Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile

by Folsom, Allan

  Someone?

  Lady Clem!

  It was something she never would have admitted to anyone but him. Even then it was done with no more than a fleeting wink as the first firefighters rushed past—the smallest gesture in an attempt to redeem herself, snatching him from God only knew what horror her father was bestowing on him in the basement tavern by using the most practical tool at hand.

  A “Leslie,” Lord Prestbury had called her, terrified she might have somehow turned gay. A father’s fear that he had lost touch with his only child, and she had become something he could neither understand nor accept.

  A “Leslie”? Hardly. And the balls of her, coming right back to his top-floor loft on Water Street overlooking the River Irwell the same night as the false alarm fiasco, immediately after sitting straight-faced through dinner with her father and the Bishop of Manchester and the Lord Mayor, where the principal topic of discussion was the terrorist act of the false alarm.

  Then, while slowly undressing, or rather performing a striptease in front of him, insisting he tell her what it was that her father had been so eager to discuss in the secretive Whitworth Hall tavern. And when he did, using her father’s genteel terminology for it, her reaction had been to say simply, “Poor Daddy. Wonderful father. House of Lords. But so much of life he doesn’t quite get.”

  The words barely from her mouth, she slid naked in front of him, stripped off his clothes, and made a party of the rest of the night. Laughing, teasing, working him into bed and onto his back. Then, with his sizable erection pointed squarely at the ceiling, she climbed astride him and with her eyes closed, back arched, her great breasts heaving, began thrusting and pumping, losing herself in the overflow of joy and love and mischief and passion. All the while chanting over and over so loudly he was certain people passing in the street four stories down would hear, “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!”

  Jesus. And she was a professor, the daughter of a Knight of the Garter. Upper class, titled, and wealthy beyond reason.

  Marten smiled again. This was what life had become. Now, at age twenty-seven, he was working toward a master’s degree in planning and landscape and literally flirting with nobility.

  At the same time and little by little the dark heartbeat of Raymond diminished. What had ever become of his threatened e-mails was anybody’s guess. Either they had been a desperate bluff and never existed in the first place, or they had been sent on a delayed basis as he’d promised and were simply lost, stuck floating for eternity somewhere in cyberspace. Either way it didn’t matter, because they never materialized. At least they hadn’t in the weeks and months since, and each turn of the calendar made it easier to forget about them and to believe they had never existed.

  In a way it was hard to believe any of it had ever existed. Los Angeles and all that had been was a dream somewhere in a distant past. Here in the cold rain of Manchester he had become a man who found joy in every passing day, who was increasingly involved with his studies, with his secret life with Clem, and with the peace and wholeness of a brand-new life.

  20

  MANCHESTER. MONDAY, JANUARY 13.

  The psychological impact of preserving and maintaining urban parks in an increasingly fast-paced, global, and Ethernet-driven society cannot be too strongly stated. Whether we realize it or not, these great tracts of sweeping landscapes …

  Marten stopped and pushed back from his keyboard. He was alone in his flat working on his term paper, a study of the psychological and functional importance of sustaining urban parks in Europe in the twenty-first century. It was a work he estimated would be some eighty to one hundred pages long and take some three months to complete. Although it wasn’t due until early April, he knew it would be a struggle, especially since he had already been at it for more than a month and so far had written just twenty pages.

  It was now three-thirty in the afternoon and a cold rain was spitting against the dormer window, as it had been doing since seven this morning when he’d first gone to work. His mind numb from concentration, he got up and navigated around the piles of books and research papers scattering the floor to go into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee.

  As he waited for it to brew, he glanced through the daily newspaper, the Guardian. Drained, his thoughts still on his writing, he was doing little more than skimming pages when a short article caught his eye. It was an Associated Press article headlined NEW POLICE CHIEF FOR LOS ANGELES and went on to briefly relate that the mayor of L.A. had appointed a new, highly regarded, highly credentialed chief to run the department. The new man had been selected from outside the organization and given the mandate to set a long-tarnished police agency on its feet.

  “Good luck,” Marten thought but in the next instant hoped it was possible. Obviously, with all that had happened, the mayor and city council had seen, at least politically, the need for a change. But even if the new man was good and the rank and file respected him, it would take a long time to shake out the old attitudes and traditions, especially with veteran detectives like Gene VerMeer. Still, it had been done, and maybe with time change for the better would come.

  Standing there in the kitchen, listening to the patter of rain against the window, Marten felt a warmth and comfort he hadn’t felt in as long as he could remember. The mind-numbing trauma of Raymond and whatever he had been about had slowly faded into a distant memory, and now, with Chief Harwood gone, a new era was beginning at the LAPD. Mercifully, it seemed, that part of his life was finally over.

  Marten turned the page and was about to close the paper and go back to work when another short article caught his attention. It was a Reuters news service piece from Paris. The unclothed body of a middle-aged man had been found in a public park. The victim had been shot a number of times in the face at close range, destroying his features and making identification all but impossible.

  Marten felt the breath go out of him and the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It was Los Angeles and MacArthur Park and the body of the German student, Josef Speer, and the murder victims found in Chicago, San Francisco, and Mexico City all over again. In the next instant a single word flashed through his mind.

