by Marele Day
Right now he could slide into the woodwork and Mrs Levack wouldn’t even notice.
‘That girl’s been round again,’ she said knowingly. ‘Took all his personal belongings away. She was looking for something in the flat too. Like the man in the driving gloves. Had one of them fancy cars . . .’
‘Porsche, it was a Porsche, a black one. Very flash.’
‘Been back since too. But she can’t get in any more because new people have moved in, a nice young couple, the girl sings while she’s doing the cleaning and the young man wears a suit when he goes to work.’ A whole new mini-series for Mrs Levack to watch. ‘She, that other girl, she was looking in the letter box one day. That’s what gave me the idea to do it.’
‘Ha!’ snorted Mr Levack. ‘You don’t need any excuses to go looking through people’s mail.’
‘I didn’t even open the box, Eddy, it was sticking out the slot.’
‘Humph!’
I stood up. ‘I’ll be in touch, Mrs Levack, Mr Levack.’ I smiled. ‘If anything else . . . crops up, Mrs Levack, don’t hesitate to call.’
I hoped she looked in her own letter box as often as she looked in other people’s.
Because next time she did she’d find a sheet of Instant Lotto tickets. Good luck, Mrs Levack.
‘SALLY? IT’S CLAUDIA.’ At the other end was cold silence. I wasn’t really expecting flowers and chocolate.
‘Are you there, Sally?’ I was surprised the telephone didn’t seize up considering the amount of ice being poured into it. ‘I want to talk to you.’
She didn’t want to talk to me, a jagged edge to her voice now, the Sally I knew and didn’t love so well.
‘You talk to me or you talk to the cops. Take your pick.’ . . . ‘Something of great interest to you. I’m sure you don’t want to discuss it over the phone.’ . . . ‘No, not your place or mine. How do you fancy a sauna?’ . . . ‘I said a sauna. Women only, no men around, especially nasty men with guns.’
I gave her the address in the city. It was private and would put a damper on her hysteria. And it might just sweat out the truth.
From the public phone box I called Brian Collier. And Otto, who was home now, drinking a few ports to get over the excitement of the evening. I rang Carol but she wasn’t there. I thought better of leaving a message. Too soon for her bungling boys to appear on the scene. Besides, as long as I knew where the manuscript was and no-one else did I had a life assurance policy. I stuck the envelope back down, readdressed Mark’s letter to myself c/o the pub’s P.O. Box and popped it in the nearest mailbox. Then walked down to the bus stop.
The bus, when it finally arrived, trundled past the street where the mailbox was. I took one last look and smiled. A van was there and they were emptying the box. The letter would arrive safe and sound in the morning.
Then I stopped smiling. Last clearance was at 6 pm and it was way past six.
THE businesswomen who usually used the gym were long since gone. I got a towel from Margaret and sat in the reception area drinking coffee.
Sally walked in five minutes later carrying a bag full of stuff and looking like she’d wandered in the wrong door.
She wasn’t smiling. Neither was I.
I signed her in.
The small talk was exceedingly small.
‘Are your parents back from overseas yet?’
‘End of the week.’
I guided Sally past the mirrors into the spa and sauna area.
It was semi-dark and smelled of warm timber and we were alone.
We undressed slowly, watching each other like strippers, then wrapped our respective towels up under our armpits and went into the sauna. I shut the door tightly behind us. I didn’t want her running out on me now. Not now that she was here. How easily she had come—seemingly unaccompanied.
‘I love saunas,’ she said, stretching her arms out along the bench. ‘Sooo relaxing.’ Her towel crept down a few centimetres, revealing plump breasts and halfmoons of dark brown nipples. She subtly moved her body, causing the towel to drop away completely.
But I wasn’t falling for it.
‘Why did you give me the run-around about the computer?’
She sat up, startled. ‘What do you mean?’
I moved close to the door, blocking her only escape route.
‘I mean why did you give me the run-around about the computer?’
Her tongue peeped out of her slightly opened mouth and licked little beads of moisture from her lips.
