Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  Frankie lifted her eyebrows. ‘Believe me, these two women don’t look like a Mary and a Mabel. They’re rather… exotic creatures. Robbie was smitten with them. Especially one.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You know what, I really don’t know. Somehow I always think of them as a pair. And to tell the truth, I didn’t pay that much attention. Robbie had these on-off crushes all the time.’ She smiled a little sadly. ‘He even had a little crush on me once.’

  ‘Well, I can’t blame him for that.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘No, really, I mean it.’ And he did. He glanced at her appraisingly. You would not call her beautiful, but Frankie’s face was immensely appealing. She was sitting in profile and his gaze took in the sweep of her cheekbone, the nose, just slightly turned up at the end, and the curve of the upper lip, which always made it seem as though she was just about to smile. Today she was wearing a flowery dress and looked young and fresh. He hadn’t noticed how pretty she looked until now, which was very unlike him. Still, when she first arrived he had felt so rough he wouldn’t have reacted if Monica Bellucci had walked through the door. Frankie’s dress had a wide, scooped neck and he could see the delicate sprinkle of tiny coppery freckles on her collarbone. Sun kisses, he used to call them, way back, when they were still together. Not very original, in hindsight. But what he remembered was how he had liked to try to count them. Usually after they had made love. A small private ritual.

  She turned her head and caught him looking. He saw in her eyes that she had sensed what he was thinking. A faint blush stained her cheekbones and she brought her hand involuntarily to her neck.

  So Mrs Whittington wasn’t quite as impervious as she liked to pretend. He smiled and touched her hand, allowing his fingers to linger. ‘I like this dress on you.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s William’s favourite as well. He bought it for me in Milan.’

  Right. That was pointed enough. He should have remembered that, despite an innate sweetness, Frankie was no pushover. And she had always been able to put him in his place. He removed his hand.

  ‘I take it the police interviewed the sisters?’ He kept his voice cool.

  ‘In depth.’ He could see she was relieved by his businesslike tone. ‘They found nothing suspicious at all.’

  ‘You said he had a crush on one of the women. Was it reciprocated?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Frankie’s voice was emphatic. ‘They’re quite a few years older than Robbie. And there is absolutely no way either one of them would be interested in him as a partner. I think they saw him as a little puppy dog following them around and were rather amused by his devotion.’

  She paused, tapped her finger against her lips. ‘I could get you inside that house. Pay them a visit and take you along.’

  He shook his head, wincing as he did so. The headache was still there. ‘What I need is unrestricted access. If you take me along as a guest, we’ll be served tea in the parlour and that would be that. I need to be able to snoop around undisturbed. Also, I want to see the house first, before meeting the owners. It would be easier to get a clean impression that way.’

  Frankie looked at him suspiciously. ‘You’re not thinking of breaking and entering, are you?’

  ‘With your help, yes.’

  ‘Gabriel… wait a minute. That would be taking it too far.’

  ‘Well, it’s up to you. I can walk away at any time.’

  Which wasn’t quite true. The discovery that he still had the ability to view so clearly had come as something of a surprise. Whether the surprise was going to turn out to be a pleasant one was the question. But he was hooked.

  And her next words showed he hadn’t fooled her. ‘You’re lying. The ride got to you. I can see it in your eyes. Was this your first ride since…’ she paused, delicately, then must have read the answer on his face. ‘Wow. You must be pumped then.’

  He shrugged. He was exhausted but excited. And still amazed that it had happened at all. Admittedly, the circumstances had been favourable. Remote viewing ideally required the viewer to manage brainwaves, which have a frequency range of four to seven cycles per second. These theta waves are present during deep meditation and create the optimal mental state for crossing over. When he had slotted into the ride, his body had been completely relaxed. That was when it usually happened for him: when he was drifting, but not out.

  ‘So let’s make a plan.’

  ‘What did you have in mind exactly?’ Her voice was wary.

  ‘I need you to invite them to your house for dinner one night so that I can be sure the house is empty.’

