by Peter James
So why had he done what he had?
Why?
She was beautiful. An English rose. A princess. His brain was a kaleidoscope of memories. She could eat anything and she never put on weight. She loved food. Grilled Dover soles a yard long. Hunks of rare steak smothered in onions. Great big sticky doughnuts filled with custard cream. He remembered on their honeymoon when she’d rammed a massive doughnut into his mouth, then licked the sugar off his lips, all the time laughing and scolding him as if he were a child.
Dead.
Trapped beside him in the wreckage of the car, broken and bleeding and inanimate. The airbag lying limp like some grotesque parody of a spent condom. The bloodied face of the dead man in the van that they had hit head on, staring accusingly out through the crazed glass of the windscreen, while the firemen sawed their way in and the crowd stood around gawping.
yourfault . . . yourfault . . . yourfault
Memories he did not want to have, but which he needed to confront.
Every day, every night, his mind returned to that accident. A safe door had locked shut in his brain. Inside it were a few seconds of his life, twenty, maybe thirty, in which his whole world had changed. He could not get to them, could not find the key, or the combination, that would unlock that door.
Once, when things had been good, they used to have those intense conversations lovers have over a bottle of wine or curled up in bed, and often they’d talk about death and how they’d cope if one of them lost the other. Katy always said it would make her sad to think that if she died he might never be happy again, and she’d made him promise faithfully that he would move on, find someone else, start a new life.
Now that generosity of spirit was twisting him up inside as he looked at Amanda Capstick’s business card lying on his desk: 20-20 Vision Productions Ltd. Amanda Capstick. Producer.
Then he looked again at the Times obituary. Gloria Lamark.
An overdose of drugs . . .
He almost knew it by heart now.
Gloria Lamark, movie actress, died from an overdose of drugs in London on 9 July, aged 69. She was born in Nottingham on 8 August, 1928.
A leading actress in the 1950s, hailed by critics as Britain’s Brigitte Bardot, although in many respects a far more accomplished actress, her numerous roles included The Arbuthnot File, directed by Orson Welles, Race of The Devils, directed by Basil Reardon, Storm Warning, directed by Carol Reed, and her most successful film, Wings of the Wild opposite Ben Gazzara. Her first stage appearance was aged three at the Nottingham Playhouse in Mother Goose. Her husband, German industrialist Dieter Buch, died in 1967. She is survived by her son, Thomas.
Then, as if it would ease his guilt not to have the paper in front of him, he slipped it into a drawer. This was behaviour wholly contrary to the advice he gave his patients. Confront your problems, your inadequacies, your fears, your demons, your monsters. Don’t file them away in a drawer.
An overdose of drugs.
It happened to every psychiatrist, although that knowledge did not make it any easier. And he’d never particularly liked the woman, but that made no difference to his distress. His job was to help people, not to sit in judgement of them. And he had failed.
And the worst of it was that he knew exactly why he had failed. He’d taken a gamble he should never have taken. Gloria Lamark had not been up to it.
He removed his glasses and buried his head in his hands. Oh, God, how the hell could I have been so stupid?
His phone rasped. He picked it up and heard Thelma’s voice.
‘Shall I send Mrs Kazan in now?’
‘A couple more minutes,’ he said.
He looked again at Amanda Capstick’s card, and thought of her smiling at him through the glass control-room window. The warmth she had radiated.
Keeping his eyes well clear of Katy’s photograph, he dialled the number. A telephonist put him on hold, then Amanda was on the line. She sounded pleased to hear him. ‘You were great,’ she said. ‘Last night, on the programme. I was so impressed!’
‘Oh – uh – right – thanks!’
‘No, really, you were so good! We’re going to include a segment for sure.’
‘I’m delighted,’ he said. ‘Uh – look – um – listen,’ he was feeling swelteringly hot suddenly, ‘I – I was given two tickets for the Globe Theatre, next Thursday evening. To see Measure for Measure. I – I just wondered if you’d been there? Whether it would interest you?’