  Raymond.

  But it was impossible.

  Shaken, Marten put the Guardian away, poured his coffee, and went back to his work.

  Raymond.

  No. Not possible. Not after all this time.

  His first thought was to call Dan Ford in Paris and see what he knew and if he had more details. But then he decided no, it was crazy. He was doing it to himself again and he had to stop it. It was simply a murder and nothing else, and Ford would tell him the same thing.

  At seven-thirty he stopped, collected his raincoat and umbrella, and took a brisk ten-minute walk to Sinclair’s Oyster Bar in Shambles Square for a pint of ale and a plate of fish and chips. At eight-forty-five he was back at work, and at eleven he wearily turned out the light and went to bed; mentally exhausted, five more pages completed.

  11:20 P.M.

  Lights from passing cars below created haphazard, dancing patterns across the dark of the ceiling above his bed while the incessant rain on the roof and windowpane provided the images with a kind of comforting soundtrack. Taken with his weariness, it was like some gentle drug, and he relaxed and let his thoughts go to Lady Clem as if she were there beside him instead of in Amsterdam, where she had gone for a weeklong seminar.

  Fleetingly, he thought of Rebecca, safe and happy in the Rothfels home in Switzerland.

  11:30 P.M.

  Sleep began to overtake him, and his thoughts drifted to Jimmy Halliday and how he was managing at Valley Traffic Division. Halliday, who, in the final seconds in the rail yards, had so heroically saved Rebecca’s life and his by facing Polchak’s murderous machine gun himself and stopping him the only way he could, by killing him. He tried to picture Halliday’s face, remembering what he had looked like and wondering if he had changed, but the image faded, replaced by the warm grin of Dan Ford, snuggled comforta
bly with Nadine in their tiny apartment in Paris proudly awaiting the birth of their first child.

  Paris.

  Again he saw the short article in the Guardian. The unclothed body of a man found dead in a public park. Shot numerous times in the face. Immediate identification all but impossible.

  Raymond.

  It was absurd. There had been no raised pulse, no whispered inner voice, no sense of doom. Raymond was dead.

  Walking back in the rain from dinner, he’d thought again that maybe he should call Ford in Paris and talk about it. Again he’d decided against it. It was his own disquiet and he knew it. What had happened was nothing but coincidence, and the idea that it could be anything else was preposterous.

  “NO!”

  His own cry startled him from a deep sleep. He was soaked in sweat and staring into the dark. He’d seen Raymond in his dreams. He’d been right there in the bedroom, watching him as he slept.

  Instinctively he reached out to the nightstand to touch his gun. All he felt was the smoothness of lacquered wood. His hand moved again. Nothing. He sat up. He knew he’d put the Colt there. Where was it?

  “Now I have both your guns.”

  Raymond’s voice rocked through him, and he looked up expecting to see the killer standing at the foot of his bed staring at him in the dark with John Barron’s Double Eagle Colt in his hand and dressed in the ill-fitting suit he’d taken from the Beverly Hills jeweler, Alfred Neuss.

  A hard sheet of rain suddenly hammered against the window and he realized where he was. Raymond was not there. Nor was Lady Clem. Nor was anyone else but him. It had been a nightmare—a replay of what had happened in L.A. when he’d dreamed Raymond was in his room and he’d wakened to find out the dream was real and Raymond was right there at the foot of his bed.

  Slowly he got up and walked to the dormer window to look out. It was still dark, but from the streetlamps below he could see that the wind-driven rain was beginning to mix with snow and turning the icy dark of the River Irwell almost deadly black against the dim gray around it. He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, then looked at his clock.

  It was just past six. He was up, he might as well shower and get to work. He had a term paper to think about, not the haunting of his own past. For the first time he realized how true and simple that was.

  Quickly he stripped off the boxer shorts he had slept in and started for the bathroom and a hot shower, his enthusiasm for his term paper and his life in Manchester recharged. Then his telephone rang and he froze where he was.

  It rang again. Who was it? No one would call at this hour unless it was a wrong number or an emergency. It rang again and he crossed the room, naked, and picked up.

  “This is Nicholas.”

  The person on the other end hesitated; then he heard the familiar voice. “It’s Dan. I know it’s early.”

  A chill slid down Marten’s spine. “The man shot in the park.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw a clip in the paper.”

  “The French police have discovered his identity.”

  “Who—?”

  “Alfred Neuss.”

  21

  BRITISH AIRWAYS FLIGHT 1604, MANCHESTER TO PARIS.

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 14. 10:35 A.M.

  Puffy clouds intermixed with sunshine gave Marten glimpses of the English Channel as they passed over it. Ahead he could see the shoreline of the Normandy coast, and then they were past it and over the huge checkerboard that was French farmland.

  For ten months he had been waiting for something to happen and nothing had, and he had all but let it go. And then this. With the confirmation that the disfigured body was Alfred Neuss, a wave of fear, anxiety, and exhilaration had rushed through him. In one way he felt exonerated because he had not been crazy but right all along. But he was equally disturbed because there was no way to know what was going on: the reason for the murder, why it had come all these months later, how it fit into the scheme of what had happened before, who Raymond had been involved with, and, most frightening of all, what the whole was about, what was yet to happen.

