No Cure for Love

by Peter Robinson

  “Is Ellie Huysman still around?” Arvo asked.

  “Moved to Canada late last year, just after she introduced me to Sally. Said she couldn’t stand living in LA one more minute. Not that I blame her, some days. I mean, we got a few problems here, right? But I ask you, fucking Canada? Anyway, she lives in Toronto now. She’s still in the business. Apparently they make movies up there in the snow, too.”

  “You got her number?”

  “Sure.” Stuart pulled a small address book from his pocket and gave Arvo a number with a 416 area code. “She’ll be able to tell you a lot more than I can about Sarah,” he said. “Like I said, they’re old friends. Go way back.”

  “What does Karen think about your relationship with Sarah?”

  Stuart narrowed his eyes. “I know what you’re getting at, Arvo,” he said, “but forget it, there’s nothing like that between us at all. Never was. Sarah’s special. It’s like she’s family.”

  “Karen goes along with this?”

  “Karen adores her.”

  That satisfied Arvo for the moment. He had met Karen a year ago at a party Stuart had thrown. She was a strong-willed, intelligent woman about twenty years younger than Stuart, and she had given up a promising acting career for her husband and family. She and Sarah would be about the same age, Arvo calculated, around thirty-four. If Karen accepted Sarah, that was a good enough character reference for him.

  They leaned on the railing and looked out over the ruffled ocean. A smell of fresh-brewed coffee drifted over from a waterfront café and mingled with ozone on the light breeze. Perfect, Arvo thought. Just enough glare to make you put on your shades. Warm, but not so you’d start sweating. There was one more possibility he had to pursue with Stuart.

  “Right now Sarah’s hot property, isn’t she?” he asked.

  “Up and coming. This series is really putting her on the map. And real quick. We’ve got movies lined up. Real movies. Maybe Merchant-Ivory. You know, all those English country houses and big lawns in the mist and rain. The real thing, not just Hollywood made-for-TV crapola, though there’ll be some of those, too. Bread-and-butter shit.”

  “Can you think of any reason why someone might want to sabotage her career before it’s even got off the ground?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m saying maybe somebody’s playing games with her, trying to freak her.”

  “Oh, come on, Arvo. That’s crazy.”

  “No crazier than any other possibility. No matter what you read in papers or see on the screen, there aren’t psychopaths lurking around every street corner. But maybe there is someone who hates Sarah Broughton so much he wants to pull the plug on her career.”

  “Like that cheerleader thing, where the girl’s mother tried to have the competitor’s mother killed just to put the kid off her stride?”

  “Could be. She must have beaten people out to get the part.”

  “Sure, but . . . No, no, I can’t see it.”

  “If Sarah’s a little fragile to start with, you can see how someone might think that sending her crazy letters like that could send her over the edge.”

  “Not to mention finding a dismembered body practically right in front of her house?”

  “That too.”

  Stuart rubbed his chin. “You’re saying that the letters, the love stuff, might just be a way for someone to get at her? That whoever is doing it is crazy in some other way from the way he makes it seem?”

  Arvo laughed. “You could put it like that. Sometimes crazy people are clever enough to pretend to be crazy in a different way. People read about stalkers in the newspapers all the time. They’re probably easy enough to imitate. We’ve had at least five false-victim cases. Maybe this is just the other side of the coin, a false-obsessive case. Do you know anything about Sarah’s private life that might help me pin someone down?”

  “Far as I can tell, her private life is very private these days, and that means as in by herself private. I know it might seem crazy to you, her being a beautiful Hollywood celebrity and all, but she’s kept to herself that way ever since I’ve known her. No drugs, no wild orgies, no tabloid headlines. This woman is squeaky clean. Christ, she hardly even fucking drinks.”

  Stuart paused. Arvo looked out to sea and saw a large oil-tanker drifting across the horizon. From an open window across the street, he could hear Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

  “She buries herself in her work,” Stuart went on. “I’m telling you, this lady is different. Has to be or this town would’ve chewed her up and spit her out by now. She’s not impressed by us. She’s just not your typical asshole star. When she’s not working, she just wants solitude, peace and quiet.”

