Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  He laughed – a pleasant laugh – and she also noted he had nice, even teeth.

  ‘You had a meeting with one of my officers.’

  ‘Yes, Jim Sharkey.’

  ‘Yes,’ he repeated softly. ‘Jim Sharkey.’ Nothing Sharkey had said had given him any indication about how Lorraine Page looked. Nor had anything he had read about her. He had not expected to be bowled over by her looks.

  ‘So, you’re running that division now, are you?’ she enquired. He liked the way she tilted her head when she spoke, her silky blonde hair falling forward over one side of her face.

  ‘Yes, I hope you don’t mind my calling. It’s not official - just wanted to touch base.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, with a half-smile, then again offered him something to drink. This time he accepted a glass of iced water. He had strong hands with long, tapering fingers, which brushed hers for a second as he took the glass from her.

  Burton drew out a hard-backed chair from the little dining nook, and brought it over to the coffee table, although there was a more comfortable chair and the sofa. He twisted the chair round and sat astride it, leaning his arms along the back.

  ‘You want to trade information,’ he said, looking at her directly. He leaned over, picked up his glass, and sipped from it, then replaced it carefully. ‘As I said before, this is unofficial, but I’m new in town - new to the station. I like to get a handle on some of my officers, especially if they’re taking backhanders, and I know most of them are. I’m on what you might call a clean-up campaign.’

  Lorraine cocked her head to one side, and waited.

  ‘Did you offer any payment to Detective Sharkey?’

  ‘No, I paid for his cappuccino, that’s all.’

  He stared at her. It was his turn to wait, and there was a long pause. ‘I see. Have you traded information with Detective Sharkey before?’

  ‘No. I did some work on a case with a former partner who was an old buddy of Sharkey’s, Bill Rooney -Captain Rooney. I think they sank a few beers together and discussed the investigation. It was the disappearance of—’

  ‘Yes, I read the file. Girl was found murdered in New Orleans, wasn’t she?’ He half smiled. ‘You got a bonus, so I heard, a big one.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Not that I think it’s any business of yours, but it’s what I used to open up my office.’

  ‘Did Sharkey get a cut of your bonus?’

  ‘No, he did not. It was split between myself and my partners.’

  Burton drained his glass, and held the blue goblet loosely in his hands. ‘You working for Cindy Nathan?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mentioned a number of things to Detective Sharkey - some tapes, telephone and video . . .’

  Lorraine stood up. ‘Yes, I did, but he said you knew about them, or the investigating officers did.’

  ‘Then he lied. It was the first we’d heard of them. You want to tell me about them?’

  Lorraine was getting edgy. Burton had got up and was wandering around the room. It unnerved her, as if he was mentally sizing up both her and her apartment. ‘It seems Nathan recorded all incoming calls, and had video monitors set up all over the house.’

  ‘So what did you glean from these tapes?’ he asked, bending to look at a photograph of her father in police uniform.

  ‘That Nathan was both vain and paranoid,’ Lorraine replied. ‘Most of the tapes were of him making beauty appointments. None that I had the opportunity to listen to were of much interest, and some were destroyed.’ She had his full attention now. ‘Someone broke into my office and poured acid over them.’

  ‘Did you tell Sharkey this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the videos?’

  ‘Well, they’re a little different. They are explicit recordings of Nathan’s sexual exploits with his last two wives.’

  Burton folded his arms. ‘Is that why you wanted to see Sharkey? Trade off these videos?’

  ‘No, though I offered them. A good defence attorney will also use them – Cindy took a lot of abuse.’

  ‘Enough to make her kill him?’

  ‘No, not necessarily. I know the evidence against her is pretty incriminating – maybe too incriminating – but I don’t think she did it.’

  ‘You mean she could have been set up?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  He sat on the arm of the sofa. ‘By whom?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s just a theory.’

  ‘And you are obviously being paid a good retainer to find out?’

  ‘Again, I don’t think that’s any of your business. I’m doing my job, that’s all.’