  She chewed her lip, her face uncertain.

  ‘Come on, Frankie. Take a walk on the wild side.’

  ‘Well, your repertoire has certainly changed. I can’t recall burglary as being one of your talents.’

  ‘It’s not burglary. It’s looking without touching.’

  She frowned, but he could see she was starting to make peace with the idea.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m not saying anything to William yet. He admires those two women a lot.’

  Maybe a little bit too much, Gabriel thought, and maybe Mrs Whittington doesn’t like it?

  Frankie glanced at her watch, picked up her handbag. ‘I should go. I have a lunch appointment. But I’ll call the sisters when I get home. Set a date.’

  ‘OK.’

  At the door she stopped and looked at him. ‘You said that in your ride you were able to sense this woman as a person. What was it you sensed? Malevolence?’

  ‘No. Not malevolence. Greed.’

  ‘Greed?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain. Not greed as in money lust but greed as in wanting to know. Curiosity is the word I’m looking for, I suppose. Except that it’s not strong enough. I’m talking intense curiosity. Curiosity squared, you might say.’

  ‘Curiosity about what?’

  He shrugged. ‘Beats me.’

  But as he closed the door behind Frankie, he realised that his description hadn’t been quite accurate. Yes, he had picked up overwhelming curiosity from the masked figure who had looked into his eyes so searchingly. But there had been another emotion radiating from her as well. Something much more basic and unambiguous. This was a woman whose expectations had not been met. The underlying emotion he had sensed from her could be summed up in one word.

  Disappointment.

  Entry Date: 11 June

  Disappointment is the saddest of all emotions. M. agrees, but she says regret is the one that will eat away at your soul.

  We finished the chamber of Toth last night. I am satisfied with it but I also feel emptiness. Like M., I long to find someone new to play with. And I have no doubt that there will be someone new. It is just a matter of time.

  I wonder who he’ll be. R. was a seeker and an innocent. But maybe M. is right. Maybe we need a man who carries more fire in his veins.

  Someone who is not only a dreamer but also a warrior.

  I wonder where he is now—our future playmate. What is he thinking of right this minute?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Monk House was the only Victorian house in an entire street of elegant Georgian buildings. It sat bulkily on the corner: square, brooding and defiant in its otherness. The brickwork was deep orange and there was more than a hint of Gothic in the pointed gable and the oriel window bulging from the house’s flank. It was late afternoon and the sun glinted redly off the tiny leaded panes, creating an impression that inside a fire was burning.

  The front of the house was flush with its neighbour and the door was overlooked by houses on the opposite side of the street. The door had two locks and Gabriel had already ascertained that one of them was a Bramah. This would not be his point of access. It would be far easier to negotiate the back garden and enter through the French doors leading from the garden into the living room. He had Frankie to thank for this piece of information as the back of the house was hidden from view. A wall that was all of twenty m
etres long and at least four metres high ensured not only complete privacy but also good security. It would be difficult to scale.

  But there was an alley round the back, and set into the wall was an access door. Gabriel suspected that it was used when the rubbish bins were put out for collection. He had already traversed the alley earlier this week, checking out the small timber door. As he expected, the lock was a standard one. He did not foresee any problems.

  He tapped his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel of the Jaguar. He wanted out of the car. Even though the sun was losing much of its sting, it was still hellishly hot. His shirt was sticking to his back where it pressed against the leather upholstery. He was parked about half a block away and had a good side view of the house. Nothing stirred.

  He glanced at his watch. They were cutting it fine. It was already ten minutes to the hour and Frankie had told him the sisters had accepted her invitation to drinks at seven, followed by dinner. That should give him more than enough time to look round. He was also carrying his mobile phone. Frankie had promised to call him as soon as the sisters were leaving for home. He didn’t want to be caught in the act, although he expected to be finished long before then.

  A black taxi cab came to a halt in front of the house. Gabriel watched as the cab driver walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds, the cabbie turned his head and spoke into the intercom unit set into the wall. He listened for a moment or two before walking back to the cab and settling himself behind the steering wheel. He kept the car idling.

