Sextet

by Sally Beauman

  ‘Thalia—I said call the police, not Reuters.’

  ‘Same thing in this city.’

  ‘Thalia, no newspaper would print this stuff.’ Colin gestured towards the sea of papers. ‘They couldn’t print it—and they wouldn’t. Why would they? King isn’t sane, that’s obvious. Who would print this kind of sick allegation?’

  ‘You’ve been reading the wrong newspapers.’ Thalia gave him a derisive look. ‘And don’t make the mistake of thinking King’s just some crazy fantasist; he isn’t. He likes to mix a little fact in with his fictions. You think this would have obsessed Tomas the way it has if it was all sick lies from start to finish? No way. King’s better than that, and a whole lot smarter. It’s because Tomas knew King was telling the truth about his activities, that he thought he just might be telling the truth about Natasha as well.’

  Colin felt that sick unease begin to rise in his stomach again. He picked up a scrap of one of the letters, then quickly let it fall.

  ‘He couldn’t have believed this—surely he couldn’t have believed this…’ he began.

  Thalia gave him a tired look. ‘I think he believed some of it, some of the time. Maybe he even wanted to believe it. I’m not arguing with you about this; I’m getting rid of this stuff, the tapes and the letters, so you’ve got a straight choice: either you help me or you go.’

  She sat down at the table as she said this, as if suddenly exhausted, and ran her hands through her frizz of grey hair. Colin hesitated. His instinct was still to call the police, to believe that they could bring order, justice and due punishment to whatever crime, or crimes, had been committed here. He looked at the blood splashed on the floor and the sea of incriminatory paper.

  ‘Let me check the bedroom,’ he said. ‘I’ll switch that tape off, then I’ll decide.’

  He crossed to the far end of the loft, opened the door in that bare, brutal brick wall, and moved into the corridor, feeling for the light switch. The ugly neon flickered into life; he could hear a low; level, Midwestern voice, speaking with a pedantic insistence, as soon as he opened the door.

  He paused in the bedroom doorway, feeling suddenly afraid, watching the small red warning light come on above the bed. The room was tidy and apparently untouched. That brownish bed cover was uncrumpled; the pillows bore the faint impress of a head, but might have been that way before.

  Although the havoc of the outer room was not repeated here, he could sense disturbance in the air. It emanated from the tape recorder and the quiet murmuring voice, and it made him feel he was breathing in contagion; he could sense it as soon as he entered, some toxicity breeding here.

  He moved across to the surgical table and the large, outdated machine. He began to fumble in the half light with the machine’s unfamiliar switches and dials. ‘Hot, hot and moist,’ said a voice, very loudly, right in his ear; he started back, realizing that by mistake he had turned up the volume control.

  He backed away to the door, trying to close his mind to this spillage of words. He found the light switch and depressed it, but no light came on. He returned to the machine and bent over it, his hands now unsteady, trying to make sense of its battery of controls. He began pressing switches at random, but the twin spools continued to rotate and the voice continued speaking. ‘Naked in bed,’ Colin heard. He turned another dial and the voice sank to a whisper, a whisper he found more insidious and more discomfiting. ‘Absolute lust, shall I tell you what she did next?’ whispered the voice, and to his horror Colin found he wanted to know.

  He slammed his palm against a whole row of switches, then, when that produced no effect, began a frantic search for the mains’ plug. The machine’s cables snaked away from the surgical table and disappeared under the bed. The electric point seemed to be at the head of the bed, under the Dead Heat altarpiece. He began to push and pull at the bed in order to reach behind it, but the bed, monstrously large, monstrously heavy, mounted on some box-like plinth, refused to move.

  Abandoning this, he straightened, stared at the machine and found himself mesmerized. ‘Such dexterity…were satisfied…the supervisor grossly…swallow them up.’ Colin watched the tape wind from the right spool to the left. The room seemed to be growing hotter and hotter; he could feel himself being lured down some whispering corridor of words, around this corner and into room after hidden room.

  He knew that the words were affecting him; his body began to stir in response to the description of acts he abhorred. He felt a giddiness, a compulsion to continue listening, then the voice made a small mistake: ‘She loved it,’ it pronounced with a sigh, and Colin’s senses returned, for love was not the emotion being described here.