  ‘Apart from the tapes and the videos, do you have anything that would cast suspicion on someone else?’

  It was Lorraine’s turn to pace the apartment. Should she tell him about her suspicions of Kendall Nathan, the parked jeep? She played for time, tidying a stack of magazines on the coffee table.

  ‘You had a problem with your car?’ he said. ‘Sharkey told me.’

  She straightened. ‘Yes, brake cable had been cut, sliced in two.’

  ‘But you didn’t report it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think someone was warning you off?’

  ‘I’d say it might have been a bit more than a warning – if I’d been going at any speed and had to stop I might have been killed.’ She swung round to face him. ‘And this unofficial visit is beginning to get to me. Do you think I’m withholding evidence or something? Why would I? Christ, I’m hired to get my client off a murder rap. Surely anything I come up with I’d feed back to—’

  ‘I’d like to see the tapes.’

  ‘Fine, send someone round to my office and you can have them.’

  ‘What else have you got?’

  She glared at him, and he looked back at her with laser-like intensity.

  ‘You don’t believe Cindy Nathan killed her husband. Is it just a gut feeling, or do you have other evidence that might implicate someone else?’

  Lorraine thought for a moment, then said, ‘Okay, there was a jeep parked across from the Nathans’ house, unidentified so far, seen by the housekeeper. He was sure it didn’t belong to anyone in the neighbourhood, two-tone Mitsubishi, driven away shortly after the shooting. Kendall Nathan owns a jeep that matches that description. Kendall Nathan was also one of only two people who knew that the tapes which were destroyed at my office were in there.’ Burton remained impassive. ‘Cindy Nathan thinks she heard possibly two shots – the first she presumed was a car backfiring, so she didn’t pay any attention to it, and the second made her get up and walk round to the pool area. That’s when she found her husband.’

  ‘He was shot only once.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Lorraine decided against saying anything about the bullet she had found. ‘There was also a phone call,’ she went on. ‘Someone called me right after Nathan was shot, said she was Cindy Nathan, but Cindy subsequently said it wasn’t her. Now that I’ve met her, I don’t think the voice was hers either. It could have been Kendall’s but she denied it.’

  ‘But Kendall Nathan doesn’t have much of a motive, right? She gets half an art gallery, but Cindy’s the one who stood to inherit the house and the stock and everything.’

  Burton had surprised Lorraine – division heads didn’t usually spend much time poring over reports and, in her experience, few had been sufficiently involved with an individual case to discuss motive. But, then, she had never had an unofficial home visit from anyone that high up either.

  ‘Maybe the motive isn’t financial,’ she said. Burton gave her that penetrating look again. ‘Nathan’s finances, as far as I can gather, are not as healthy as one would expect – Cindy Nathan is not coming into a fortune. I’d say she might even find herself in debt after she’s paid off all Nathan’s creditors, so I’m in two minds about money being in the picture at all.’

  Burton hesitated before replying. ‘Maybe you’re right, but even if it’s not money, Ci
ndy Nathan is still in the frame. You’ve said he abused her – maybe she’d taken enough. She’d threatened publicly to kill him and, according to the reports I’ve read, she was pretty confused when she was arrested, not saying categorically that she didn’t kill him, but that she didn’t think she did, that she couldn’t have. Then she said, “Could I?”’

  Lorraine sat down on the sofa. ‘Yeah, I know, but she found the body. She was presumably in a state of shock.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know the results of the medical examination, after she was brought into the station?’

  ‘She was pregnant. Yes, I do know, and she lost the child – in fact she’s only just been released from hospital.’

  ‘I wasn’t referring to her pregnancy. Cindy Nathan is or was a cocaine addict. According to the report, your client was high as a kite on the morning of the shooting.’ He looked at his watch, then extended his hand. ‘Thank you very much for seeing me, Mrs Page.’

  She shook his outstretched hand, trying not to show her astonishment that Cindy Nathan had been doped up when she had first spoken to her.

  ‘I’ll have someone collect the tape footage from you first thing in the morning,’ he said coolly.