She hadn’t been there, she told him. And yes, it would interest her hugely. She sounded genuinely delighted to have been asked. And she’d seen a televised version, she said, but she’d never seen the play performed live.
Michael replaced the receiver, elated. He’d done it. They had a date!
Seven whole days away, but that didn’t matter. For the first time in three years he had something to look forward to.
Thelma buzzed him again, the phone rasping away urgently.
But now not even Thelma mattered.
Chapter Twelve
‘Tina, look, I want to show you! You’re in the Evening Standard!’
Thomas Lamark leaned over the operating table and held the front page in front of Tina Mackay’s closed eyes.
Her face was pale. Dark rings around her eyes. Blood dribbled from her mouth. She didn’t look good.
She hadn’t made the front-page splash, Ulster was the lead story, but the only photograph was Tina Mackay’s face.
EDITOR – KIDNAP FEARS GROW.
‘I’m the only person in the world who knows where you are, Tina. How do you feel about that?’
There was no reply.
He checked her blood pressure: it was very low. Her pulse was racing: 120. There was still only a small amount of urine in the catheter bag. He hadn’t given her fluids or food since she had been here.
How did I forget to do that?
This worried him. He’d always had bad memory lapses but now they were getting worse. He looked down at her with remorse, trying to remember how long she had been here. Almost a week. ‘You poor thing, you must be thirsty, hungry, I didn’t mean to make your life hell. I wanted to hurt you, to punish you, I wanted you to understand pain, Tina, because you gave my mother so much pain. I wanted to educate you, but I didn’t mean to be cruel by depriving you of food and water. Do you understand that?’
He searched for a flicker of response in her face, but saw none.
Raising his voice, he said, ‘I’m saying sorry, Tina. I’m apologising, I really do want to apologise. Can you forgive me?’
No response.
He put down the Evening Standard on the metal table where he laid his instruments, then opened the Daily Mail, and held that up above her face. ‘You’re in the Mail too. Page five. It’s a nice-sized piece, a good photograph.’ He looked at it. Her brown hair was cut short, the way it was now; she was neatly dressed, smiling pleasantly, she looked a responsible person, in a school prefect way. She could never, ever, have been beautiful in the way that his mother had been, and this made him sorry for her.
Trying to cheer her up, he said, ‘They say nice things about you, Tina. That you rose from being a secretary to a senior fiction editor, and now you’re in charge of the entire non-fiction list.’
He put down the Mail, opened the Mirror and held that up for her to see. ‘Tina, take a look at this. Here’s a photograph of your boyfriend. The Honourable Anthony Rennison. He’s saying he can’t understand what has happened to you, he’s at his wit’s end.’
Thomas studied the man’s face more closely, then looked down at Tina. Here were two people and they had a relationship. How had they met each other? How had they become boyfriend and girlfriend?
‘Tell me, Tina, why do you like this man? He’s really not very good-looking – he’s a chinless wonder. Why would someone want to go out with a man like this, but not with me?’
Still no response.
He turned away and put down the newspaper.
What h
ave I done to this woman?
A tear rolled down his cheek.
What have I done?
Have to snap out of this.
‘Tina, you kept on saying to me how sorry you were about not publishing my mother’s book. You have to understand that I’m sorry too. I’m sorry my mother had to go to her grave without her biography being published.’
Then he turned away and paced up and down the concrete chamber, churning a question over and over in his mind. Do I keep her or let her go?
Finally he pulled his coin out of his pocket, tossed it in the air and palmed it.
Tails.
‘Tina, I’m letting you go.’
Chapter Thirteen
tuesday, 15 july 1997. 4 a.m.
The caterers are coming to day, to get everything organised for tomorrow, and I need to keep my mind clear. Lots to think about.
I go to see Tina and find she’s already gone. No pulse at all. It only took a small dose of curare, which paralysed her lungs. The end would have been quick for her, in her state.
On the whole I think she made some good progress here, she got well beyond the apex of the learning curve I set for her. I told her what Socrates said, that the greatest pain is that which is self-inflicted, and she was intelligent enough to understand this. I’m glad for her that she did.