‘I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You do know. No nasty men came with guns after my last visit, did they? You just wanted me off your back. Didn’t want me coming back with any computer experts. Afraid an expert might be able to wheedle something out of the computer that you couldn’t.’
She stood up, wrapping the towel around her. ‘I have to have a shower.’
‘Sit down.’
‘You’re holding me against my will. I’ll scream the place down if you don’t let me go.’
I shoved her back on the bench. Sweat was pouring from both of us. It would be slippery wrestling with her but I would if I had to.
‘Scream all you like, sweetheart. No-one will come, it’s only you and me.’
Her eyes scanned the timber box, darting like a mouse in a maze while the cat held its paw over the door.
‘There are no monitoring screens in here, the door has no lock apart from me and I’ll put a headlock on you if necessary.’
‘What if I faint?’ she said pathetically.
‘You faint, I take you out and stick you under a cold shower then I bring you back in again. As many times as is necessary.’
Cold hard bitch, cold hard monster.
‘You’re a woman! How can you talk like that!’ Then she changed tack. ‘Claudia . . . Claudia, can’t we . . .?’ Her eyes groping in my heart for the soft spots. I had a lock on them too.
‘I’m doing a job. It gets a bit messy at times but then I deal with messy people.’ Cold hard renunciation.
For the sake of their craft the Amazons cut off the breast closest to the heart.
‘Why are you here, Sally? You could easily have just not come. I didn’t exactly frogmarch you into here. Why did you come?’
‘Please, Claudia, I’m going to faint.’
‘First tell me why you came.’
‘How can I tell you anything if I’m lying on the ground.’
‘Lying is what you do best,’ I spat at her.
We were both breathing heavily, breathing in each other’s thick expelled air. I didn’t know how much longer I could last either.
I opened the door. ‘Shower.’
She unwound her towel and staggered to the shower. I stood ten centimetres away from her, the secondhand spray dampening my towel, cooling my head.
She ran shivering to her bag.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just getting my bathrobe. That towel’s all wet.’
She put it on, wrapped the towelling sash around her waist and stuck her hands into the deep pockets.
‘Better?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘Much.’
‘Now, will you tell me why you came?’
My eyes never left hers. We were holding each other’s eyes in a throttling lock.
‘I’ve come for my book.’
My eyes dropped. Down to my stomach, or where my stomach should have been. My insides curdled and all of time eclipsed into the barrel of the gun she had aimed at my navel. Just a small gun, the sort women in New York carry as protection against rapists. A close range gun, the bullet ready to rupture my umbilical cord and dissever me from life.
‘Your book? I thought it was Mark’s book.’
‘He dedicated it to me. It’s my book and I want it back.’
‘Pull that trigger and you’ll never find it.’
‘I didn’t want it found.’ She smiled triumphantly. ‘But you had to go and find it, didn’t you? That’s why
you called me here, isn’t it, because you’ve found it?’
In the endless silence of the room my mind chattered like a chipmunk, deftly darting here and there looking for a way out of the maze. Alter. Reverse positions. Now I was the mouse. She had me over a barrel, a small one but at this range very effective. This was a child holding me to ransom. Cute, flighty, and ultimately dangerous. A child who’d have to be handled with kid gloves. Any untimely move and the highly strung nerves would jerk the trigger.
I dragged my eyes away from the gun and up towards hers. Up so the eyes didn’t know what the legs had planned. Too close to run now but close enough to . . . ‘Yes, I’ve found it.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In my bag. I’ll get it.’
‘Don’t move.’
She circled around me, gun aimed higher now, at the heart.
Left hand felt for my bag, took it off the hook, unbuckled, felt inside the bag. She would feel the shape of my cassette recorder. Thicker, but not unlike a disc. The momentary flicker of eyes. The hand emerging now, holding it. The flicker again. Shadow of dismay.
