No Cure for Love

by Peter Robinson

  “So what’s your interest?” Joe asked finally.

  “Sarah Broughton.”

  Joe nodded. “Right. She found the body. She wouldn’t have been receiving any unwanted attention from warped members of the viewing audience lately, would she?”

  Arvo smiled. “You got it. Nasty letters.”

  Joe cocked a finger at him and clicked his tongue. “I’m not a hotshot detective with RHD for nothing, man.”

  “There’s nothing concrete,” Arvo said. “It’s just—”

  “Too much of a coincidence?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “No,” said Arvo. “People who write weird letters are generally wimps. They’d be no more likely to commit murder than a nun would. But like you said, it’s too much of a coincidence. I have to check it out.”

  Joe nodded. “Uh-huh. Never did trust those nuns,” he said. “Anyway, a team of detectives canvassed the Boulevard strip, and all they could come up with is that a couple of other street kids saw John Heimar getting into a car about eight o’clock on the night he was killed. They figured he’d scored, of course. Needless to say, none of them was especially forthcoming.”

  “Did they get the make?”

  “Yeah. It’s a blue-green-black Ford Chevy convertible sedan pick-up truck from Japan.”

  Arvo laughed. “Okay. Sorry I asked. You said earlier you thought it was a sex crime. Any other evidence yet, apart from the MO?”

  “Some. The kid had been sodomized sometime before death, but there’s no telling when, or how willing he was. And there’s no evidence at all to show that he was forced. Given the victim’s line of business I’d say it’s likely enough he’d been with at least a couple of other chickenhawks earlier that night, wouldn’t you? On the other hand, you sometimes get cases where the john cuts off the guy’s air supply from behind with some sort of ligature while he butt-fucks him. Supposed to be a real turn-on. Something like that could have happened, gone too far, then the john panicked and tried to cover up, make it look like a sex murder. The coroner’s office found traces of semen from two different sources in the anus. Either he hadn’t heard of AIDS or he liked to take risks. Or maybe the rubber had a hole in it.”

  “Was he HIV positive?”

  “Nope. They ran that test pretty quickly.”

  Arvo took a sip of tepid coffee and pulled a face. “What was the time of death?” he asked.

  “Between about eleven that night and two in the morning. Wouldn’t say any closer than that.”

  “That’s three hours after the kid was picked up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Nobody saw him after he got into that unidentified car around eight?”

  “Only the killer.”

  “Any signs of torture?”

  “Nope. Clean as a whistle. Under the sand, the kid was buck naked. Apart from the stab wounds and an old needle-mark or two, his body was in pretty good shape.”

  “Are you running DNA tests on the semen?”

  “Sure. Like I said, they got two different samples already. But you know as well as I do, Arvo, that shit takes time. Especially the way things are backed up right now. Thirty-eight homicides last weekend. Thirty-eight. Can you believe it? You can only push the coroner’s office so hard. Those guys are up to their eyeballs in stiffs. Plus it takes so long for toxicology to get the test results from some of these things.”

  Four businessmen came in, laughing and joking, fresh from the office by the looks of their clothes.

  Joe looked at his watch. Just gone three. “After-work crowd,” he said. “They get in early on a Friday. Sometimes they get here so early they just sort of merge right in with the late-lunch crowd.”

  Arvo laughed.

  “I guess it’s not often you get a homosexual killer writing love letters to a beautiful actress, is it?” Joe asked.

  Arvo shrugged. “Statistically speaking, no.”

  “Fuck statistics.”

  “Still no. Like I said, letter-writers don’t usually do much more than write letters. I’m just poking around. All I’m looking for is some connection between Sarah Broughton and Heimar, and it doesn’t look as if there is one.”

  “If there is, I don’t see it.”

  “Me, neither. What’s your theory?”

  “Sex killer of some kind. Got to be. And he’s so proud of his handiwork he wants people to admire it. Peacock mentality.”

  “Pretty limited audience.”

  Joe shrugged. “Maybe.” Then he paused. “These letters the actress has been getting. Anything there?”