  She walked beside him to the front door. He stood head and shoulders above her, and she was close enough to smell his aftershave, fresh, lemony, discreet. He took her by surprise again when he opened the screen door and said softly, ‘You don’t look anything like your photograph.’

  She looked up into his face. ‘My photograph?’

  ‘Mug-shot. I read up on you, Mrs Page.’

  ‘Did you?’ she said coldly.

  He held open the screen door with the toe of his shoe. ‘But, then, that sort of photograph is never very flattering, is it?’

  ‘No, and it was a long time ago.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I congratulate you. It takes a lot of personal courage to beat alcoholism – beat the demons, so to speak.’ Lorraine made no reply. He had read the reports of her drunkenness and her arrest for vagrancy, no doubt he even knew she had prostituted herself, but she felt sickened above all that he knew what she had done – knew why she had been cold-shouldered out of the force. It made her flush.

  ‘What happened to your scar?’

  Lorraine jerked back her head as Burton reached out to touch her cheek with one finger. ‘I had it fixed.’

  ‘You mind if I say something to you, not as an officer, but as a friend?’

  She took two steps back, avoiding his eyes.

  ‘You haven’t reported the break-in at your office, that someone tampered with the brake cable on your car. You had a tough climb out of the gutter, Mrs Page. Perhaps someone from your past, nothing to do with Cindy Nathan, is carrying a grudge. I’d take a little more care.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice.’

  ‘Take it, Mrs Page, and if you need to speak to me at any time, please call.’ He took out his wallet, adroitly produced his card and a pen, and wrote down another number for her. ‘That’s my extension and my home number.’ He put his wallet and pen back in his jacket, and held out the card.

  Lorraine took it without looking at him, and walked back into the apartment as he let himself out and closed the door behind him. She watched from the window as he went towards his car; she knew she should have told him her suspicions of a possible art fraud, which Cindy had outlined, but he had thrown her by admitting he had seen her report sheet. She continued to watch as he drove off down the street.

  He had made her feel jaded somehow – his cleanness and freshness, and his neat handwriting on the card in her hand. Plus Cindy Nathan had tested positive for drugs. That put a whole new light on their meetings, and Lorraine was angry that she had not noticed, or even suspected it from the girl’s odd chatter, her chronic inability to concentrate, and failure to connect with what was happening around her. Suddenly, Lorraine doubted her judgement completely, and began to think that Cindy Nathan was probably guilty, after all. The depression deepened until she sat down, her head in her hands, feeling wretched, inadequate, unable to stop the tears.

  Something else, too, had crept up on her unawares – though she hated to admit it even to herself. She had been attracted to Mr Neat and Clean, and the real pain was knowing that no one or, at least, no decent man would take a second look at her, and that anyone who knew about her past would give her a very wide berth. She was almost thirty-nine years old, and she felt older. The plastic surgery only covered the cracks; it was what was inside that counted. And Lorraine was alone, with only Tiger for company, and it was the idea of a future on her own that made her weep even more despairingly.

  Tiger raised his head as she sobbed, then padded across and climbed onto the sofa beside her. She put one arm around his shoulders to draw his head close.

  *

  It was almost ten o’clock when Juana turned on the bath taps and discovered there was no hot water. She called to her husband, who was still downstairs, asking if he had turned off the water. He didn’t hear her, so she made her way along the landing, then froze as she heard the sound of water running. She was outside Cindy Nathan’s bedroom – and there was no way that the girl could still be taking a shower.

  ‘Get up here, Jose. Hurry, HURRY!’

  Juana and Jose went together into Cindy’s bedroom. Sure enough, the shower was still running, and sounded louder than normal. Suddenly both were afraid.

  ‘Go into the bathroom,’ Juana whispered.

  Jose turned the handle, calling to Cindy as he pushed open the door, one inch, then two – then let it swing wide open.

  ‘Mrs Nathan?’ he said.