I feel that with the benefit of what she’s learned, next time she wouldn’t make the same mistake. But that’s for the Higher Authority to decide.
God can flip his own coin.
Chapter Fourteen
Nobody came.
Thomas sat in the back of the black Daimler limousine, trying to work this one out. Some part of London he did not know was sliding past outside, distorted by the refractions of a million prisms. Maybe it was raining outside, maybe he was crying, maybe both, who cares?
He lashed out with his foot and kicked the upright seat in front of him, the one beneath the glass that partitioned off the driver. He saw the driver turn his head slightly to observe him in the mirror. So what?
His mother was dead, nothing mattered any more.
Except this.
Nobody had come! Just the people from the funeral directors’ – the drivers, the pall-bearers, Mr Smyte, the dapper man who had made all the arrangements. A locum clergyman, who ignored eighty per cent of the information Thomas had briefed him with on his mother. And some brain-dead kid reporter from a local rag, carrying a cheap camera, who had had the gall to ask him who Gloria Lamark was.
Jesus!
Maybe they had misunderstood the directions and were waiting at home now. There had been an obituary in The Times – OK, he’d written it for them, they hadn’t had one in stock, but that was irrelevant. He’d put the posting out to the newsgroup fan club. He’d put the information up on his mother’s website. Blanked from his mind was the knowledge that no one ever corresponded with the newsgroup, and no one ever visited the website.
The driver, a little man in black in a peaked cap, was ogling women. Thomas could see his head turn, constantly, in the direction of attractive girls.
He could scarcely believe this. They were driving home from his mother’s funeral and here was this man, this creep employee of the undertakers’, who should have been thinking respectful thoughts, instead thinking about doing things with his penis.
Thomas leaned forward and hammered on the glass partition. ‘Stop that at once!’
The driver turned his head, startled and confused. ‘Sir?’
But Thomas had already settled back in his seat. He wagged his index finger backwards and forwards like a metronome. The driver, even more puzzled, turned his attention back to the road.
No one was at the house, either. Thomas paced up the marquee, his shiny black lace-ups from Lobb sinking into the matting that had been laid on the lawn. He was wearing a black Boss suit, summer weight, a mohair and silk blend that had a slight sheen. Beneath he wore a crisp white mandarin-collared shirt from Favourbrook, with a single black diamond stud closing the neck.
He’d bought the clothes specially for the funeral. He needed to show his mother he was all right, he was coping. The outfit was more modern than she would have chosen, but this was the image he wanted to portray to the press, that she was a modern woman, in every sense, they were modern people, children of the nineties, they were millennium people.
It was muggy inside the marquee, but he was comfortable; the heat wasn’t a problem. He was cool.
He was powerful.
He could feel the power swinging through his body as he walked. It swung through his arms, through his legs; he swaggered up the length of the marquee then down it again.
Six barmen stood to attention behind the champagne bar. Fifteen waitresses were ranked behind the tables laden with food. Half lobsters. Dublin Bay prawns. Stone-crab claws. Loch Fine oysters. Platters of whole roast snipe. Couscous. Mangoes, guavas, passion fruit, lychees. His mother’s favourite foods. A feast. He had catered for three hundred. There was a podium with a microphone where Thomas had planned to make a speech, to welcome everyone, to thank them all for attending.
There was even a fucking liveried Master of Ceremonies.
The marquee had a ruched ceiling. That had cost extra. Green-striped walls. The rain was making its own rhythm on the roof, and in the far corner some had found a way in and was dribbling down.
Just as well no one’s here, the fucking marquee leaks.
Thomas paced up and down again. Just himself, the six barmen, the fifteen waitresses, the Master of Ceremonies.
That reporter from the local rag in Mill Hill, who had come to the burial, was sticking in his gullet. A gormless creep in white socks and a cheap suit, hair cut like a lavatory brush – and wearing a candy-striped tie, a pink, yellow, white and magenta striped tie, with small orange globes sprinkled around it – at his mother’s funeral!