  Arvo shook his head. “I’ve only seen one, and it’s pretty low-level stuff. How did she react at the scene?”

  “As you’d expect. I didn’t get there till later, but according to the first officer she was pretty shaken up.”

  “She a suspect?”

  “Come on, Arvo, what do you take us for? She wouldn’t be in England right now if she was, would she? When they’d got her calmed down, the detectives who caught the squeal had a good look around her place. No blood, nothing. Do you figure the stiff for her pen pal? He comes visiting and she kills him, then cuts him up, buries him under the sand and conveniently finds him on her morning run?”

  Arvo shrugged. “It was worth asking. Weirder things have happened.”

  “True. But the answer’s still no. She’s clean.”

  “Did she see anything?”

  “Nope. Said she might have heard a sound or seen a light in the night, or she might have imagined it. It was later she found the stiff, when she was going for her regular morning run. She says she leaned forward and tugged the arm and . . . well, I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?”

  Suddenly, Joe’s eyes twinkled and he burst into laughter. It sounded like a braying horse. Some of the other drinkers looked over, smiling uneasily. “Hey,” Joe said. “What if the cameras had caught that, huh? TV star bends over to pull this guy up out of the sand and what happens? His fucking arm comes off, that’s what, and she falls flat on her ass holding it out in front of her.”

  Arvo visualized the scene, too, and couldn’t help but laugh with Joe at the farcical absurdity of it. When they had calmed down, Joe knocked back the dregs of his drink and stood up. “Got to go, old buddy,” he said. “Or Mary will have my ass. Booked off early. It’s little Sue’s birthday party today and I promised I’d be there. Six. Can you believe it? Seems only last week she was crawling around on all fours and running through a six-pack of Huggies a day. Anyway, don’t be a stranger.”

  Arvo stood and shook hands. “You, too,” he said. “Any chance of a look at the crime-scene photos?”

  Joe looked at his watch. “Sure, I’ll make a call and have copies sent over. And . . .” Joe paused and turned on his way out. “Keep me informed.” He pointed a finger at Arvo and cocked it. “I mean it.”

  “Will do. And thanks.”

  When Joe had gone, Arvo found he had no desire to stay in the bar any longer. The smoke had thickened since the after-work crowd had started to arrive, and some moron had arranged “Suspicious Minds’ for accordion and strings. Probably made a fortune out of it, too. Welcome to hell.

  He had some leftover pizza and a couple of bottles of Sam Adams lager in the fridge at home, and the previous night he’d set his VCR to tape I Married a Monster From Outer Space. If he hadn’t screwed up on the settings, it should be right there in the machine waiting for him. He’d seen it when he was a kid, but after Nyreen, the title took on a whole new perspective.

  Arvo couldn’t see any link between a homosexual murder and the letters Sarah Broughton had been receiving. Despite the publicity given to exceptions, the rule was that celebrity stalkers were rarely violent; on the other hand, male prostitution was certainly a high-risk profession, AIDS not being the only danger. It attracted more than its fair share of violent weirdos and thrill killers. So John Heimar’s number had come up. As Joe said, that was just his
bad luck.

  But as he walked out onto Broadway, Arvo couldn’t help but wonder. The body had been placed where someone would have the shock of finding it, that was for certain. The killer obviously had a theatrical flair and needed an audience, if only of one. What Arvo had to ask himself was why he had selected that particular stretch of beach, where Sarah Broughton went for her morning run.

  12

  SARAH LAY HALF-ASLEEP LISTENING TO THE seagulls screaming and squawking outside her window. At first, she thought she was still in her own bedroom back at the beach house. Soon she would wake up and the bad dream would be over. When she opened her eyes, though, she felt a momentary panic. Everything was different.

  This room was smaller, for a start, and a thin white radiator under the drawn curtains infused the air with what little warmth it possessed. The tip of Sarah’s nose felt cold in a way it never had in Los Angeles. In the dim light, she could make out cream wallpaper patterned with poppies or red roses, matching the heavy duvet she pulled up to her chin. Her pillow smelled of lavender. Beyond the noise the gulls made, she could hear the sea pounding the wall.