  Arvo looked around. “Hell of a place to come for that.”

  Stuart scratched the side of his neck. “Fuck, don’t I know it. But for Chrissake, Arvo, the last guy she was in love with OD’d outside a nightclub. That’s gotta have some effect on a person’s psyche. Maybe work helps keep her mind off things she’d rather not think about. I don’t know. I’m no shrink. But these letters and now this murder . . . Maybe you’re right. If he keeps this up, it might just send her over the edge. Tough or not, there’s only so much a person can take.”

  “I’m looking for a name, anything, just somewhere to start,” said Arvo. “You know as well as I do that these guys usually haven’t met their victims. They watch them on TV or at the movies and think they’re getting personal messages over the airwaves. Then they start stalking them, find out where they live, get hold of their addresses and phone numbers. It’s not difficult. You can buy them along with the map to the stars’ houses on Sunset Boulevard. But if our man really does know Sarah Broughton, whether he’s a true stalker or just someone out for revenge or sabotage, that could give us an edge.”

  Stuart gave a little shiver. “Yeah, I know.”

  “So back to my question. Do you know of anyone she associates with who gives you any cause for concern? Friend? Colleague?”

  Stuart chewed his lower lip as he thought. “Shit, Arvo,” he said finally. “Like I told you, this town is so full of loony tunes I wouldn’t know where to start. And I’m just talking about people I’ve seen around, you know. People on the show.”

  “Other actors?”

  “Yeah. And some of the crew. They’ve got a cameraman I swear’s the fucking image of Charlie Manson, but everyone tells me he’s a harmless whale-hugging vegan, not to mention one of the best damn cameramen in the business.” Stuart shrugged. “I guess I can’t really answer your question.”

  “Can you get me a list of all the people she works with and comes in contact with at the studio?”

  “Sure I can.”

  “At least that’s a start. Have you heard of this Justin Mercer, that old boyfriend she mentioned?”

  “I know the name. Why?”

  “You’ve got plenty of contacts in the business, so maybe you can find out where he is these days.”

  “I guess I could do that.”

  “What about Jack Marillo, the co-star?”

  “They’re pretty good friends.”

  “Just friends?”

  “That’s right.” Stuart lowered his voice. “Just between you and me, Jack’s queer as a duck. Nice guy, though.” He looked at his watch. “Sorry Arvo, but I gotta go now. Karen’s expecting me. Got people coming. Fucking holidays, huh?”

  Arvo nodded. He had almost forgotten it was December 22. He made a few notes in a tiny, spider-trail hand that no one could read but himself, then moved away from the railing.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “I don’t know where we’re going with this, but I’ll stay in touch.”

  “No problem.” Stuart shook hands and walked down to the nearest cross-light.

  As Arvo walked toward his car, a bum detached himself from the greenery and stuck his hand out. Arvo gave him a buck.

  “Merry Christmas,” said the bum.

  16

&n
bsp; ON SATURDAY MORNING, SARAH WALKED HALFWAY to Whitby and back along the beach. She had spent much of last night unable to sleep, thinking about the letter. It so obviously admitted to the murder that she couldn’t simply overlook it. She knew she would have to do something soon. Like a bad tooth or a lump in your breast, you could ignore it for a while, but it wouldn’t go away. She had been good at procrastinating in her life. Too damn good.

  The problem was that she didn’t know whether she should phone the detectives in Los Angeles and tell them everything now or let it wait till she got back.

  Finally, distance helped her decide on the latter. What good would it do anyway? She didn’t know who the letter-writer was. Besides, surely now that he had murdered someone, the police would have forensic evidence to go on? By the time she got back, they probably wouldn’t need her. She would hang on to the letter, of course, and give it to them later—it might be useful as evidence—but beyond that, she didn’t see how she could help.

  Also, if she phoned, they might send the local bobby round to put her on the next plane back to LA, and she would miss Christmas with her family. Just when she felt she was making some progress.

