Full Stop

by Joan Smith

  ‘You never heard what they did to Christians in those days? She was thrown to the lions — absolutely torn apart. In my book I have the transcript of the hypnosis where I hear the lions roaring and I describe the place where she died in total detail, total detail.’

  ‘The Colosseum?’ ventured Loretta, trying to remember whether gladiatorial combat had taken place there or in the Circus Maximus. ‘You do know that Sarah isn’t — it’s not a Roman name.’

  ‘I told you, she converted.’

  The man said: ‘Seems like you’ve had bad luck, murdered twice and four more lives to go.’

  ‘I’ve always wondered,’ said Loretta, ‘why people who believe in reincarnation always have these glamorous other lives, Egyptian princesses and so on. I mean, in a hundred years’ time I expect people will start claiming they were Mrs Thatcher.’

  Katha said ominously: ‘I just love Margaret Thatcher. I don’t understand why you Brits got rid of her.’

  ‘For much the same reason you got rid of George Bush. What I mean is, why does no one ever remember a previous life where nothing happened? Where they died in bed at the age of 82 surrounded by their grandchildren?’

  ‘So what do you think happens when we die?’

  Loretta shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? You mean all this’ — Katha made a circling motion with her right hand, encompassing Kelly’s living-room as though it was a microcosm of everything she valued — ‘all this is for nothing?’

  Loretta glanced towards the sliding door on to a wide balcony where more of Kelly’s clients had gathered, including a man she thought she recognised as a Syrian academic who had written a controversial book attacking America’s role in the Gulf War. ‘In the sense you mean, yes,’ she said reluctantly.

  Katha narrowed her eyes. ‘Millions of Americans disagree with you. Do you have any idea how many people already bought my book?’

  Loretta realised that her part of the room had gone quiet. Calmly she said: ‘Several hundred thousand, I should think. There’s obviously a market for — for consolatory fictions.’

  Katha stared at her, open-mouthed. Loretta was bracing herself for a full-scale row when Alan Larner, Kelly’s husband, intervened.

  ‘Loretta. Your glass is empty.’ He signalled to a waiter in a white jacket who hurried over and filled it with Chardonnay. ‘Katha, I’m sorry to drag you away but there’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a big fan.’

  Avoiding Loretta’s eye, he slipped a hand under Katha’s elbow and steered her away, past the big white sofas which faced each other in the middle of the room. On the far side, a man in a collarless shirt was talking earnestly to Kelly, and Loretta wondered whether he had written a book, and if so what it was about. Behind him, a lifesize portrait of Kelly gazed radiantly from the wall, posed on the balcony, her arms flung wide as she leaned back against the rail in a strapless white dress. She looked, Loretta thought for the first time, a little like Ivana Trump.

  Loretta turned back and saw that the small group of people who had gathered around Katha had drifted away. Only the tall man was left and she immediately felt terrible, as though she had broken every unwritten rule about behaviour at parties. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I seem to have upset one of Kelly’s most important authors.’

  ‘Best selling,’ he corrected.

  Loretta conceded the point. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about films. Is that what you write about?’

  ‘Part of the time. It’s my day job, if you like.’ He held out his hand. ‘Dale Martineau.’

  ‘Oh.’ She had been aware that he looked familiar without being able to place him. ‘Loretta Lawson. Your book’s had terrific reviews.’ She hesitated, then added: ‘Since I seem to be putting my foot in it tonight, I might as well admit I haven’t read it.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to me you had. There are around two hundred million people in the States and it’s sold five thousand, six hundred and forty copies. On the other hand, I don’t have to pay a ghost writer.’

  Loretta glanced across the room at Katha, who was now lecturing the man in the collarless shirt and a woman in green trousers. ‘Did she?’

  ‘You mean she struck you as literate?’

  She heard the bitterness in his voice and said hastily, remembering what his novel was about: ‘I suppose you can only sell books about old age and dying if you can think of a positive angle. Like Betty Friedan. Or Katha. I don’t suppose you remember any previous lives?’

  ‘I have enough problems with this one.’