  His decision to go to Paris had been made on the spot in the middle of Dan Ford’s call. On the practical side it had been easy because for the next week he had no classes, just the occasional meeting with a supervisor; Lady Clem was one of them, and she was in Amsterdam. Instead he had planned his calendar to focus on his term paper, and right now that could wait. The only other consideration was cost. His settlement with the LAPD had allowed him and Rebecca to come to England, with enough for her to go to the Balmore and for him to pay his rent in Manchester and his not inconsiderable university tuition. Rebecca’s luck in going to Jura had saved substantial expense, and his only real outlay for her now was clothing. Her sundries and spending money were taken care of by the small salary she earned working for the Rothfels. What remained of his compensation he had put aside, drawing out only what he needed for expenses and to dutifully pay off the monthly balances on the two credit cards he kept.

  Still, it was a long way until he graduated and could look for a job, and he had to watch what he spent. Flying to Paris was costly, but so was the Eurostar, the Chunnel train, and the plane was faster; besides, it would be the bulk of his expense because for the short time he was there he would sleep on the couch in Dan Ford’s living room. On the other hand, if he had classes back to back and no money at all, he still would have gone. The pull of Raymond and what he had been about was far too strong.

  22

  Dan Ford was waiting for him as he cleared immigration at Roissy–Charles de Gaulle airport, and together they drove into the city in Ford’s small, white, two-door Citroën.

  “A couple of teenagers found Neuss’s body in the Parc Monceau under some bushes near the Metro station.” Dan Ford shifted gears and accelerated onto Autoroute A1, heading into Paris. “Neuss’s wife asked the hotel people to check on him when she hadn’t been able to get in touch with him. They were the ones who called the police. Things came together pretty quickly after that.

  “Neuss was here on business. The hotel where he was staying is near the park. He’d flown from L.A. to Paris, taken a connecting flight to Marseilles and then a cab to Monte Carlo, then come back to Paris. He bought a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of diamonds in Monte Carlo. They’re missing.”

  “The police have anything solid?”

  “Only that Neuss had been tortured before he was killed.”

  “Tortured?”

  Ford nodded.

  “How?” Immediately Marten thought of the Azov brothers in Chicago and the men murdered in San Francisco and Mexico City. All had been tortured before they were killed.

  Raymond! Again the name shot through him. But he knew it was crazy and so he said nothing.

  “The police didn’t give specifics. If they have anything more they’re not talking about it, but I doubt it. Philippe Lenard, the chief inspector assigned to the case, knew I’d covered the LAPD, and when I told him I’d been involved with the Neuss story earlier he asked if he could call on me with questions. I think if the method of torture meant anything, or if he had something else, he’d tell me because he’d want my input.”

  Ford changed lanes and slowed behind traffic. Marten hadn’t seen him since early fall, when he and Nadine had suddenly arrived in Manchester to surprise him and announce her pregnancy. Now, nearly five months later, approaching fatherhood seemed to have affected him little. He still wore the rumpled blue blazer over khaki trousers and horn-rimmed glasses, still looked at the world and his place in it with the same one-eyed fire and intensity he always had. Moreover, it seemed to make little difference where he was on the planet—California, Washington, D.C., Paris, each fit his soul like a slipper.

  “LAPD know about Neuss?” Marten asked.

  Ford nodded. “Guys from Robbery-Homicide talked to his wife and to the detectives at London Metropolitan Police who interviewed him there before. And then to Lenard, here in
Paris.”

  “Robbery-Homicide, you mean VerMeer?”

  Ford looked at him. “I don’t know if it was VerMeer.”

  “What happened?”

  “Neuss’s wife said she had no idea who it could have been or if it might have had to do with what happened before. Her feeling was that it was just a robbery gone bad. All London Metro had was the transcript of the conversation they’d had with Neuss last year, and the same story he told all along, and that his wife corroborated—that he had gone to London on business and that he had no idea who Raymond was or why he’d been in his shop or his apartment and that the only way his name was in the phone book of the brothers Raymond killed in Chicago was because they were tailors he used one time when he was there and had them bill his store in Beverly Hills.”

  “Those guys were Russian. Anybody get hold of the Russian investigators who came to L.A. after Raymond died? With Neuss murdered they might have some new take on the whole thing.”

  “I don’t know. If they have, neither Lenard nor his men have said anything about it.”

  Dan Ford slowed the Citroën as they crossed the Porte de la Chappelle interchange and came into the north of Paris. “You want to go to the park, see where they found Neuss’s body?”

  “Yes,” Marten said.

  “What do you think you’re going to find that the Paris police haven’t?”

  “I don’t know, except the Paris police weren’t at MacArthur Park when we found Josef Speer.”

  “That’s just the point.” Ford turned to look at Marten directly. “I called you about Neuss because I knew once you learned who it was and how he’d been found, you’d come running anyway.” Abruptly Ford downshifted, turned right, and accelerated once more.