‘Hua!’ My legs went into action, paralysing the wrist and knocking the gun into the shower recess. She dived for it. So did I, the towel and modesty now forgotten. She got to it first but couldn’t curl her fingers round it. I wrenched her up by the back of the bathrobe and threw her onto the tiles. She was panting with frustration, fighting back the tears. She had landed on her coccyx, her eyes screwed up with pain, still fighting, fighting the tears.
I had the gun now and she was coming up. Slow motion. I flung open the door of the sauna and threw the gun in. She came for it then saw where it had landed: in the fire box of electric coals.
‘Any more bright ideas, sweetheart?’
She flopped down on the bench, left hand holding the paralysed right wrist, chest heaving heavily, revving up, revving up.
She came at me with the full force of animal survival, trying to push me against the fire box.
I dodged. She ran smack into the wall and teetered back bewildered. She made for the open door of the sauna. I grabbed her hair and reeled her back.
She was hysterical now and screaming, wild-eyed, savage. I raised my hand to hit her across the face.
‘Not my face! Don’t hit my face! Don’t hit my face!’
She buried her face in the folds of her bathrobe, protecting her pride and joy.
I dropped my hand.
‘Claudia? Are you still in there? We’re closing up now.’
It was Margaret.
‘God! What’s . . .?’
‘Call the cops, Margaret. Central. Get them to page Detective Carol Rawlins. Tell her I’m having another tea party, would she like to join me.’
It didn’t matter whether she got onto Carol or not. What mattered was that Sally heard it.
‘You’ve got about fifteen minutes to save your life and this time it better be the real version. That gun will be red hot by then and they’ll want to know what an illegal firearm is doing in your possession.’
She was still whimpering into her bathrobe.
I jerked her head up.
‘No, no! Don’t touch my face! You bitch! I did it for my father! For my father!’
‘You were the delivery girl, were you? Waiting till your father had reduced me to a screaming heap then you were to come in and pick up the pieces.’
‘My father’s done nothing to you.’ Her eyes searched my face. ‘My father’s a good man.’
‘Your father’s slime. Don’t give me that good man stuff. He killed your boyfriend, for God’s sake! Or was that all part of the set-up?’
‘Daddy wasn’t even here when Mark died. What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t do it, Sally, just don’t do it. You’ve got ten minutes now and when the police get here and start asking you questions they won’t be worrying about your pretty little face!’
‘Claudia, Claudia . . . my father left me the gun when he went away. Self-protection. I was in a big house all by myself. I . . . I . . .’
‘Don’t waste your ten minutes on the gun, I want to hear the rest, all of it. You can start with what you were coincidentally doing at Mark’s flat when he was having his heart attack.’
‘I told you! The studio cancelled so I came back to the flat.’
‘Yes, you did tell me,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘Now you can tell me what you did there.’
‘I . . . I . . . didn’t do anything.’
‘Yes you did. You did do something. You went into the bathroom.’
‘I . . . I went to the toilet.’
‘You went to the toilet.’ My voice was thick with sarcasm. ‘At a time like that? Even if you’re busting, the last thing you think of when your boyfriend’s lying dead or dying on the floor is going to the toilet.’ . . . it wasn’t the stuff it was safe . . . some junkie paraphernalia in a plastic bag in the . . . A wicked smile spread across my face. ‘Of course. You did go to the toilet. But it wasn’t to relieve yourself. You went to get the stuff and you came back and shot Mark up. Why did you shoot him up? To give him a good send-off? Why Sally, why?’
‘Because . . . because . . . I told you, I did it for my father. I wanted them to think it was the smack, I didn’t want them to think it was the pacemaker.’
‘What made you think it was the pacemaker?’
I wrenched her up, her head turning away to avoid the words I was spitting at her. ‘What made you think it was the pacemaker?’
‘The computer,’ She said in a hoarse whisper.
‘What?’
‘I said the computer!’
I released her and she clumped down on the bench.
She was swallowing air, her chest heaving under the bathrobe.
