The door closed silently behind him, and Oscar was alone in a powder room—green tiles the color of rain-forest frogs, enamel the color of good cream, a second door opposite the one he entered through. Oscar caught sight of a man at the far wall and was about to apologize for intruding when he recognized the flop of coppery hair and the poorly shaved face with its crusty scabs and bruises. He looked thin. The room was silent. Oscar wondered if a mistake had been made.
Near the vanity, the second door opened, and Anne Chaume stepped inside. Once again she wore gray—a sheath of silk that ran like liquid pewter down her length to spread into petals that exactly kissed the floor. Her shoulders, arms, and neck were bare, and her pale skin was as striking as a camera flash: as unsettling a surprise as seeing marble brought to life. She wore jewelry this time—four pieces of polished jet that caught the light and gleamed: earrings, a hairpin, and a ring. Dark points of a strange compass. But it was the pale oval of her face that captured and held Oscar’s eyes. Her red lipstick was as shocking as a wound, yet somehow perfect and full—an ideal balance to her ice-blue eyes that roved over Oscar’s face and chest and legs. Again, the sense of being physically touched by that forthright stare was an unnerving, pleasant shock.
“Detective Mariani.” Her voice inflected quiet wonder, as if she had not been told that he was waiting here and had stumbled upon him by coincidence. But her eyes showed no surprise. She had known he would come the moment she asked him to. She took a step closer and narrowed her eyes. “I’m hoping like hell you have a cigarette.”
He checked his trouser pockets. A small miracle: he found a rumpled, nearly empty pack of Jilu.
When he looked up, she had moved closer still, as if by some silent magic. Maybe because the dress hides her feet, he thought, and suddenly imagined tracing fingertips from those feet up slender, milk-white calves.
He lit her cigarette, and she inhaled greedily.
“Thank you.”
“Happy birthday,” he said.
She watched him light another for himself. “I got the sense you didn’t go for these things.”
“Cigarettes?”
“Parties.”
“I’m trying to quit both.”
“Ah.” She studied him, as if calculating his weight or guessing his star sign. “I’m not helping.”
“There are probably better cigarettes out there,” he suggested, indicating the corridor outside that led back to the ballroom.
“Better cigarettes, beastlier people.” Her eyebrows arched. “You saw Paul.”
The way she said her barrister’s name made it sound a little diseased. It wasn’t a question.
“Saw,” he agreed.
Chaume leaned against the vanity and tilted her head back as she exhaled again. She was dressed as finely as any of Europe’s princesses, but he could imagine her same stance in jeans and tank top, eased against the rails of a country fence. A smile toyed with the corners of her lips.
“I hope you won’t use my party as an opportunity to interrogate my guests.” She drew in more smoke. “I thought you were here for fun.”
Oscar thought about it. “I’m really not sure why I’m here.”
They smoked in silence a while, and she stubbed out her cigarette on porcelain.
He offered her another.
“Two in one night? Aren’t you the accommodating man.”
He watched her slide the cigarette out of the box. The gesture was at once perfectly innocent and supremely erotic. He saw the artery on the side of her pale neck pulse. And those startling eyes, as pale as windows, inscrutable and sparkling. She seemed so alive, more alive than anyone he’d seen in months. Maybe years. She watched his fingers as he held the lighter to her cigarette. She made a small, approving sound. Oscar felt his own blood pulse harder. He knew what she was doing. And the moment that thought took his mind, she smiled, as if they were sharing a good, playful joke. She was beautiful, and despite the hundreds of guests outside she seemed in no hurry to leave him.
“Why are we doing this in private?” he asked.
She stepped closer, no magic now, a deliberate approach.
“You don’t fit in out there.” She smiled. “Don’t take that badly. It’s a compliment.”
“Why did you invite me?”
Her smile disappeared slowly into another, deeper expression.
“That’s a very good question,” she said, but didn’t answer it.
Under the scent of tobacco, he could smell her: a slow, warm fragrance of sandalwood, vetiver, and clean skin. “Karl told me you looked tired.” Her voice was softer now. “But Karl is very polite.”
“I’ve had an interesting week,” Oscar admitted.