  Then she remembered: she was at the family cottage in Robin Hood’s Bay. It stood at the bottom of the hill, on a row to the left of the main street, and looked out right over the North Sea. That was why her father had wanted it. In clement weather, Sarah knew, Arthur Bolton liked nothing better than to sit in his wheelchair at the bottom of the garden and look out to sea. She fancied that the open horizon somehow helped make up for the years he had spent in the dark, claustrophobic coal mines.

  Everything seemed unfamiliar to Sarah because she had never slept in this room before. The last time she had visited, the two adjacent cottages had not yet been knocked into one and renovated. Though she couldn’t remember the visit at all clearly, she had probably slept downstairs on the sofa-bed, stupefied with Quaaludes and cognac.

  So far, she hadn’t seen either her father or Cathy and Jason. They hadn’t known what time Paula and Sarah would get back from the airport, so they had left a note saying they’d gone to visit a neighbor and wouldn’t be long.

  Sarah had felt so tired that Paula had packed her off to bed immediately with a cup of tea. It was still there on the bedside table, only half drunk. Sarah slid her hand out and touched it. Cold. She huddled under the duvet again and closed her eyes.

  Even though she now knew where she was, Sarah still felt disoriented. Too restless to go back to sleep, she turned over and stretched, arching so her fingers scraped the wall above her. That felt better.

  She pulled back the sheets and went to open the curtains. Outside, it was getting dark. The rain had stopped and the sky looked like a dirty dishrag slashed with charcoal. The slate-colored sea sloshed heavily against the rough stone wall at the bottom of the garden. It was a sea view, all right, but light years away from the one she was used to, where bright sun bleached the vanishing point of water and sky.

  Sarah turned the bedroom light on and took stock of her surroundings. Everything was fresh and clean, of course; that would be Paula’s doing. There was even the old framed print of Atkinson Grimshaw’s Park Row, Leeds 1882 from the old house in Barnsley hanging on the wall opposite her bed. Paula knew Sarah had always loved it for its eerie moon and sky and the cobbles and tramlines all wet and shiny after rain. She must have put it there specially.

  In the small bookcase beside the wardrobe were Sarah’s old books. She hadn’t looked at them for years and hadn’t even known they had survived the move from Barnsley: childhood favorites like Black Beauty and The Secret Garden; Enid Blyton, mostly the Famous Five and the Secret Seven; some girls’-school and nurse stories; and one or two Mills and Boon romances.

  Then came the Romantic poetry of her early teens—Keats, Shelley, Byron—followed by the plays she had read first at home then studied later at university—collections by Shakespeare, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams, along with well-thumbed copies of The Duchess of Malfi, Three Sisters and A Dream Play.

  Hanging from a hook at the back of the door was the red knitted Christmas stocking her mother had made, with her name, Sally, embroidered in white. Paula must have dug it out. Perhaps her family really did want her here for Christmas after all.

  Everything was quiet downstairs. Either they were still out or Paula was hushing everyone up so Sarah could sleep. Time to unpack.

  Sarah hefted her suitcase onto the bed and unfastened it. Clothes and presents spilled out, and there, stuck in among them all, was the letter. She hesitated, then reached out and picked it up. This one had no stamp; it had been delivered by hand.

  Just then, she heard a door bang downstairs, followed by the clamor of children’s voices. Jason called out her name. Paula told him to be quiet. Time to enter into family life again.

  Sarah’s heart leapt into her throat. She had never felt so nervous, even before going on stage for a first night. She looked at the letter again and dropped it back among the pile of clothes, half pleased that she had been interrupted before opening it. After all, she was in England now, thousands of miles away from her problems in LA.

  She pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt, then opened the door and started down the worn stone stairs.

  What she saw made her stop halfway.