  A sudden cleansing anger surged through his body. Reaching across, he grasped hold of the tape and wrenched it out of the machine. It coiled about his wrist and voided itself with a high-pitched squeaky scream. He pulled harder, and yards of the stuff spilled out like entrails; he caught hold of the machine, which proved immensely heavy, picked it up bodily and flung it down. Its casing cracked open, sparks flew, there was a blue, scorching, flashing tongue of light, a smell of burning, then a fizzling sound.

  Colin returned to the main room of the loft. Thalia, who was kneeling on the floor, stuffing handfuls of papers in boxes, looked up at him.

  ‘You’ll help me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve already started. I’ll find a trash can,’ Colin replied.

  They worked side by side, in virtual silence, for several hours. Shortly before six, Thalia telephoned Mario to cancel that morning’s meeting and to inform him that Tomas Court had returned to Montana; Mario received this information without surprise.

  Half an hour later, when the first thin light began to tint the sky, their task was completed. The bags and boxes of toxic waste, as Colin now thought of them, were stacked at the door awaiting disposal. Thalia was about to call the clinic, to check on Tomas Court’s progress; Colin, exhausted and troubled, was standing at the tall loft windows, watching a slow Manhattan dawn. A thin cat, he saw, was emerging from an alleyway; he watched it nose the trash cans. He was trying to think of Lindsay, and finding he could not do so here, when the telephone rang.

  ‘Tomas never picks up. He always lets the answer-phone field the calls.’ Thalia looked at him uncertainly. ‘But it could be the clinic…’

  Colin crossed to her side, feeling a sudden unease. They both waited as the telephone rang three times. The intercept kicked in. ‘Leave any message after the tone,’ said a tinny mechanical voice; silence ensued. Thalia gave a nervous gesture; Colin leaned close to the answering machine. He thought he could hear breathing, then a strange rhythmic sighing sound, like the sea. When the now familiar Midwestern voice finally spoke, it startled him.

  ‘Testing, testing, testing,’ said the voice. ‘Just checking your machine, checking your machine…’

  XI

  ‘NOT A NICE PLACE, that labyrinth,’ Markov was saying to Lindsay, at 9.23 the same morning. ‘All those sacrifices, Lindy. A definite reek of blood and bone. Even I could sense it, and Jippy didn’t like it at all…’

  Not for the first time in her life, Lindsay cursed Markov’s addiction to the telephone. Since 8.55, the entire world had decided to call her. First it had been Pixie; then, on the dot of nine, Gini Lamartine, wanting to cancel Thanksgiving in Washington (‘I’ll call you back,’ Lindsay had cried); next, Max had called and received very short shrift. There was then two minutes of agonizing silence, before the next caller proved to be that mumbling person from Lulu Sabatier’s office, wanting to speak to Ms Drummond urgently.

  ‘She’s dead,’ Lindsay cried. ‘She died suddenly. Go away.’

  At 9.15, it had been Markov. Lindsay had already had four minutes on the subject of the lunch he and Jippy had just finished—retsina and moussaka; delicious, but Jippy had no appetite at all—and four minutes on the palace of Knossos; she did not intend to have any more.

  ‘Markov,’ she interrupted, ‘will you get off this line? I’m not intere
sted in minotaurs. I told you, I’m waiting for a very important call.’

  ‘You’re insensitive, you know that, Lindy?’ Markov yawned. ‘Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, darling, this is your friend calling you from the other side of the world. How’s Gotham City? Whose call?’

  ‘I’m hanging up, Markov. I’m hanging up in twenty seconds…’

  ‘Tell me, Lindy, just to set my heart at rest, sweetling—this call wouldn’t be from a certain Rowland McGuire, would it? You remember him? The answer to every maiden’s prayer? Otherwise known as Mr Blind, Mr Unobtainable and Mr Conspicuously Bad News?’

  ‘No, it damn well isn’t. It’s—it’s work, that’s all. Go away, Markov. Ten seconds and counting…’

  ‘Jippy wants a word.’

