Her family were theatre people for generations. Some were professional actors and worked on everything from Shakespeare to modern productions, or worked behind the scenes as costumers, stage managers, whatever. Others, like her parents, upheld the Briers family’s reputation for stage magic, psychic tricks, ventriloquism and other music hall performance. The point was, all of them toured. They could no more imagine settling in one place than a migratory flock of geese.
But that didn’t fit Nick.
A man who built gardens should have his own roots planted somewhere. He should have a patch of dirt that he nurtured through the seasons and gifted to the future.
After nine months at the museum, she’d noticed how being in one place developed different kinds of ties. New commitments. On tour, your community, or family, was the people who travelled with you. The calendar was structured by performance dates and you moved through the year, and through towns, according to its schedule. Summer was the seaside towns, and winter inland. The big cities—London, Manchester, Birmingham and so on—anchored the schedule, and the towns provided the variation.
Living in one place turned her life experience on its head. Instead of seasons signaling a change of scene, now she stayed still and the seasons moved around her. She kind of liked it. Her community was no longer defined by theatre people, but was composed of different circles. There was the museum and its volunteers, Mrs. Smith and visitors. Then there were the people in the neighborhood: the café on the corner, the financial consultancy next door and, on its roof, Marshall, the pigeon fancier. Travelling wider, there were the weekend markets she went to, the op shops she visited hunting for 1950s gear, and the other museums she visited for ideas.
Despite her intention to stand alone, she’d built ties. If she truly wanted to exist alone, she ought to take Nick as a model.
He was a lone wolf. He was competent and capable, self-sufficient, without apparent family ties.
But she didn’t aspire to be alone forever. She’d grown up in a loving family and, although for their own good, she’d distanced herself temporarily—she’d never forgive herself if the serial killer’s voyeur went after them to get at her—she would return to their loud, meddling antics.
Lanie shifted, restless, re-crossing her legs at the ankles.
It wasn’t enough to dismiss Nick as a lone wolf type, the kind of man who challenged a woman by making her wonder what he’d be like if his control shattered and he let her in. Nick wasn’t some romance novel hero. He was real and complicated, and far more appealing than a fictional construct.
She wanted to know where he came from, what drove him. Why he appealed to her so damn much.
She was attracted to him.
The sun had set. It was dark and cold enough that she ought to go inside. She picked up her phone, and smoothed her thumb across it, musing.
It was odd how electronic communication altered things. In person, Nick was reserved and she’d learned to be. But as she’d added comments to her photos of the roof’s progress—little snippets about happenings in the museum, her crazy cousin’s latest Sydney adventure, the wrongness of being served tepid coffee—he’d responded by chatting about things other than gardens.
For all her doubts and caution, the attraction wasn’t one-sided.
She and Nick were establishing trust, with him half the world away.
Nick took the Underground from Heathrow and arrived at the Horry Museum at lunchtime. He’d detoured long enough to check in at a nearby hotel, drop his luggage and take a quick shower to wash off the grimy, tired feel of travel. He’d had Lanie’s photos to watch progress on the roof garden, but he wanted to see it for himself—and her.
He liked her.
She’d shown her backbone in resisting the roof garden, but once it was inevitable, she hadn’t sulked. She’d been helpful, funny and had totally beguiled him.
He couldn’t wait to see what 1950s outfit she’d be wearing, today.
Outside the hotel, Bloomsbury teemed with people racing along under the gray sky. Business-suited corporate types were outnumbered by tourists, students and harassed-looking hurry-ers who were probably academics.
A misting drizzle began to fall. No one seemed to notice, though he hunched his shoulders in his black leather jacket and recalled ruefully the heat of Mexico. Thinking of Lanie, though, even England and its problems didn’t seem so bad.
He arrived at the Horry Museum to find the bottom left corner of its banner flapping in the rising wind. He re-tied it, then studied the façade of the building. Its Georgian geometry was pleasing and familiar. He walked in, out of the rain.
The front door’s buzzer beeped as he entered. The hall smelled overwhelmingly of competing women’s perfumes and from the dining room came the sound of voices. Perhaps Lanie was conducting a tour?
But even as he walked over to peer into the dining room, she came lightly down the stairs. He stood, appreciating her anachronistic 1950s perfection in the Edwardian setting.
She wore a navy blue dress with white polka dots scattered over it, and a tight red cardigan that matched her red high heels. Her birch-tree-brown hair was tied up in a ponytail that swished in time with her jaunty walk. She could have been dressed to jive.
His wolf-whistle escaped before he had time to think of political correctness.
She laughed.
He caught her hand as she descended the last two steps and swung her into a spin. Her skirt flared up and tangled with his legs. He grinned down at her. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.”
A group of late middle-aged women burst out of the dining room.
“You’ll want to see the roof,” Lanie said instantly.
“Do you have time to accompany me?” He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, leading her swiftly towards the elevator, not waiting for her answer.
“Yes.” A lurking smile suggested she didn’t mind his utilization of force majeure.
He closed the elevator doors with relief, the tour group hot on their heels.