  The water was still running and the shower screens were so steamed up that Jose could not make out whether Cindy was inside or not. He edged further into the bathroom, calling Cindy’s name, seeing towels and a delicate necklace lying on the tiles. He eased back the sliding doors, which had been drawn around the bath, and gasped. Cindy was naked, kneeling in a position of prayer, a cord wound round her throat and attached by its other end to the shower jet. Her head had slumped forward, and her wet hair covered her face.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he whispered.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Juana.

  Jose didn’t want his wife to see what he had seen, so he turned quickly and pushed her out of the bedroom.

  Cindy Nathan was dead. Her eyes were open and her dead gaze stared down at the bottom of the bath, as water continued to spray over her kneeling body and swirl into the drain.

  Kendall Nathan sat on her orange sofa in front of the TV set with a tray on her lap. She’d made her usual salad and had just poured herself a glass of white Californian Chardonnay. When the phone rang she was irritated. She had worked late at the gallery and was so tired she was in two minds as to whether to pick it up, but the ringing persisted. When she answered, she couldn’t make out what the caller was saying, and had to ask repeatedly who it was.

  Jose sounded terrified, his voice breaking as he half sobbed how he had found Cindy.

  Kendall almost dropped the phone, and had to breathe deeply to steady herself before speaking. ‘Calm down. Tell me again – is she dead?’

  ‘Yes, in the shower. What do we do? What do we do?’

  Kendall closed her eyes, her mouth bone dry, but her mind racing. ‘Have you called anyone else?’

  ‘No, no, we don’t know what to do,’ Jose said. He had tried to call Lorraine at the office but her answer-phone was on, and he didn’t have her home number. He had also thought about contacting Sonja, but by this time Juana was hysterical, pointing out that Sonja couldn’t do anything from East Hampton. They were afraid to call the police, afraid of any blame being attached to them. Kendall had been their last panic-stricken decision – she would know at least what they should do. They could explain to her that they could not be held responsible.

  Kendall calmed them, forcing herself to take deep breaths so that her voice was controlled. ‘I’ll come right over. Just stay calm and I’ll b
e there as soon as I can. Don’t do anything until I get there, do you understand? Don’t make any more calls,’ Kendall repeated, not wanting to find Feinstein in occupation by the time she got to the house. ‘Wait for me to get there.’ This time, she was determined to get into the house before anyone else did - and get at least one of her paintings out.

  She replaced the receiver with shaking hands, and took a few moments to compose herself before she grabbed her coat, car keys and purse and ran from the house. It took her no more than fifteen minutes to get to the Nathans’, where she screeched up to the garage compound and slammed on the brakes.

  Jose was standing, pale-faced, at the front door.

  ‘Where is she?’ Kendall snapped.

  ‘Bedroom. I found her in the shower,’ he said, as Kendall ran past him towards the staircase.

  A tearful Juana was sitting on a stair and looked up, wiping her eyes on a sodden tissue. ‘There’s a note.’ She sniffed.

  Kendall looked down at the woman, then continued up the stairs and along the landing towards the master suite, Jose behind her.

  ‘No - she’s in her own room,’ he said, and Kendall bit her lip before continuing more slowly along the landing. Cindy’s bedroom door was slightly ajar. She took a deep breath and walked in. Jose was about to follow her, but she turned round. ‘Leave me for a minute, please.’ Jose stepped back and the bedroom door closed.

  Juana appeared, still clutching the tissue. ‘Did you show her the note?’

  ‘I left it on the dressing table.’

  Kendall picked up the single sheet of scented pink notepaper, across which Cindy’s childish writing sprawled: ‘I can’t live like this. It’s all over. By the time you read this I will be dead - Cindy.’

  Kendall sighed and set down the note on the zigzag, nursery style blue and white wood unit that Cindy had used as a dressing table, then turned towards the bathroom.

  She leaned over Cindy’s body, bending down first to try to find a pulse at the wrist, then reached out as though to turn up the face, but recoiled: Cindy’s eyes bulged and her tongue protruded, her face swollen and discoloured. Kendall shut the shower door and walked out.