  Jippy might have wanted a word, but as usual he had difficulty in pronouncing it. Desperate now, Lindsay stared at the hands of her bedside clock; she could hang up on Markov without compunction, but not Jippy—that would be too cruel. She listened to Jippy fight sounds; she saw his gentle, steady, brown-eyed gaze, that expression of dog-like fidelity; she remembered the last time she had spoken to him and felt the brush of unease. It took Jippy one and a half minutes to utter a sound.

  ‘H-h-hell,’ he said finally. Lindsay waited for the last ‘o’ of the greeting; it never came.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ After a pause, Markov came back on line. ‘I told you, Jippy’s upset. He’s picking up some baad vibrations here…’

  ‘Where?’ Lindsay asked, jolted by Jippy’s truncated greeting and giving a small shiver. ‘Where? In Knossos? In Crete, you mean?’

  ‘Kind of.’ There was a pause; some whispering. ‘Anyway, he sends love. He says, take care.’

  ‘Listen Markov, I send you both my love too, but I’m hanging up, I have to—’

  ‘No problems. We’ll see you soon anyway. Back for Thanksgiving in Gotham City, that’s the plan. I might go for a swim now. The wine-dark sea beckons…Give my fondest love to Rowland, darling. Oh, and here’s un petit message for him. Tell him, he who hesitated has lost. Tell him, serves him right, because if he’d listened to me years ago, he wouldn’t be up shit creek without a compass now. And tell him Jippy says—’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Jippy says, Frailty thy name is woman.’ Markov laughed. ‘Bye, mia cara,’ he added, and with his usual annoying timing, rang off.

  Lindsay glared at the telephone. The trouble with gay men, she told herself, was that they did not understand women at all. They might like to think they did, but they were invariably wrong.

  Minutes ticked. Mr Blind, Mr Unobtainable did not call. She would give him another five minutes, Lindsay decided, at 9.40, and then she would leave.

  It had taken Colin and Thalia a long time to load all the bags and boxes of toxic waste into her station-wagon. Thalia announced that when she had disposed of them she would be going out to the clinic to see Tomas Court; she would call Colin at the Conrad later that day.

  ‘You know that ex-wife of his is trying to buy an apartment there?’ she said, standing arms akimbo, out of breath, next to the open door of her car.

  Colin felt as if he were drowning, possibly in un-happiness, or confusion, or slime; he focused on her question with difficulty.

  ‘I know. It seemed better not to mention it—’

  ‘Wise,’ said Thalia. ‘With Tomas, the art is knowing when to speak and when to keep your mouth shut. He respects silence.’ She frowned. ‘Have you met Natasha?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, when you do, you’ll see. She perfected the art of silence a long time ago.’

  Her tone was pejorative. ‘Perfected?’ Colin said.

  ‘Sure. In her case, silence can be a weapon, you know.’ She made no further comment. Colin watched her car disappear. He stood in the deserted street, looking at darkened buildings; a steady rain had begun to fall. It was still early, not seven yet; the day seemed reluctant to begin, and the city was unusually silent. Distant, and filtered by buildings, he could just hear the growl of traffic, as if some somnolent leviathan sensed dawn and stirred.

  He felt light-headed and disoriented from lack of sleep. He knew there was a cross-street less than two blocks away where he could pick up a cab, yet felt he had no idea which way to turn. He was tired, yet hyper-alert; he felt dirty and anxious to wash off all trace of King’s communications from his hands; he felt afraid, and had done ever since he heard that low, oddly mocking voice come through on the answering machine.

  ‘Testing, testing, testing.’ He glanced over his shoulder, swung around, suddenly sensing someone behind him, as close as a shadow. There was no-one there; the street was empty. From some domain beyond the stacks of trash cans, a cat yowled.

  He had to walk, he discovered, when he had already covered two blocks. He had to walk, move his body, breathe air; he had no wish to wait for a cab, or to be in a cab, or to have to speak to anyone, even to give directions. He had to walk and force the night’s events out of his mind. He paused, looking back at the towers of the financial district to his south, where the light was beginning to crest the money citadels with gold. Then he set off north, swinging his arms, breathing in carbon monoxide as if it were the freshest mountain air. He skirted Little Italy, plunged on north through the charms of the West Village, and found himself in the Garment District, where the trucks were already drawn up, disgorging rails of clothes. It was winter and it was cold, yet he was pushing past diaphanous summer dresses. He brushed against something gauzy, thought of Lindsay whose professional territory this was, and felt a longing to be with her so fierce and so sudden it was like being punched in the heart.