“Gerard will show them the library next,” Lanie said. “He and his wife, Sophie, volunteer today. They’re a retired couple. She’s pretending to be the cook in the kitchen—and baking actual scones in the coal stove.” Her tone marveled at the other woman’s daring.
The elevator arrived at the roof and opened to serious drizzle.
“Just a tick.” Lanie popped into her flat and re-emerged second later, handing him an umbrella.
“Thanks, but I don’t mind the rain.” He propped the umbrella against the wall of the flat.
She blinked at him as she shrugged into a black raincoat and belted it snugly. “I hate being wet.”
“So you said in your messages.”
He prowled the rooftop with her beside him or wandering off on her own investigations.
She ended up standing at the street front, staring down.
“You look like a spy from the Fifties,” he called.
She turned and smiled at him. “My great-aunt was.”
He abandoned his examination of the foundation for the crystal light installation that would be the centerpiece of the flower garden and take the place of a real water fountain.
“I never met Aunt Suzanne, but apparently MI6 recruited her after one of their senior field agents saw her theatre act. She was a conjuror with a specialty in mind-reading. He married her later.”
“So he didn’t really believe she could read minds,” Nick concluded, amused.
“Who knows? Some people like to believe in the impossible, and during the Cold War both sides attempted things like remote viewing. The Soviet Union even convinced some people that they achieved it.”
“You don’t seem to believe in ESP or the supernatural.”
“No. When you grow up seeing how a trick is done, the magic never really catches hold. But there’s a fascination in working out further refinements to convince people to question their disbelief. Watching their eyes widen and their involuntary back
wards step is genuine applause for a magician.” Then she changed the subject firmly. “Are you still going to put a raised platform in here?”
“I’ve lowered it,” he said. “The carpenter was right about safety concerns. We want to keep this front wall a safe barrier to the street. It’ll be just high enough to serve as low seating, facing back to the flower garden.” And to her flat, but he didn’t mention that. “It’ll also give the suggestion of a rotunda, like in a grand garden or park. Plus there’s the practical consideration that not much will grow here, in the deep shadow of the north-facing wall, and I need to mark the end of the garden with something less abrupt than a wall.”
“But you intend to paint a mural on that wall.”
“Have one painted, yes.”
The rain stopped and Lanie pushed back the hood of her coat.
“Do you have time for lunch?” he asked abruptly.
She stared at him for a long moment, and he wondered if she recognized the invitation for the turning point it was. She wasn’t client or colleague to him any longer. He was inviting her to explore if they could be something more.
“Yes,” she said.
Lanie stood in the hall of the museum and looked up. The front door was locked and secured against the tradesmen, museum visitors and volunteers who’d just departed. Only Nick remained on the roof, unless he’d left by the outside staircase, and she didn’t think he had. Their lunch at the café on the corner had been too much fun, too full of promise, for him to leave without a good-bye.
She caught the elevator skywards, foot not quite tapping in time with the rattle of it. She’d started to make up songs to accompany the old contraption’s squeaks, groans and clanks on these rides. Just now, she could swear the elevator rattled out a percussion beat of excitement, trepidation and sly mockery at her eagerness to see Nick. She ignored the elevator’s opinion and pushed open its doors.
Nick was nowhere to be seen.
Her stomach plummeted, as if the elevator plunged downward. The sound of a drill caught her ear and she walked around the corner of the elevator shaft, and there he was, hidden behind it, against the west-facing, windowless wall of her flat where a steel lacework arch sketched the idea of a gazebo.
Nick knelt in front of it.
The scent of newly cut—or drilled—wood drifted to her. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t you guess?” He smiled up at her, eyes faintly narrowed as he looked into the evening sun. He fitted two nuts and bolts to a short plank of wood. Chain pooled near him, in his shadow.
“Not the foggiest.” She sat on the narrow bench inside the “gazebo”.
“I had a last minute inspiration for the garden. It won’t make it into the television program. I’m making it detachable.” Chain jangled as he swapped tools and continued working.
She watched his hands, tanned and strong, moving competently. It took a minute before she added up the clues: a wooden board, chain attached either end, and a last minute inspiration. “Nick, it’s a swing!”
His head tilted as he grinned at her. “You said a romantic garden would have a swing in it.”
She had said that, when they’d been flirting at lunch, pretending to be discussing garden design. “You’re making me a swing!” An expensive gift wouldn’t have wowed her as much as this thoughtful surprise, especially when he was so busy. He’d taken time to make her the swing, not simply requested it from the carpenter.
“You won’t actually be able to swing on it. The arch is too narrow and you’d hit the wall. But you can rock gently.” He stood, stretched up and attached the two chain ends to steel loops in the roof of the steel arch. Then he invited her with a courtly bow to try out her swing.
She sat and swung gently.
Nick abandoned his tools and stood watching her, one hand gripping the roof of the arch. He looked tall and masculine, tough and intent. The wind ruffled his hair and caused the cotton of his shirt to ripple.
“It’s perfect.” You’re perfect.
A slashing grin. “I aim to please.”
