by Susan Lewis
‘I must emphasize here, gentlemen, that I had no idea what was happening in Luke’s mind or life over this two year period. He stopped confiding in me at the time he told me he had ended his relationship with Annalise. It was only when he came to spend some time at the clinic recently that I learned of at least some of what had been happening. He told me that he had been trying to punish you, Mr Denby, for what had been done to Siobhan. Of course he didn’t tell me how he had been punishing you, but we know now that it was through the prostitutes. He confessed to the terrible identity crisis he was having between himself and his father – and he also told me that he believed, if he could only get through to Corrie, she could help him.’
Cristos’s head came up. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.
Horowitz sighed. ‘I think, as far as Luke is concerned, that Corrie is the only member of Mr Denby’s family who is untainted. I imagine that at first he wanted to seduce Corrie as a means of tormenting Mr Denby, but as his state of mind worsened, and I think he knew that it was deteriorating, he started to view Corrie in a very different light. You must understand, he can no longer see his life as being apart from this family, or perhaps I should say, as being apart from his own nightmare. So his salvation, he believes, must come from within the family. Or, as it turns out, must come from Corrie. But he has been unable to reach Corrie, though he’s tried in many convoluted ways to do so. And, as we know, she is in love with you, Mr Bennati. I strongly believe that it is because of that, that Luke’s last vestiges of hope – and indeed sanity – died.’
An oppressive silence stretched through the minutes that followed. Phillip was sitting with his head in his hands, Cristos was still at the window staring sightlessly out at the darkening sky, and Radcliffe was quietly smoking another cigarette. Phillip was the first to speak.
‘After Luke returned to Ireland in ’67, did he ever go back to London again?’
Horowitz frowned. ‘I’m sure he did, many times as a journalist, but he didn’t live there again until ’85.’
‘I see,’ Phillip said, and as he spoke it was evident that he was somewhere deep inside his own thoughts. He lifted his eyes to see that they were waiting for him to speak again. ‘I was just trying to connect the disappearance of Geraldine Lassiter’s gigolo with … certain other things that happened at that time,’ he explained.
Cristos’s head came up. ‘Who?’
‘Geraldine Lassiter, the woman who … educated him.’
‘You remember him then?’ Horowitz asked.
‘I don’t recall ever meeting him, no,’ Phillip answered. ‘But I knew of his existence. Everyone did.’
‘Would you like to tell us what those certain other things were – at the time of his disappearance?’ Radcliffe asked.
Phillip shook his head. ‘Not yet, no,’ he said. ‘I’d like to speak to my wife first.’
Every one of them was on the point of protesting, but something in Phillip stopped them.
‘Do you remember your wife’s affair with Luke?’ Horowitz asked.
‘Yes, I remember it,’ Phillip answered.
Long minutes ticked by as they waited for him to speak again. In the end it was Cristos who broke the silence.
‘So where does all this leave us?’ he said, turning to Horowitz. ‘We still don’t know where they are …’
‘I’m afraid that’s a question for Mr Radcliffe,’ Horowitz answered.
‘Then perhaps you should tell us,’ Cristos said, knowing that at this stage Radcliffe would be unable to answer the question, ‘just what kind of danger you consider them to be in.’
The expression on Horowitz’s face as he glanced at Radcliffe was as unsettling for Cristos as it was for Phillip, who was now listening intently. It showed so clearly that Horowitz was seeking Radcliffe’s permission as to whether or not he should divulge his worst fears. Radcliffe gave an almost imperceptible nod and Horowitz turned back to Phillip and Cristos.
‘I believe that it is Annalise who is in the most immediate danger,’ he said. ‘Her resemblance to Siobhan will confuse and frustrate him, and if she does know that Luke is her father then her behaviour towards him is likely to be very much on a parallel with the way Siobhan was with her father. Luke could very well respond to that in the way his father did with Siobhan.’
‘Oh, God help us,’ Phillip breathed, letting his head fall back as he closed his eyes. It was Radcliffe though, who asked the question that had soared to the front of Phillip’s mind.
‘Phillip Fitzpatrick never went so far as to kill Siobhan,’ he said, ‘so are you saying that Luke is likely to adhere to that too?’
Horowitz’s sallow face became pinched with unease. ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not saying that.’
‘And Corrie?’ Cristos asked, unable to look at Phillip.
The sympathy was clear in Horowitz’s silvery eyes as he looked back at Cristos. ‘As I said earlier,’ he answered, ‘Luke has, for some time, been convinced that Corrie’s love and compassion was all he needed to make his life whole. This is an irrational conviction, of course, but his mind is very far from rational. He sees Corrie as someone who can heal the damage that has been done to him … He feels he needs her, that he can’t be without her – in life or in death.’
Fear churned through Cristos’s stomach like a vortex. ‘What do you mean, in death?’ he asked.
Horowitz looked at him, blinking sadly. ‘It is my belief that Luke intends to take his own life,’ he said. ‘If he does then I’m very much afraid that he will take Corrie with him.’
Cristos’s face had become very pale, every muscle in his body was taut.