  A bitter wind blew off the North Sea. Bundled up in a shirt and sweater under her down jacket, a woolly hat, mittens and earmuffs, Sarah didn’t feel too cold. The sky was as gray as used dishwater, but now and then the clouds would break for a moment and a shaft of sunlight would shoot through and dance on the pewter sea, reminding her of the calm after a storm.

  Behind her, the whitewashed, red-tiled cottages seemed piled on top of one another like children’s playing-bricks, huddled together in crooked, cobbled alleys higgledy-piggledy fashion. The village straggled down a steep hill to the sea in much the same way as the ones on the Greek islands that Sarah had visited with Gary. A small church perched on top of the cliffs, and even though it wasn’t Sunday, Sarah could hear children’s voices singing “Away in a Manger.”

  She had forgotten how unusual the geology was around the bay. There wasn’t much sand, only the curved layers of dark, barnacle-encrusted rock, which looked like a slice through an enormous onion, or a giant scalloped seashell embedded in the shore. The grooves showed where the waves had eroded the older rocks more quickly than the bands of limestone and ironstone between them. It was a great place for fossil hunters, and it also created numerous rock-pools where Sarah stopped to watch tiny crabs scuttle beneath the pellucid water.

  Out to sea, Sarah could see a ship with white sails flapping in the wind. She shivered, imagining what it would be like out on the North Sea today in a sailboat. She pulled her jacket more snugly round her neck and carried on walking. The wind whistled around her earmuffs.

  When she arrived back at the harbor, she walked up the ramp to the street. It was just after noon. Instead of returning to the cottage, she decided to call at the pub where Paula worked and give her sister a surprise.

  There weren’t many people in the public bar, but when Sarah walked in, what conversation there was stopped at once. Even the clack of dominoes ceased. The only sound came from a radio playing an old pop song somewhere in the back. Sarah recognized it: Susan Maugham singing “Bobby’s Girl.”

  At first, the reaction she got reminded her of the opening scene of An American Werewolf in London, where the young tourists get lost in the Yorkshire Dales and go into an isolated pub to ask their way. She could see the grizzled, sea-leathered, wind-reddened faces trying to place her. She smiled and said hello to everyone, then walked toward the bar.

  Paula came through from the lounge and said, “Sal! So you’ve finally decided to grace us with your presence, after all?”

  “I thought I’d drop by for a quick one, yes,” said Sarah, taking off her mittens and rubbing her hands. “It’s cold out there.”

  “Not half as cold as it will be in a day or two, lass,” said one of the drinkers behind her. Then they all laughed.

  “This is my sister, Sally,” Paula said to all and sundry. “You know, the famous actress. Calls herself Sarah Broughton now.” She tilted her head, put a finger to the tip of her nose and turned it up.

  They all nodded shyly and said how d’you do, then went back to their dominoes and muffled conversations. Sarah doubted if any of them watched her show on television. Besides, she was getting sick of this star business Paula kept going on about. She wasn’t a star; she was a supporting actress on a network drama.

  Still, she supposed that in a village like Robin Hood’s Bay, she would have to accept that she was a star.

  She unzipped her jacket and sat on a stool at the bar. It was a long time since she had been in a real English pub, and she took in the rows of unfamiliar bottles, the mirrors and brass rails. There were plenty of imitations in Los Angeles, but nothing quite like the real thing, with its bags of pork rinds and roasted salted peanuts, its upside-down bottles in the racks with optics attached, stone-flagged floor and roaring fire in the hearth.

  “What’ll you have?” Paula asked. “Whatever it is, the first one’s on the house.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have a whisky, please.”

  “Good idea,” said Paula “Summat to warm the cockles of your heart.”

  Paula handed her the glass and Sarah sipped. It burned all the way down her throat and spread a warm glow in her stomach.

  She hadn’t been paying attention to the radio, but at that moment, Gary Knox came on singing “Blue Eyes, Black Heart,” his biggest commercial success and his least favorite song.

  Sarah turned pale and almost dropped her glass.

