presence of Lisa.
There were problems, however. Nothing physical had yet happened between them. Sometimes Matt thought he could sense her staring at him as he sat at his computer or reading a book on the sofa. But whenever he looked up, her attention was elsewhere. Even so, an unspoken hum of mutual attraction seemed to linger in the air between them.
Last week, out fishing on Mirage’s private lake, Lisa had lost her footing on the bank and Matt instinctively slipped an arm around her waist. Lisa froze. But after a moment’s hesitation she did not object, gradually allowing herself to relax against Matt’s body. It felt wonderful. Matt longed to go further, but he knew better than to rush her.
I have to be patient. Let her come to me. She’s just lost her husband. She’s just been raped.
That was the other problem. Lisa never spoke about the night of Miles’s murder or her rape. As if by refusing to talk about it, she could make it go away. And much to his shame, Matt saw himself colluding in that silence. He wanted to forget the past as well. But this killer was not just a part of the past. He was out there, somewhere, watching and waiting, planning his next kill.
Matt had come to Bali looking for clues, clues that might help him unearth a serial killer, but he’d allowed his love for Lisa and his happiness in her company to distract him. Watching Lisa sip her tea now, he forced himself to remember:
The man I’m looking for raped and terrorized Lisa. If his past crimes are anything to go by, his next step will be to kidnap her. To have her “disappear” like Angela Jakes, Tracey Henley and Irina Anjou.
Lisa was in danger. And Matt still had no idea how, or where or when that danger might strike. The thought crossed his mind that his own prospects looked none too rosy either. This man, whoever he was, had a pretty gruesome track record of dispatching the men involved with his female victims. But it was Lisa’s safety that tortured him inside.
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