“Can I help?”
“How could you help me?”
Her gaze didn’t shift. It was frank and ready, as if nothing he said would surprise her. “Lots of things are possible.”
He looked at her long throat. He wanted badly to lick it.
“Your father is Sandro Mariani,” she said.
He was surprised. “That’s right.”
“My father owned the Fenhurst Hotel—do you remember it? In Alice Street?”
He nodded, recalling an elegant building that was sold for a small fortune to a French chain.
“There was a murder once, in one of the penthouses,” she said. “This was a while ago, I was nine or ten. I remember, the phone rang in the middle of the night, it woke us all. A plastic surgeon had plastered his suite with cocaine and then beaten a call girl to death with the alarm clock.” She smiled sourly. “My father insisted on good-quality appliances. Everyone panicked. The floor staff, the duty manager, the general manager. They rang my father. ‘What will the press say? What do we say?’ He asked if the police had arrived, and then asked who the investigating officer was. It took them a few minutes to find out, and they said, ‘Sandro Mariani.’ And my father said, ‘Don’t worry,’ and he went back to bed. Apparently Sandro Mariani didn’t like the press, didn’t take bribes, and understood that scandal died in a vacuum.”
“Dad believed in letting the job speak for itself.”
She looked him up and down. This time she made no pretense about the gaze. It was a gourmet’s stare. Hungry.
“And did he pass that on to you?” she asked quietly. “Discretion?”
“No.” He found he was whispering, too, they were that close. His blood pumped hard. “I had to learn that on my own.”
She nodded, watching him. Her eyes glittered. “Mariani.” She said his name very softly, as if it puzzled her. “Are you happy?”
“No,” he found himself answering.
She was so close now. Close enough for him to see that those pale-blue eyes held the faintest motes of gold. “Unhappy, because of your wife?” she whispered. “Or your job?” Her breath was sweet, her lips red. “Or your ghost?”
His phone rang, a sound so loud in the small room that he jumped.
He looked up at Chaume. Her eyes said, “Don’t answer.”
“I’m sorry.” He pulled out the cell. “Mariani,” he answered.
It was the night desk. “There’s been gunfire at a meat trader’s in Red Hill. Detective de Rossa and a man named Kannis are dead.”
Chapter 21
Smoke twisted in coils of orange and black, a choking, madly capricious serpent that swayed to its own crackling rhythm, breathing down choking gasps of arsenic, hot metal, and burned flesh. The underside of the black, pregnant billows reflected winking sapphires and rubies from the emergency vehicles below. This is what a dragon would look like, Oscar thought. Gluttonous and venomous and glittering with unreachable riches.
More earthly, more tangible treasures were being beaten from the hands of looters stealing meat from the only cold room not yet ablaze, the one farthest from where he’d placed Penny Roth. A unit of firefighters, exhausted already from a night’s worth of work, stood in a ragged line like soldiers who’d arrived too late for the battle.
Despi
te the heat that struck his face and chest and legs, Oscar felt frozen.
“What started it?” he asked quietly.
“Gunfight,” said a firefighter from a face as stage-blacked as a vaudeville minstrel’s. “Loose shot hit a propane tank.”
“Can’t you put it out?”
The firefighter shook his head. “It’s the polystyrene. It’s sandwiched between sheet metal, so the water can’t reach it, and it goes up like …”
“Like polystyrene,” offered another firefighter, and the rest nodded sagely. “Poisonous. And there’s more gas bottles. We’re not going in there.”
“Bodies?” Oscar asked.
“They got the shooters out.”
Oscar found the sergeant in charge of the scene. He led Oscar to a small white tent that had been set up in the adjoining lot. Inside was a Scenes of Crime officer texting on his phone, and pathologist Dianne Hyde wearing a lab coat over her pajamas. When she saw Oscar, her face tightened. She looked as if she wanted to be anywhere but here.
“They called me out,” she explained. “Busy night. I’m so sorry, Oscar.”
Two bodies lay on a small tarpaulin.