‘Please understand, Mr Bennati,’ Horowitz continued in a feeble effort to comfort him, ‘that I am only surmising. I cannot say for sure what Luke will do.’ And it was true, he couldn’t. But there was no doubt at all in his mind that Luke had by now lost control completely. There would be no reaching him now, his reason was lost to him forever. There was nothing to be gained from telling Cristos that, for neither man need know the extent to which he, Horowitz, feared that the degradation, abuse and terror of Luke’s childhood would be meted out to both Corrie and Annalise before they went to their deaths.
– 29 –
CORRIE AND ANNALISE were lying back to back on a vast wooden bed inside the villa. Their hands and feet were bound to each other’s, a flimsy cotton sheet covered their near nudity. Some time ago Corrie had heard a distant clock chime midnight and just after there had been the sound of footsteps passing along the corridor outside followed by a door closing nearby. She wondered if Luke had gone to bed too, if he would lay down the gun while he slept – if this could be an opportunity to escape.
She bit down hard on her lip as the futility of her wonderings, the sheer helplessness of their position pushed tears into her eyes. Even if she and Annalise could loosen their bonds, which Corrie knew already they couldn’t, the door to their room was locked and the windows were too high for them to jump.
For hours now Corrie had felt her inner strength ebbing. The effort of holding herself together, if only for Annalise’s sake, was proving so difficult as to be almost impossible. In her weakened state her desperate longing for Cristos and the yearning to feel herself being lifted into the safety of his arms was growing to such a pitch that she could feel herself drawing ever closer to the brink of panic. But she mustn’t allow herself to think of Cristos, she had to push all thoughts of him from her mind. He had no more idea of where she was than she did, and to think of him coming for her was a dangerous fantasy for it was clouding the brutal and stupefying reality of what was happening to her and Annalise.
Luke had kept them out in the blazing sun the entire afternoon while he himself had disappeared inside, or maybe he had even left the villa for a while, Corrie had no way of knowing. What she did know was that she was still, all this time later, reeling from the shock of all that Annalise had learned from her mother while they had been in Spain with Luke. But it wasn’
t only that Luke was Annalise’s father that Corrie was finding so hard to accept, it was the part Octavia herself had played in the whole unspeakable deception.
‘Luke says that she’s corrupt, that she’s rotten right through to her soul …’ Annalise had said in a voice fractured by the terrible sadness and betrayal she was suffering. ‘And how can I doubt that after what she’s done? I see her face in my mind’s eye and I know that beneath the shallow surface of her oh-so-perfect skin there’s nothing more than a festering mass of poison. But whatever she is, whatever evil there is in her, it doesn’t change the fact that Luke knew what he was doing. He knew who I was and he never told me. He’s tried to excuse himself by reminding me of how many times he tried to break it off between us – it’s as though he’s blaming me for it all because I wouldn’t let him go.’ She had looked up at Corrie then with such desperate torment in her eyes that Corrie, who was perched on the edge of the hammock chair, brushed her fingers gently over her face.
‘But you didn’t know,’ Corrie soothed her. ‘How could you have known?’
For a while then neither of them said anything. Corrie’s eyes wandered across the sea, following the tide to the distant shore. The heat was so oppressive it was soaking through the pores of her skin. It was difficult to move, even to think. The shock, the sheer horror of what had been happening to Annalise these past two years was beyond comprehension. She wanted to find some words of comfort, but what comfort could there ever be for something like this? And what in God’s name was going to happen to her now – to either of them?
She looked down as Annalise shuddered, then reached out to her as she struggled to catch her breath through a battery of dry sobs.
‘I can’t bear it!’ Annalise gulped. ‘To think that I have to live the rest of my life knowing what I did, what my own mother … Oh, Corrie, she laughed when she told me, do you know that? She actually laughed.’
Corrie’s face was drawn with pity as she all too vividly envisaged the scene Annalise had had to endure.
‘And then … Oh God …’ As Annalise’s chest heaved with the pain and revulsion of memory she turned away from Corrie and buried her face in her hands. ‘Do you know what she did, Corrie? Oh God, I can hardly believe it even now. She came and stood behind me and she told him he could rape me. She said she’d hold me down for him, and she would make me call him daddy.’
Corrie’s eyes closed. She could feel the sun scorching across her back, she could see the blisters starting to form on Annalise’s shoulders, smell the pungent sweetness of the flowers, taste the salt in the air. But all of it, just like Annalise’s words, seemed so remote from the heart of her senses that it was as though reality had become blurred by the shimmering heat around her.
‘And do you know what he did, Corrie?’ Annalise said. ‘Do you know what Luke did?’
Corrie shook her head.
‘He raped me.’
‘Oh my God,’ Corrie breathed, wishing that her imagination could tear itself free of the images Annalise’s words were creating.
‘I didn’t call him daddy,’ Annalise spat, ‘but she did! She said it for me! She put on a little girl’s voice and shouted “Stop! Daddy, Daddy, stop!” And then she started calling me Siobhan. She called him Phillip … She said “Come on Phillip, fuck your daughter, Siobhan. She wants your …”’ Annalise’s tongue recoiled from the obscenities … ‘She went on and on and on. She drove him to such a frenzy I don’t think he knew who he was, who I was or even who she was. He was laughing and crying and screaming … And all the time he was raping me while she held me down.’