  Gabriel waited. The front door remained shut.

  Earlier today he had stopped off at Robert Whittington’s flat. Frankie had given him the key. He spent almost an hour opening cupboards, rifling through drawers and boxes. A sad little exercise. Not only did the flat have the forlorn feel of an unoccupied place, but Gabriel had the feeling that everything there belonged to someone who was searching.

  Books on self-improvement rubbed shoulders with tomes on Buddhism, astrology and tarot-card reading. Against the wall were two framed pictures: an X-Files poster with its slogan ‘I want to believe’ and the iconic features of Che Guevara, improbably handsome and debonair. Candles, crystals and a number of different Buddhas—some of them jolly and potbellied, others intimidatingly ascetic—lined the shelves.

  Above the bed hung a wooden mask. It looked to be African in origin, thick eyelids surrounding hollow eye sockets and the mouth pulled back into a stylised grimace. The furniture was modest, the apartment small. It was difficult to believe the heir to a vast fortune had lived there.

  On the bedside table was a framed photograph. It showed Robert Whittington as a teenager, all outsized nose and feet, with his arm round the waist of a thick-set blonde woman. There was a definite family resemblance—the mother, at a guess. Frankie had told him she had died in a skiing accident when the boy was only fourteen. The first Mrs Whittington was no beauty, but she had soft eyes. As he looked at the two faces, Gabriel felt a sudden pang of sympathy. The loss of his mother must have been a tremendous blow, especially if relations with the father had been strained since childhood.

  The only thing of real interest in the apartment was a pencil sketch tacked to a discoloured pinboard. The sketch was extraordinarily well executed and almost architectural in detail. It showed a circular space with a domed ceiling and walls composed of wheels densely covered with symbols. Some were easy to identify: a star, a candle, a book. Others were more obscure: squiggles and doodle-like icons impossible to interpret. At the bottom of the sketch was written in a slanted hand Portal and underneath it a simple signature, Robert, followed by a date. Robert Whittington, it seemed, had a real talent for drawing.

  But it wasn’t the skill of the artist which made Gabriel pause and caused his heart to beat faster. It was the fact that the pencilled lines on the paper replicated a place he had visited only a few days earlier. A fantastical space he had entered shortly before being sucked into a nightmarish whirlwind of images and sounds that had sent his mind crashing into insanity. This vast chamber with its turning, symbol-clad wheels had been the gateway to madness and death. Just thinking back on it gave him a chill.

  Portal.

  As he looked at the drawing, so finely rendered, he found himself shivering. Thought given substance. Proof that he had indeed managed to cross the slippery borders of Robert Whittington’s mind.

  The door to Monk House opened. Gabriel blinked, brought back to the present. The occupants of the house were finally about to leave. A woman with red hair reaching to her shoulders stepped out. She turned sideways and he was able to see the tip of a delicate nose and chin behind the gleaming veil of hair. She was obviously talking to someone who was still inside the house.

  Red hair. So that would be Minnaloushe. Frankie had told him Morrighan was dark-haired. Someone, another woman who was not yet in his line of vision, was pointing towards the taxi: a slim bare arm was reaching out from behind the front door. The redhead nodded and walked down the steps, adjusting a long, floaty scarf around her neck. Before he had time to have a proper look at her face, she had ducked into the interior of the cab.

  The second woman walked through the front door, pulling it shut behind her. He saw a flash of keys. She was slightly taller than the redhead. Her hair was black as coal and pulled back in a sophisticated chignon. After locking the door, she looked up and down the street. For a moment he had a full view of her face: heart-shaped with cheekbones that could cut glass. Ve-e-ry nice indeed. Then she too stepped inside the cab. The taxi pulled away and accelerated down the street.