  ‘Me too.’ She was silent for a moment.

  He said lightly: ‘This is getting very serious.’

  Loretta lifted her head and their eyes met, his so dark that it was almost impossible to make out the line between the iris and the pupil. A sudden, unexpected sensation of sexual arousal rippled through her and she felt her cheeks grow red.

  He smiled. ‘You were about to say?’

  ‘Nothing. Did you — are you working on another book?’

  He started telling her about his new novel and she tried to visualise a profile of him she had read in the San Francisco Chronicle when the first one came out. It was mostly anodyne stuff about his job teaching film studies in New York, how he had started to write, what his students made of the book, but one startling detail came back to her: his father had been a policeman, one of the few high-ranking black cops in the NYPD in the 1950s, and he’d been shot dead in an undercover operation when Dale was only eight or nine.

  He finished speaking, gave her an amused look and said: ‘What’re you doing after this?’

  Loretta felt a rush of disappointment. ‘Oh God,’ she said, not disguising it, ‘I’m having dinner with someone.’

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘I’m going back to Oxford.’

  Unspoken signals flew between them. Loretta undid the catch of her bag and felt inside for her purse. I’il give you my card. In case you’re ever in England.’ She found a pen and scribbled her home telephone number next to her direct line at St Frideswide’s.

  He studied it. ‘I’m in London in September, when my novel comes out over there. That’s not too far from Oxford?’

  ‘An hour by train. Will you ring me?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘Who’s your publisher?’

  ‘Bloomsbury.’ He pronounced it in the American way, three discrete syllables: Bloomsbury.

  ‘Loretta?’ She felt Kelly’s hand on her arm. ‘Sorry Dale, but I can’t let you monopolise her.’

  She led Loretta across the room towards the balcony, saying in a low voice, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I just noticed Cary Walker all on her own.’ Loretta saw a small, lost-looking woman in a pink pantsuit staring out across the city and then Kelly was stepping through the open door, touching her on the arm: ‘Cary, I’d like you to meet Loretta Lawson. Loretta’s an academic, she’s written a wonderful book on female characters in fiction but she knows all about journalism as well. Her husband’s a reporter.’

  ‘Ex-husband,’ Loretta said quickly but Kelly was already going back inside, arms spread wide to greet a latecomer.

  ‘Are you an author?’ she asked, turning back to Cary Walker and trying to look interested. She glanced covertly at her watch.

  ‘I write true crime,’ Cary Walker said in a gravelly voice. ‘Like, the real story behind the headlines? I used to be on the crime beat for the New York Post but since Kelly took me on I write full time.’

  Loretta manoeuvred herself into a position which gave her a view of the room she’d just left and saw Dale watching her. He grinned and she pulled a face.

  ‘.. . current project is writing the life of the Brooklyn Beast,’ she heard Cary say. ‘You hearda Ted Bundy?’

  Loretta nodded.

  ‘This guy’s not as big as Bundy, not yet, but the cops are going back through files this high.’ She held her hand in the air, indicating a point above Loretta’s head. ‘This guy predates computers.’

&n
bsp; ‘Doesn’t it upset you?’ asked Loretta, who had avoided reading about the case as far as was practically possible with such a sensational story. The preliminary court hearings, and the prosecution’s so-far-unsubstantiated hints about cannibalism, had pushed O J Simpson off the front pages of the tabloids for two or three days.

  ‘Upset me?’

  ‘I just meant,’ said Loretta, ‘that you’re a woman and all his victims are women.’

  Cary said abruptly, changing the subject: ‘You read her book?’

  ‘Who?’ Loretta peered into the room to see who Cary was looking at. ‘Katha Curran? No.’

  ‘It’s about how she’s supposed to remember all these previous lives.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Crap. The Beast’s my fifth book, you know what they call me?’

  Loretta shook her head.

  ‘The True Queen of Crime. Neat, huh? Like Agatha Christie, except what I write about is all true.’ She leaned towards Loretta and said confidentially: ‘You know what never came out about him, the Beast?’