  Illuminated by the hall light, a man slumped in a wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs. Beside him, attached to the chair, stood a small tank, like the kind frogmen wear, from which a transparent tube ran to his nostrils. His shoulders sloped and his body looked emaciated under the thick woollen blanket. Bluish flesh sagged and wrinkled over hollow, bony cheeks and scared, bright, feverish eyes looked up at her. Even from halfway upstairs, she could hear the soft hiss of the oxygen and the struggle as he labored for breath.

  White-knuckled, she gripped the banister and took a faltering step forward. “Hello, Father,” she said.

  13

  I HEAR YOUR ACTRESS FOUND A BODY ON THE beach,” Maria said. “Think there’s anything in it?”

  Arvo shook his head. “I doubt it. Just unlucky, I guess. On the other hand . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t like coincidences, that’s all.”

  “So what’s she like?”

  “Who?”

  “You know. The actress. Sarah Broughton.”

  “You watch that show?”

  “Sure do.”

  Arvo shook his head slowly. It was late Friday afternoon, and Maria was sitting opposite him. He hadn’t seen her since the Sandi Gaines intervention. The only other team members in the office were Eric Mettering and Kelly Norris, one of the three females on the unit.

  “Me, too,” Kelly called out from the far hutch. “That Jack Marillo guy’s got a great bod.”

  Maria laughed. “So tell me about her,” she insisted. “What’s she like? In the flesh?”

  In the flesh, Arvo still thought that Maria herself was as desirable a woman as he had ever met, though he hadn’t told her that, and just about the opposite physical type to Sarah Broughton.

  They were different as day and night. Maria’s sexuality was sensual and earthy, while Sarah Broughton’s was more cerebral. While lovemaking with Maria would be joyous and uncomplicated, Arvo imagined, with Sarah it would mean searching for and freeing repressed emotions, finding ways through barriers and other defenses. Maria’s skin would be warm, would offer friction and texture to the touch, he thought, whereas Sarah’s would be as smooth, and possibly as cold, as marble.

  “What kind of question is that?” Arvo asked. “‘What’s she like?’”

  “A pretty simple one, I’d’ve thought,” said Maria. “Is she pretty?”

  “Of course she’s pretty. She’s a TV actress.”

  “They’re not all pretty,” Maria countered. “Especially the Brits. Some of them are downright plain and homely.”

  “They’ve all got crooked teeth,” Kelly chimed in.

  “Okay, so her teeth are a bit crooked,” Arvo said. “So what? So are mine. Does it mean
you can’t be pretty if you’ve got crooked teeth?”

  “You think you’re pretty, Arvo?” Maria asked with a mischievous smile.

  “That’s not what I said. You’re misinterpreting me. What I said was—”

  “I know what you said. So you think she’s pretty?”

  “Sure she’s pretty, in a cool sort of way.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know, she’s blond, pale complexion, has that accent.”

  “You think she’s frigid, is that it?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. Look—”

  “So she’s sexy as well as pretty?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Guess so? Come on, Arvo, you can do better than that.”

  “Okay. Yeah. She’s sexy. All right?”

  “How sexy?”

  “Just sexy.”

  “No need to blush.”

  “I’m not blushing.”

  “Yes you are,” yelled Kelly.

  “What about her personality?” Maria asked.

  “General impressions?”

  “Well you hardly know her intimately. Or do you?”

  “She’s an actress. You know actresses. She was partly in character. The cop she plays.”

  “Anita O’Rourke,” Kelly chipped in again.

  “That’s the one.”

  “So,” Maria went on, “you’re saying you didn’t get a real good sense of her?”

  “She’s very reserved.”

  “Sounds like a typical Brit.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “But I think she’s scared, too.”

  “Maybe she’s got good reason to be. What’s your sense of the guy who’s writing the letters?”

  Arvo thought for a moment, recalling the letter he had been studying earlier. “He sees himself as her long-lost lover, now become her saviour, her rescuer, her knight in shining armor.”

  “Rescuer from what?”

  “From the evils of Hollywood. From Them.”

  “The usual semi-literate diatribe?”