Kannis’s face was red, and his hair had been burned from his head. One bullet had smashed into his cheek, raising the corner of his mouth into a roguish grin. Burned skin had begun to split and peel from the back of his skull. Neve’s hair had been singed, and one side of her face was a blush so deep she might have been caught praising herself. Her shirt was open, and Oscar saw between her breasts a tiny hole—dark and red, like the world’s smallest volcano.
The icy weight in Oscar’s chest dragged him down, and he knelt clumsily. He wanted to grab Neve by the chin and shout in her face that she should have listened, should have waited. Instead, he softly touched her neck. It was cold. He forced himself to breathe. He didn’t want to.
“They shot each other,” the sergeant said. “We’re waiting for Homicide, of course. Two rounds from hers, one from his.”
“Maybe he thought she was trespassing,” Hyde offered.
Oscar looked at the bodies. “The weapons?”
The Scenes of Crime officer uncovered two evidence bags—Neve’s service semiauto, and the little silver pistol with which Kannis had killed the horse.
“Where did you find her pistol?”
The sergeant looked at Oscar as if it was a trick question. “Next to the body.”
“Underneath? Left? Right?”
The sergeant sighed, closed his eyes momentarily. “She was on her left side, and it was near her right hand.”
“Photos?”
“No time. The fire. We didn’t know if they were alive or dead, we got them straight out. Why?”
“She was left-handed.” Oscar stood. “No witnesses?”
The sergeant shook his head.
Hyde tried to touch his arm. “Oscar—”
He pushed past her, followed by the sergeant.
Outside, the roar of the flames had grown louder. A crowd was gathering around the titanic bonfire.
“Has she got family?” the uniformed officer asked.
“Her parents are dead. No siblings.” Oscar took a deep breath and regretted it—the air this close to the fire was bitter. He coughed. The roof of a cold room fell in and flames jetted up like red spines. Onlookers cheered.
“What was she doing here?” the sergeant asked.
“There’s another body in there,” Oscar replied.
He pointed to the remains of the cold room that held Penny Roth. The roof had fallen in, and the leaning walls buckled and jigged as if something inside was trying to kick its way out of the inferno.
“Seriously?” the sergeant said.
“The morgue was snowed under. Neve got a fax from Health about hospital records pertaining to the cadaver. I guess she came up here to check them herself.”
Oscar stared at the flames. While Neve was being murdered he was in a lavish powder room, flirting with a rich woman.
He noticed the sergeant taking notes. “And who was the cadaver?” the sergeant asked.
Oscar watched the cold room containing the remains of Penelope Roth collapse in a fountain of sparks that birthed a billowing crown of tall orange flames. More cheering.
“A Jane Doe.”
Fifteen minutes later, rain arrived, and with it came the Homicide branch: a fat detective sergeant and young Detective Constable Bazley. When Bazley saw Oscar, he instinctively flinched, then composed himself and put on a vulpine grin. Oscar knew from the smile what Homicide’s finding would be.
Oscar crossed the street and headed for his car. He slowed when he saw a sleek white patrol cruiser parked behind it. Its driver silently wound down the window.
“How was your party, Mariani?”
Oscar walked over to Haig’s car. The ice in his chest spread into his skull; he felt untied and cold. A pendulum had swung a full arc, from the brilliant sense of aliveness looking into Anne Chaume’s eyes to feeling numbed and emptied now. His hands were white fists. From under the bandage on his cut knuckle, fresh blood wept.
“You did this,” Oscar whispered.
Haig looked up at him, impassive. “You’re a fool, Mariani.”
Oscar’s fist struck forward. But Haig was quicker. He caught the blow and firmly pressed Oscar’s wrist down on the doorsill. Oscar knew the man could break it.
“A fool,” Haig repeated. “I asked you to give me this case. A good cop’s dead now. A waste.”
Flames reflected in Haig’s eyes. Kace was a shadow in the backseat.
Oscar slowly twisted his wrist. Haig didn’t release the pressure, so the pain was searing. Oscar wondered, with every heartbeat, when his bones would snap—he realized he didn’t care if they did. Skin tore on the rubber of the sill, and blood trickled, lubricating Haig’s grasp. Oscar’s eyes and Haig’s were locked. Oscar pulled his hand free.