  When Paula realized what had happened, she went into the back. A few seconds later the song stopped and another station came on: an innocuous Whitney Houston number, this time.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Sarah said quietly to Paula when she came back. “But thank you.”

  “Think nowt of it. Maybe one day you’ll tell me about him?”

  Sarah managed a weak smile. “Maybe one day, yes.” She had heard only a snatch of the song, of Gary’s distinctive voice—like honeyed gravel, a poetic reviewer had once written—but it was enough to bring his image back to her mind’s eye.

  TALL, THIN, stooped, dark-haired and hollow-cheeked, with a lock of hair constantly falling over his right eye and a distant, crooked smile, he had always looked the way she imagined one of the Romantic poets might look after he had been up all night grappling with a particularly recalcitrant sonnet and a bottle of laudanum. Young Coleridge, perhaps, with feverish opium eyes and mussed-up hair, and that distracted look, as if he were hearing and seeing things no one else could. And, like many a Romantic poet, Gary had died young.

  She had tried to imagine Gary’s death many times, how he had faced it. Many of his songs were about death; it was a subject he had thought intensely about since adolescence. She had recognized a kind of death-wish in much of his drug use and recklessness, a sort of cocking one’s hat against the grim reaper and saying, come on, catch me if you can.

  As far as Sarah had heard, Gary had simply dropped dead on La Brea after leaving a nightclub with a group of friends. The autopsy had revealed a lethal mixture of cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, LSD, alcohol and barbiturates. His heart had, quite literally, just stopped beating. Had he had time in the moment of his death to savor the experience that had fascinated him so much in his life? Sarah didn’t know, and never would.

  Their life together was still something of a blur. Of course, she remembered the early days: the party where they met in Camden Town, and how they walked the quiet London streets all night talking; the sunny idyll on the Greek island of Santorini, all vivid blues and whites, when Gary was writing the songs for what was to be his last album; the frustrations of studio work; the tour.

  It was crazy from the start. Pushed by the record company to promote the new album when he was still exhausted from its creation and production, Gary set out for a mammoth US and Canadian tour with the band. Sarah went along for the ride.

  And what a ride it was
.

  She could only remember patches of the chaos: backstage arguments, smelly tour buses, short, gut-churning air hops. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago. The names sped by and meant nothing; she saw nothing but hotel rooms and concert halls. Half the time she didn’t even know whether she was in the USA or Canada.

  Gary was too sick from drugs to perform in Omaha, and he collapsed onstage in Dallas. The fans loved it. After only a couple of days’ rest, the band hit the West Coast and life became a nonstop party tinged with mayhem and madness. Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, picking up groupies and hangers-on all the way like a snowball picked up snow going down a hill. The further south they got, the more Sarah’s memory started to fail her.

  Somewhere along the line, Gary had changed. He was pushing himself at an insane pace, drunk and stoned or coked-out all the time, almost as if he were running headlong to embrace death. There were no rules; nothing was sacred; everything was permitted. Total derangement of the senses. Well, Sarah had read Rimbaud, too, and look what happened to him.

  At first she wanted to know why, what was wrong, but he wouldn’t talk to her about anything. They didn’t even make love. When he was capable, he suggested threesomes with poxy groupies or all-out gang-bangs with the whole band. When she refused, he ridiculed her. Maybe she didn’t always refuse; she couldn’t remember. But something had driven her over the edge; something had given her the courage or fear to walk out and salvage what little self-respect she could.

  But until then, hurt and humiliated day after day, she had snorted coke to get up, though it no longer made her feel good, and she took booze and ’ludes to get her to sleep. Ecstasy in between. She liked the downers best. ’Ludes or nembies, it didn’t really matter.

  After a couple of bad LSD trips, one of them a terrifying nightmare in Tijuana, where she was almost raped by a half-crazed local pimp, whom Gary’s entourage had adopted for the night, she stopped taking hallucinogens altogether. Life had become hallucinatory enough without them. Everything was crumbling, falling apart, until that one day when she just walked out. She felt that she had run so far and so fast with Gary she had left herself behind.