‘It . . . it . . . a message on the computer described a way of killing someone by altering his pacemaker.’ She breathed in and tossed her damp hair back. ‘It described exactly how it had been done. Mark got his pacemaker checked from home. You connect the tester to the modem and the heartbeat pattern is transmitted to the hospital. But the computer . . . the computer was also connected to the modem. And the computer of the person who sent the message. Someone had put a program into the computer that corrupted the pacemaker program. Mark’s was programmed in a special way. The new program altered that. It said the time had come to put the heart in critical condition. So if Mark exerted himself, or got stressed, or did anything that made his heart beat fast he would die. And something did happen to make his heart beat fast. He read his own death. The shock of reading his own death killed him! The message said that a dangerous program had been tried on Mark in the testing period. It said it was on Dr Villos’ records. How could I call the police? It implicated my father!’
‘The whole book implicated your father! The title implicated your father: “The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender!” Harry Lavender’s your father, isn’t he? Isn’t he!’ Clutching the thin shoulders under the absorbent towelling. The thud, thud, thud of them against the warm dull timber.
‘Not Harry Lavender. God, not Harry Lavender!’ she spat. ‘Raymond Villos is my father.’
The sweaty silence penetrated my brain.
My fingers went limp, my strength sapped. Her thin shoulders slipped away. I flopped back, wiping my arm across my forehead, wiping the sweat out of my brain.
‘Why does Harry Lavender have a photo of you?’
She was shaking her head in dismay. She swallowed. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘Because he’s your father, isn’t he? Isn’t he!’ Looming over the pretty face, the menace of bodily hurt.
‘No, no, Harry Lavender is not my father. Raymond Villos is my father. Harry Lavender is my father’s patient.’
‘How well do you know him?’
‘Know who?’
‘Harry Lavender,’ I snarled, ‘who else?’
‘Not very well. Sometimes I looked after reception and I’d see him. He was nice to me, asked me what I was doin
g, if I had a boyfriend, what my boyfriend did, stuff like that. He told me I had a pretty face, said I should try modelling. Introduced me to an agency.’
‘Harry Lavender doesn’t do favours without favours being returned. What were you doing for him in return for him setting you up in modelling?’
‘Nothing,’ she said with the innocence of childhood. ‘I didn’t have to do anything. What sort of person are you? Can’t you believe people can help you without wanting anything in return?’
‘Not people like Harry Lavender. There’s only one reason he’d do something for you without you being in his debt. It’s because he’s your father!’
‘Why do you keep saying that? He’s not my father, he’s not!’
‘Do you know he’s got cancer?’
She nodded her head, a nod so deliberate and long her whole body started slowly rocking.
‘Answer me,’ I said, going for the face again. ‘Do you know he’s got cancer?’
‘Yes!’ she spat. ‘I know.’
‘Then why was he seeing Dr Villos? Cancer’s not his field, he’s a heart specialist. OK, so maybe he had pains in the chest, but after the initial visit he needn’t have come back. But he did come back. He came back to see you!’
She was panting now, opening and closing her mouth like she wanted to vomit. Her eyes and nose were running, running down her face and joining the rivers of sweat.
I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, a useless gesture in the sweat box that blurred the edges of us both.
Words came out of the mouth, words I hadn’t even thought of, suspended in the heavy liquid air.
‘Lavender cancelled your modelling session that day. He wanted you back at Mark’s flat to read a message on that screen. Apart from describing Mark’s death it said something else, didn’t it?’
Her eyes were rolling now, the head loose on its axis.
‘Answer me, damn you, answer!’
Her voice came from somewhere far away, as if she had pondered the question for a long, long time and still not found the answer.
‘It said that I was his . . . his . . . his . . .’ Her mouth couldn’t form the shape of the word.
‘Daughter.’
She dug deep for her last bit of strength, the last thing she could hold onto. ‘Yes, that’s what it said but it’s not true. He only said it to scare Mark more. He said it was funny Mark had dedicated the book to me because I was his daughter. But he couldn’t be my father, he couldn’t!’