“Too far, Haig.”
Bleeding, he went to his car, got in, and drove off. His hands on the steering wheel felt disconnected, not his own, and the view through the windscreen could have been a movie projection. He wondered with a little curiosity whether those remote hands might jerk the wheel and steer him into a power pole or another vehicle or over a bridge. They didn’t. They took him to Neve’s apartment building.
He went up the stairs slowly and knocked at the door.
Alex’s face was wet and her eyes were red. She took aim and slapped Oscar as hard as she could.
Chapter 22
Blood and fire.
She smelled them, even from afar.
They roused her from her slumber, made her listen.
Voices. They were faint, but the words were right. The air was right. And the smell—the scents on the air of tender flesh and clean fire were more than right.
She rolled, stretched her claws. No. She did not want to be bidden. The howling of the dying dumb thing repulsed her.
Oh, but the smells! Her mouth watered.
The words, the asking, the call, the pull, the—
Flesh.
Sweet, clean blood. Sweet, clean flesh.
She was displeased. She could come and go as she wished now. Why should she listen to these requests? But her stomach growled. She was still hungry.
She rose and called her favored pets.
Chapter 23
The city straddled the river like a wide saddle hung over a thin crooked spine. But this morning the city was erased, hidden in fog, and the snaking river was invisible under a cobweb-white shroud.
Oscar drove slowly; he’d had less than two hours’ sleep. He followed his headlights away from the city, along the river, then across one of its many bridges to a suburb where picket fences were bared like teeth through the dreamy fog and the trunks of old trees lined the quiet streets in rows, gray as the shins of bony gods. He checked the address, parked, and entered a neatly painted gate. At the front door hung a brass ship’s bell. He rang it and waited.
A man makes assumptions th
at, when proven false, surprise him with their shortsightedness. A man hardened to major crime has no problem believing that a mother could choke the life from her infant, that a clergyman could be caught with a suitcase full of church money and a dead transsexual in the trunk of his car; that a ten-year-old could be found with twists of licorice in one hand, twists of iron bar in the other, and the pulped head of the shopkeeper he’d robbed at his feet. But to discover that Benjamin Moechtar lived not in some strange, dry little storeroom among pinned hexapods but in a pleasant house with an attractive family and an Airedale terrier made Oscar wonder what a poor judge of character he was.
Moechtar answered the door, held back his excited dog, and led Oscar through his home. The two children, a girl and boy, smiled at Oscar, then went back to the toy castle she was building and he was destroying. The boy giggled as he knocked over a tower of colored blocks, and looked over to an empty chair in the corner for approval, and giggled more. Children had ghosts, too, Oscar knew. Back when he could afford newspapers he’d read a theory that children born after Gray Wednesday would grow up without fear or wonder at their invisible playmates. Their ghosts would be no more remarkable than shadows, and when these children were middle-aged the world would speculate what an unhaunted life could have been like. With Neve’s family all gone, Oscar wondered who would get her. He hoped it would be a little girl.
“And my wife, Susan,” Moechtar said as they walked through a kitchen of clean lines and tall windows.
Oscar shook hands—Susan Moechtar looked ill, and he noted a box of cold-and-flu tablets near the kettle. But her husband seemed unconcerned. “Have you had breakfast?” Susan asked.
“I’m fine,” Oscar replied.
“Coffee?” Moechtar offered. “I’ve just made some.”
“There should be a law against Ben’s coffee,” Susan said, waving them out. “Go talk, I’ll bring you some fresh.”
Moechtar motioned Oscar toward the back door, and he could see the tension in his inspector’s shoulders.
The yard was a subtle watercolor in grays and greens: trees and hedges wrapped lush arms around puddles of grass the color of wet jade. Rising from the mist was the prow of a boat carved from crystal: a greenhouse, its glass fogged. Oscar followed Moechtar across mossy flagstones to the glass door. Stepping into the warm, wet air was like blinking awake in a jungle—a sudden assault of color and scent. Hundreds of beautiful, strange flowers. Orchids, Oscar realized. Not so far from bugs.
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