  Loretta stepped sideways, grasping the rail of the balcony. The light had begun to fail and twelve floors below she could see the tail-lights of cars on a cross-street between Park and Madison, the roar of the traffic muted now; the sun had only just gone down, flushing the sky on the west side of the city a cloudy pink which reflected off the gilded pediment of a nearby skyscraper. Even the heat was bearable, had it not been for Cary Walker’s voice describing in minute detail what the Beast had done to his victims in a residential area of Brooklyn.

  ‘Sorry,’ exclaimed Loretta, interrupting Cary, ‘but I have to meet someone. Good luck with the book.’

  She hurried inside, looking for Kelly.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘It’s been -lovely.’

  Kelly threw back her head, hardly disturbing her flossy blonde hair, and laughed. ‘She has this theory, you know, Katha. She thinks anyone who isn’t nice to her had a bad time in their last incarnation. I expect she has you down as a roach.’ They walked towards the front door and she added: ‘I love your outline. There’s someone I’d like to show it to next week, I know Branch Books did a nice job on Milton’s Cook but I’m not sure this is for them. Is that OK with you?’

  ‘Whatever you think,’ Loretta said distractedly, aware that Dale Martineau was following them.

  He caught up with them at the front door. ‘You leaving, Loretta? I’ll walk you down.’

  They crossed the landing to the lift, which was waiting on Kelly’s floor, and travelled down in tense silence. In the lobby, as the porter held the door open for them, Dale said: ‘Sure you won’t change your mind?’

  Loretta pulled a face. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘OK. Where’re you going?’

  ‘TriBeCa.’

  ‘It’ll be easier to pick up a cab on Park.’ They walked the short distance and he waved one down, turning to Loretta with a regretful expression on his rather sensual face. Without thinking she stood on tiptoe and kissed him, not in the usual exploratory way of strangers but sliding her tongue into his mouth, startling him for a few seconds. Then he responded, pulling her close so their bodies pressed together, releasing her only when the taxi driver leaned across and asked bad-temperedly how much longer he was supposed to wait.

  Dale opened the door for her and she slid on to the back seat, gasping: ‘Greenwich Street. Greenwich and Franklin.’ The taxi pulled away and she turned, watching the dwindling figure of Dale Martineau until she could no longer distinguish him in the gathering dusk.

  Nine

  John Tracey pushed back his chair and stood up, beaming at Loretta as she approached his table. He was more smartly dressed than the previous evening, wearing what looked like a new suit, and his hair had recently been washed. He slid his arm around her waist, murmuring, ‘You look fabulous,’ and went to kiss her on the mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, turning her face so his lips brushed her cheek. Stepping back, she rested her hand lightly on the only other chair and said: ‘Shall I sit here?’

  Tracey gave her a searching look. ‘That’s the general idea. Unless you want to move to another table. The only problem with this one is they want it back by quarter past ten.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, sitting down. ‘How’s your day been?’

  He leaned forward. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘You seem... preoccupied. Not all here. And your cheeks are flushed.’

  Loretta turned to look out of the window, feigning interest in a slender Asian woman who was getting out of a taxi. Otherwise the wide, dimly lit street outside the restaurant was empty and she said: ‘It’s this area. I’ve never been here before and it’s a bit strange. All those warehouses.’

  Tracey shrugged. ‘It’s quite safe as far as I know. As safe as anywhere in New York, that is. I wouldn’t recommend walking round TriBeCa on your own at night but as long as you get a taxi. Here, have a look at the menu, I don’t want to rush you but I did say half eight.’

  Loretta picked it up, ignoring the implied rebuke, and ran her eye distractedly down the list. ‘I’ll have the lamb.’

  ‘No starter?’ Tracey was watching her closely, almost as if he knew — had guessed, somehow — about Dale Martineau.

  ‘I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘Something to drink?’

  ‘Anything. White wine.’ She had had two or three glasses at Kelly’s party, it wasn’t easy to keep count when the waiter kept topping it up. ‘Oh, and some mineral water. Sparkling.’