  This was where his footsteps had been leading him, he realized. Lindsay could heal him; she could rid him of this sensation—which he still had, long after leaving the chaos of Court’s loft—that he was treading on broken glass.

  But he could not see Lindsay as he was now. He felt dirty, coated with grime, besmirched; he could not rid himself of the sensation that Joseph King’s words had got under his fingernails and were adhering to his hair. Two men, he felt, had stood in Tomas Court’s bedroom a few hours before, and two men had confronted that tape recorder. One, the Colin he recognized and thought he knew, had wanted to silence that voice; the other, some dopplegänger, some other Colin whom he loathed and feared, liked the voice and its story. It was familiar to him, as if he and not King had determined it; he knew every twist of its plot, longed to hear its climaxes and saw, with a dark and resonant pleasure, how it must inevitably end. Which man had failed to find the switch-off mechanism? Colin thought now, quickening his pace—and was he entirely sure which of these two selves was drawing him northwards to Lindsay now?

  He crossed 42nd Street, that Manhattan divide, and pressed on, the rain falling more heavily now. He was on Fifth, and approaching a gilded area of the city, although he scarcely saw the lighted windows and was blind to their promise of luxury. He did not see the furs, the exquisite shoes, or the jewels; he did not see the temptations arrayed for Thanksgiving, or sense the allure of commerce’s pre-Christmas display. Blind to Saks, to Tiffany’s and to Bergdorf s, he fixed his eyes on the bare trees of Central Park up ahead, crossed by the Plaza, caught the smell of the poor blinkered horses who waited there to ferry tourists, even in winter, even in rain, and finally glimpsed, up ahead of him, the dark, squat bulk of the Conrad, the bellying of its rounded turrets and the expectancy of its many dormer eyes.

  How many blocks had he walked? Fifty? Sixty? More? He had lost count long ago. He stumbled into Emily’s apartment, drenched to the skin. There Frobisher, who had known him all his life, fussed over him and exclaimed, but he brushed aside these ministrations; all he could think about was a bath, a shower, the cleansing effect of water and the urgency of seeing Lindsay. Pushing past Frobisher, he was waylaid by Emily, who seemed to be in a great state of excitement about something. She bombarded him with sentences; she was getting ready for the crucial board meeting;
she couldn’t find her pearls; she had discovered she was wearing her pearls; she had already spoken to Biff and Henry Foxe on the telephone, and something was going on…

  ‘Going on? Going on?’ Colin did not know what his aunt was talking about; nor, at that moment, did he care.

  ‘What time is it? What time is it?’ he said over his shoulder, hurrying on down the corridor.

  ‘Wheels within wheels,’ he heard her call after him. ‘Wheels; and I can darned well hear them turning. Frobisher, Frobisher, which purse shall I take? The lizard, or the crocodile?’

  Colin slammed his door on her agitations. He went to look at his watch, a twenty-first birthday present from his father, and found he was not wearing it. He began on a frantic search, on his chest of drawers, bedside table, on the floor. Then he remembered, felt in the pocket of his coat, felt in the pocket of his masterly suit and discovered it. He peered at its dial in disbelief. Past nine? How could it be past nine? What had happened to the hours?

  He plunged across to the telephone and dialled the Pierre.

  ‘I have to see you,’ he said. ‘Lindsay—I have to see you this morning, now. Can you wait for me? I’ll—I have to—I’ll be with you within the hour

  He thought she said yes, she would wait. He put down the phone, turned on the shower and started pulling off his clothes. Then he realized he was uncertain what she had said. Was it yes? Was it no? Had a time been mentioned? He dived back to the phone. He punched in the numbers. It rang through to Lindsay’s room, his watch told him, at precisely 9.45. Lindsay answered on the first ring.