“Oh, you do.”
“Life is changing.” Lanie sat on the outer edge of the L-shaped timber bench that formed part of the roof garden’s proposed entertainment zone and raised her voice to cover the distance between her and her sometimes neighbor.
On the adjoining roof, Kevin Marshall held a pigeon expertly, studying it for who knew what arcane pigeon fancying reason. He glanced briefly from it to her. His expression was shrewd. Once a policeman, always a policeman. He’d retired from the force as a detective-inspector with a reputation that lasted seven years into his retirement. “Life has a tendency to do that. We think we’re settled in a pattern, and life turns things upside down. Sometimes more brutally than others.”
The oblique reference to her history was one of the reasons Lanie relaxed when she talked with Marshall. He’d heard worse stories than hers in his career; investigated them, too. He understood scar tissue, how it hardened and warped lives. You were never the same person…after.
Evil was real. Most people remained able to debate the existence of good and evil as a theological or philosophical concept, but when true evil touched you, it was unmistakable. The flames of hell weren’t hot, but freezing cold. They isolated and tortured.
Trauma could lock you into a time loop, replaying events again and again, so that you spent your whole life waiting for the terror to recur.
Lanie looked over the tops of the trees in the square and across the city. She had chosen not to be a victim. Defeating Purvis, the serial killer who’d kidnapped her, hadn’t been enough. His death hadn’t meant closure. She’d needed a path out of the haunted cellar in her mind that he’d locked her in. So she’d committed herself to a quest to find the man who’d instigated the serial killer’s actions; not those specifically aimed at her, but the general evil of snuff films.
She shuddered. How could anyone enjoy watching someone die, and die painfully? She pulled her knees up and hugged them close. If the voyeur suspected that Purvis had told her about him, then he might come after her…but surely that wasn’t likely, not nine months later?
Then again, what logic applied to the situation? Here she was, still searching with such little chance of success, for his identity. And she was getting tired of it.
On the adjacent roof, Marshall puttered around, selecting a pigeon, examining it, returning it to the cote, and choosing another. He fussed over those birds.
An idiosyncratic hobby for a man who’d spent a lifetime as a policeman, a hunter.
She let her knees go and her feet drop to the concrete floor.
Would he understand her sudden irritation with the waiting pattern of her life or was the patience he showed his birds part of his nature?
That he travelled from home every day rather than relocate his birds now that he was retired hinted at the complexities of human behavior. She’d heard the genuine affection in how he spoke of his family, yet he evidently valued this separation of his life, with the pigeons as something apart.
The rooftops of London had their own ecology, their own separate logic. On the roof, you could be anyone. Real life happened at street level. Did Marshall keep the pigeons as a hold on this other life?
She’d never ask him. She’d learned that everyone fought their demons differently.
However, an impulse for companionship and reassurance drover her closer to him. She perched her butt against the northern edge of the wall, confident now that the safety rail was there to keep her fear of falling at bay.
She’d found a precarious sense of security on the roof and hidden in the Horry Museum. The impulse, now, to venture beyond both seemed ungrateful, and yet, perhaps, inevitable.
The shell she’d built of her withdrawal from the theatre, her 1950s costumes and learning how to be a museum curator was cracking. For nearly a year, she’d been in an egg, incubating to become someone else. Or, given her garden setting, she’d been wrapped in a cocoon of her own self-preo
ccupation, metamorphosing. As she tore her way out of that cocoon, how vulnerable would she be?
More prosaically, how much was she risking?
“Marshall, do you think Purvis’s friend,” and that was a perversion of the word, “is looking for me?”
The conversation echoed the one she’d had with Detective-Inspector Ann Khan a few weeks ago, but then Lanie had been asking a different question. She’d wanted to know when she’d encounter the monster. She’d believed that either he’d find her or she’d find him. She’d been impatient, desperate, for it to happen. But now…was she asking permission to abandon her narrow isolation and self-imposed quest?
Marshall returned the pigeon he held to its home with gentle hands. He was a tidy man, with his bald head covered by a cap and a blue pullover keeping off the night chill. His gray trousers were clean and pressed.
Lanie waited for him to re-emerge from the cote.
He wouldn’t be stalling. He simply insisted on tackling one thing at a time.
What she didn’t know was if that had always been his way, or if age had changed him.
The gray tinge to his complexion hinted at underlying ill health that he never mentioned. He was tall and thin, and radiated an aura of unassuming, reassuring authority. A Devonshire accent still marked his words despite decades in London.
He stood at the edge of his roof space, close so that he could speak quietly. “He’ll be aware you exist, love. But he hasn’t come after you. That means he thinks he’s safe. And him believing he’s safe, means you’re safe.”
“Unless something shakes his cage.” And that was the fear she couldn’t rationalize away, the stalking horror that haunted her when she walked in the streets below. The monster could be anyone. She could encounter him in the street, and until he stabbed a knife between her ribs, she wouldn’t know him.
Not that he’d do anything so public. The police and her own instincts said that direct action didn’t match his profile. He would plan something more devious.
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