  ‘So how was the party? Did you meet the New York literati?’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She looked down at the menu again, as though she might want to change her mind, then said as casually as she could: ‘Katha Curran was there, the reincarnation woman. And Anwar Saady, who wrote that book about the Gulf War. At least, I think it was him. We didn’t actually speak.’

  ‘You talk to anyone I might have heard of?’

  ‘Carla Griccioli, the cookery writer. And a novelist called Dale Martineau.’ His name came out unnaturally, the verbal equivalent of being up in lights, but Tracey appeared not to notice. ‘Means nothing to me,’ he said, and started reading out their order to a waiter.

  When they were on their own again Loretta said: ‘I don’t know if you remember, last night, in the restaurant, I told you I’d had a couple of obscene phone calls?’

  ‘Did you?’ Tracey sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Sorry, Loretta, last night’s a total blank.’ He began to look interested. ‘How d’you mean, obscene?’

  Not wanting a re-run of the previous evening’s conversation, Loretta didn’t answer directly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘what I wanted to ask you is, how do I go about finding out who a telephone number belongs to?’

  ‘Why? You don’t mean this bloke gave you his number?’

  ‘Of course not. Well, not exactly. The thing is –’ She hesitated, reluctant to say it out loud. ‘The thing is I think I’ve been set up. I mean, I thought I was talking to the police and all the time ...’

  Tracey held up his hands. ‘I’m not with you.’

  She told him the story again, from the initial call from Michael on Thursday night to Lieutenant Donelly’s little lecture that morning about ambient noise and church bells. At this point, Tracey interrupted.

  ‘Bloody hell, Loretta, you don’t really think the cops would go to all that trouble over a couple of obscene phone calls? Do you realise how many murders there are a day in New York? They’ve got serial killers, gang fights, drug wars –’

  ‘You didn’t talk to him,’ she said crossly. ‘He was very plausible, and he didn’t sound anything like ... like Michael.’

  ‘The other point is, with the technology they’ve got these days, they can trace a number in seconds. Haven’t you heard about these phones that display the number of the person who’s ringing you? You’ll be able to get one in Oxford by the end of this year.’


  ‘No I haven’t, I’ve been out of the country for three months, remember. Anyway, that’s exactly what I thought to begin with, I’m not completely stupid.’ She began ticking off all the avenues she’d tried, finger by finger. ‘I rang the police first, they couldn’t have been less interested, then I tried the phone book and all it offers is counselling. No, really, I’m not kidding, have a look when you get back to your hotel. There’s this number you can ring, some kind of helpline, but only in office hours. I even tried the operator and she referred me back to it, I was going round in circles. By the time Don — by the time this pretend policeman called I was just incredibly relieved that anyone seemed to be taking it seriously. And he did say something about Toni’s exchange being one of the last to be computerised.’ Contradicting the conclusion she’d come to earlier, she added: ‘It’s not implausible, given how many exchanges there must be in New York City.’

  Tracey rolled his eyes upwards. ‘AH right, when did you get suspicious?’

  The waiter was hovering, waiting to pour the wine Tracey had chosen. ‘I’ll taste it,’ said Loretta, thankful for the distraction. She held her glass under her nose for a few seconds, took a sip and nodded in approval. ‘Are you sure it’s all right for you to drink?’ she asked Tracey, a little maliciously, when the waiter went to fill his glass. ‘After last night?’

  ‘He only said to stay off alcohol while I was taking the tablets and I haven’t had any today. Come on, when did it dawn on you something was wrong?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I was always a bit ... uneasy. And then tonight, when this ... supposedly this other detective phoned. He sounded just like the first one, Donelly, except he had a bit of a foreign accent. He said they’d traced the area he, Michael that is, was ringing from and when he mentioned First Avenue, down on First Avenue, that’s when it hit me.’

  ‘What hit you? What’s special about First Avenue?’

  Loretta said: ‘I was looking at the map this morning, trying to remember the name of your hotel if you must know, and I thought — oh, I never knew that’s where it was.’

  Tracey was getting irritated. ‘What} What are you talking about?’