  He waited for a few minutes after the taxi had disappeared round the corner. No harm in making sure they were really gone. Then he got out of the Jaguar and headed for the alley, taking care to walk briskly and confidently. The alley was overlooked by the back windows of a number of houses, but he wasn’t too fussed. If one walked with enough assurance, people usually didn’t pay attention. Furtive skulking, on the other hand, would get you noticed every time. The only glitch might be the lock on the garden door. He would have to work quickly.

  He didn’t have to worry. He was just about to take out his tools when his shoulder pushed against the door and it clicked open under his weight. It had been left unlocked. Quickly he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  He was standing at the foot of a long narrow garden, which had a wonderful feel of manicured wildness to it. A cascade of mauves, purples and pinks—lavender, lilac, love-in-a-mist—grew among the silken tassels and feathery plumes of softly swaying grasses. Rambling roses with pale petals covered the walls. But even though the overall feel of the garden was one of delightful randomness, if one looked closely it was obvious that real thought had gone into the planning of all this luxurious herbage. It might be botanical anarchy, but it was a controlled disorder. The mind which had created this floral fantasy was a meticulous one.

  To his right was the swimming pool, shaded by a humpbacked tree with bright red flowers. He walked over and knelt down on the brick apron, trailing his hand through the sun-warm water. As Frankie had said, the pool wasn’t big but it seemed quite deep. The surface of the water was flecked with stray petals. He could see the delicate bodies of dead insects bobbing near the edges of the filter.

  He wiped his mind clean of emotion and waited. Concentrated. He kept his hand submerged in the water.

  Nothing. If Robert Whittington had died here, the echo of his passing had already disappeared. He could sense nothing at all.

  He got to his feet and wiped his hand against his shirt front. Maybe he’d have better luck inside the house.

  The windows on the ground floor were shut, as were a pair of tall French doors. But as he started to walk towards the doors, he experienced a flash of recognition. The stained-glass panels set into the doors showed the coat of arms he had seen during his ride. The Monas. Astrological symbols, according to Frankie.

  They didn’t look like any astrology symbols he’d ev
er seen but, to be fair, he wasn’t exactly au fait with the wonderful world of the zodiac. Isidore, on the other hand, was meticulous about checking his horoscope every day and a negative forecast could send him into depression faster than you could say ‘Saturn in retrograde’. Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to have Isidore check out the Monas. It had to be important if Robert Whittington had the design tattooed onto his arm.

  He stopped and tried the doors. They were locked, but the lock itself was basic. There was also no indication of an alarm. Except for the higher than normal garden wall, the sisters did not seem to worry unduly about security. Which might mean they had nothing to hide.

  Or not. It could also be a sign of arrogance.

  If he had been a real burglar, he would have tapped out one of the glass insets in the door and simply put his hand through and let himself in that way. As it was, he did not want to leave behind traces of his visit, so a little more effort was required. From the inside pocket of his jacket he extracted the chamois pouch containing his picks and removed one of the pronged instruments. As he started to work on the lock, he smiled. This was going to be easy. And, indeed, after only a few seconds, he felt the bolt slide back. He eased himself in and closed the door behind him.

  For a few moments he stood without moving, giving his eyes a chance to become accustomed to the interior gloom. The windows were shuttered, allowing only filtered shafts of sunlight to shine through the slats. The air was heavy, the shutters not so much screening the house from the heat as trapping it and keeping it prisoner. A ceiling fan whirled lazily above his head. It hardly stirred the air and the whisper of the slowly turning blades only accentuated the quietness of the room.

  Every house has its own peculiar smell. Whenever he visited a place, this was always the first thing he noticed. Not the décor; the smell. It might vary from day to day—cooking, cleaning, working, all these activities left their olfactory imprint—but the underlying essence of a house stayed the same. The scent of this house was powerfully feminine. And surprisingly old-fashioned. Talcum. Roses of the old, fragrant variety. Spices such as cinnamon and cloves. Tangerines? Also something else. Something he couldn’t quite place but which bit into his palate, slightly bitter and acrid. And then, of course, the olfactory ingredient that made the smell of any house as singular as a fingerprint. The occupants. The sisters themselves. He could smell them as well.