‘Oh, Annalise,’ Corrie murmured.
‘When it was over,’ Annalise said, ‘after she had pulled him out of me so he could finish with her, she told me that Siobhan was his sister. That, so he says, I look exactly like her. That all this time he’s been with me in his head he’s been screwing his sister and his daughter. But not only that, his father’s name is Phillip, the same as …’ Her eyes fell, and Corrie saw the way her mouth trembled.
‘Your father’s,’ Corrie said for her.
Annalise attempted a smile and her eyes were filled with an uncertain gratitude as she looked back at Corrie. ‘She was enjoying it, Corrie,’ she went on. ‘She was loving every minute of it. She must hate me so much to do that to me … But she hates everyone, I could see it in her eyes. And I could see what she was doing. She was deliberately tormenting Luke. She was making him hold me as though I was a baby, and fondle me. And he tried to do it. He tried to make me stop crying by kissing me, by putting his hands all over me …’ She shuddered violently. ‘I got away from them – I ran away, but he caught me. When he dragged me back inside she was sitting there, curled in a chair and looking so superior, so pleased with herself. “You know what brought all this on, don’t you?” she said to me. “It’s because you told him that Corrie Browne was going to Los Angeles, and he’s threatening to go back to London to stop her. He wants Corrie Browne,” she said. Then to Luke she said, “But you can’t have Corrie Browne can you, mother-fucker? She won’t want you now, no one wants you now – except me.” Luke started to beg me then to get him away from her. He started pawing me, pleading with me not to leave him … But I couldn’t stand him near me. I never wanted him to touch me again … I could still hear her laughing when I ran into my bedroom and locked myself in. And I heard them all night long … I don’t know what he was doing to her, or she to him, but she kept asking for more … And all I could think of was that I wanted to kill her … And if I had had the means to do it I know I would have. I hate her, I despise her … My own mother … And my father … But I can’t think of him as my father, I’ll never be able to think of him as that.’
And neither, Corrie thought now, as she lay in the darkness listening to Annalise’s delirious mumblings, would she.
Despite the heat emanating from Annalise’s body, Corrie could feel her shivering. Luke had forced her to remain in the sun for so long that day that her delicate skin was now ravaged with blisters and her mind was tortured by the feverish confusion of heatstroke. Again the sheer helplessness of their situation welled up in Corrie, but as the tears trickled from her eyes her own exhaustion settled a smothering blanket over the fear that her conscious mind was losing the struggle to suppress.
Cristos was standing at the vast arched window in his suite at the Majestic watching the first crimson rays of daylight burn the horizon. He had slept fitfully for an hour or two, but now he was wide awake and once again trying to snare the elusive thoughts which had been plaguing him ever since he had left Horowitz the day before. Something the man had said, or was it something Phillip had said, was bothering Cristos, but no matter how many times he reran in his mind what they’d told him he couldn’t figure out what it was. He was missing something, he was damned sure of it, something vital, but Jesus Christ what was it?
He looked round as the door to the second bedroom of the suite opened and his mother, fastening the belt of her dressing-gown, came into the room.
‘Ah, chéri,’ she sighed, when she saw him. ‘No sleep again?’
‘Not much, no,’ he confessed, slipping an arm around her as she joined him at the window.
‘Shall I ring down for some breakfast?’ she said, as they both gazed out across the fiery sea.
Cristos shook his head.
‘But you must eat,’ she told him gently. ‘All this worry and no sleep …’
‘I can’t think about food …’
‘All you can think about is Corrie. I know, chéri.’
‘Damn it!’ Cristos cried, slamming his fist into the wall. ‘All I can think about is what that madman might do to her.’
Breaking away from him Mariette went to sit on one of the powdery-pink sofas. ‘Come here,’ she said, patting the cushion beside her.
Cristos glanced back over his shoulder, but made no attempt to move from where he was standing.
Because he was her son and because she loved him so very muc
h Mariette could feel his pain as though it were her own. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said softly, trying in vain to comfort him. ‘You’ll get her back, chéri.’
‘Mother, don’t patronize me,’ Cristos snapped. ‘You know what she’s up against. I told you what the doctor said.’
‘But he doesn’t know for certain,’ Mariette reminded him. ‘He was only guessing.’
‘And what if he’s right? What if Fitzpatrick in his sick mind …’
‘What if? What if?’ Mariette interrupted. ‘You must stop torturing yourself like this, Cristos. You can’t be any help to her if you don’t. Now come, sit here and let’s go over it again. Let’s see if we can’t find out what it is that’s bothering you about what the doctor told you.’
‘We’ve been over it and over it, Mother,’ Cristos said tightly. ‘It’s something to do with that woman, Geraldine Lassiter, but Christ knows what.’
‘Didn’t you say that Phillip was trying to find out where she is now?’
Cristos nodded.
‘Then why don’t you try to put it out of your mind until …’
‘Mother!’ Cristos seethed.
‘Well what purpose is this serving, getting yourself worked into a frenzy … You have other commitments here, Cristos. Bud Winters wants you to put in an appearance at the Palais tonight …’