I’m sorry, my editor sent me here. I’m afraid I hadn’t heard of Gloria Lamark before today.
What kind of a jerk reporter goes to a funeral of someone he hasn’t even heard of? And who then stands there smirking because no one else bothered to come? And who didn’t have enough respect to put on a black tie?
He had the youth’s card in his pocket. Justin F. Flowering. The youth had even written his home number on the reverse. He hadn’t even had the decency to come back to the house.
I don’t like you, Justin F. Flowering. I don’t even like your name. You and I are going to become very bad friends.
The waitresses were all watching him. So were the barmen. They didn’t know yet that no one had turned up to Gloria Lamark’s funeral.
Not even any of the faithful old retainers had come. Not one. He guessed that they were upset because they’d been sacked. In the past couple of years his mother had had some strange moods. One by one she’d fallen out with her staff, some of whom had been with her for thirty years, and fired them. Most recent of all she’d sacked their cleaning lady. Now there was no one. She’d told Thomas she just wanted it to be the two of them together, no outsiders, no interruptions to their happiness in the house.
All the same, he’d thought some of them might have come today, out of respect. Couldn’t they have found it in their hearts to forgive her? At least Irma Valuzzi, her dresser. Or Enid Deterding, her secretary. But they had not shown up. The only apology for absence had been from Joel Harriman, her publicist, who was recovering from a heart-bypass operation. All the same, he could have sent someone from his office, couldn’t he? Instead, he’d sent a fucking telegram.
And what about Dr Michael Tennent? No, he wouldn’t have come. He wouldn’t have had the nerve to show his face.
Thomas marched through the house and into his mother’s study, closing the door so no one could hear him. Like her bedroom, this room smelt of her. Chanel No. 5. It was in the wallpaper, in the curtains, in the cushions on the divan, it was in her handwriting on the sheets of notepaper that lay on the desk, her lists that she wrote out for him daily.
; Separate headings on separate sheets. Daily shopping lists headed Cosmetics, Vitamins, Homeopathic Remedies, Chinese Herbs, Additional Medications, Food, Hardware, Miscellaneous. Daily Phone Call lists. Correspondence lists. There was a stack of bills and invoices. On the top was an invoice for Durrant’s, the press-cutting service.
He sat down in the massively ornate chair at the desk, suddenly overwhelmingly tired as he stared at the tiny pile of condolence letters. He avoided his mother’s eyes. They were everywhere he looked in the room, staring out at him from frames. Accusing him.
You fool.
You’ve let me down.
You’ve made a complete fool of me.
And he had. He knew that. The barmen out there would be smirking in another ten minutes, when they realised the truth of the situation. So would the waitresses. It was probably best to stay in this room now, let the funeral directors deal with everything. He’d done his bit, strutted his stuff. Now they could all go to hell.
He looked at the one tiny framed photograph his mother had kept of his father, whom he had barely known – he had left when Thomas was three. He was standing in front of an aircraft propeller in a greatcoat; his own plane, his mother had told him once. A tall man, with Teutonic good looks, sharp dark hair and a stiff, unsmiling expression. Thomas liked this photograph. The man had a coldness, an arrogance, the kind of man no one ever makes a fool of.
He was his father’s son.
He picked up the phone. It was old-fashioned, with a dial rather than numbers. His mother had preferred that: she thought it more elegant to dial than to press buttons. He dialled Joel Harriman’s home number.
The publicist answered, his voice instantly recognisable, the squeaky, creepy voice of the school fat boy. ‘Thomas, hi, sport, how’s it going?’
Thomas reckoned Joel Harriman had lost the plot two decades ago, but his mother had insisted on keeping him on, and Thomas knew why: it was because the creep knew how to work flattery. Strands of hair carefully parted over his bald dome, designer warm-up suits, trainers, perma-tan, he kept up a prodigious, relentless bombardment of badly typed, badly photocopied press releases about Gloria Lamark to the press and media.