Cold Heart

by Lynda La Plante

  The first time she heard his voice was at the moment he had put the ring on her finger. She had started talking to him, saying how happy she was, and asking him why he didn’t reply to her questions. It was frightening that she could hear them talking to her but they couldn’t hear her.

  The visits were the worst, when they seemed to ignore what she was saying, talking at her, not to her, not hearing when she called their names. Then she listened intently, and realized that the high-pitched chattering voices she had been hearing day after day belonged to her daughters, talking about what they wanted for Christmas. She wanted to cry with happiness that they were there with her – but why couldn’t they hear what she was saying? She could hear Mike, and told him how pleased she was that he had brought the girls, asked him if he had met Jake. She asked so many questions, and sometimes she laughed at what they were saying, especially old Bill Rooney, forever droning on about some case he knew he should have beaten, then complaining that Tiger had chewed up his best sweater. Her visitors came and went, not hearing her answers, her voice, and when it was night she wept, because it felt as if she would never see them again, and she couldn’t understand what had happened, or where she was. She started to be strict with herself, telling herself to pull herself together, that she had to straighten out. Crying every night was not doing any good: it was just using up all her energy, and she had to start thinking about other things. She forced her brain to be active, even though it hurt to think – yet she had to do something.

  Lorraine felt as if she was gritting her teeth with determination, that if she could just get through the pain barrier her mind had erected, then she was sure she would be able to see again, see her loved ones. She told herself that she was having a nightmare, that she’d wake up soon, but that she had to make herself do it by retaining a mental connection with her active, waking self and her life, and convince herself that she would soon be coming back to them.

  Worst of all were those silent night hours when all she heard was the clatter of things around her, the alien whispers, sounds that reminded her of a hospital, and her mind drifted back to the last time she had been in a hospital, when she’d had the plastic surgery on her cheek to get rid of the scar in an expensive private establishment. She made herself visualize the place, taking herself on a tour of her room, the corridors, the television lounge, the day room, the other patients.

  Lorraine had had no visitors then – no one had even known she was undergoing surgery – so she spent many hours alone in the sunny, comfortable TV lounge, not that she had ever had much interest in television but this was the only room in which patients were allowed to smoke, and she had passed the time by watching the others, playing detective as to their real ages and backgrounds.

  Most were women between forty and sixty, and some had already had so much surgery that at first sight they looked much younger, but there was always some incongruity between their faces, uniformly taut, tanned, slightly android-looking, and the way they dressed, moved or, most noticeably, spoke, that betrayed their real age. There were other dead giveaways too: the slight slackening of skin tone on the under surface of the arm that no amount of exercise could firm, plus, of course, the hands and feet. There were a couple of veritable Zsa Zsa Gabor lookalikes, dyed blonde hair piled up, stretched and lifted faces that could have passed for mid-forties, but with the liver-spotted hands, thickened knuckles and prominent tendons of old age. Only a lucky few seemed to escape that tell-tale sign of time’s passing. There had been a woman in a wheelchair, wearing dark glasses and still bandaged so that virtually none of her face could be seen. Lorraine had assumed, from the few visible strands of white hair, that she must be in her sixties or seventies, but she had noticed that the woman’s large, fine, restless hands were those of someone much younger, conveying an unusual impression of simultaneous flexibility and strength. She remembered noting how short the nails were cut, and had thought at the time that the woman must use her hands – perhaps as a musician or, at her age, a music teacher – which would explain how they had escaped shrivelling into an old lady’s claws. Now she knew that the woman was no musician, no teacher, and no old lady: it had been Sonja Nathan, she would have taken an oath on it.

  The woman had kept herself to herself, only coming into the TV lounge once and taking no part in any of the casual conversations that were going on around her. Lorraine had thought, though, that she had seemed to pay attention when she herself had revealed to a chatty lady who worked for a real estate company that she was a private detective – they had commented quietly that they seemed to be in a minority here of working women: most of their fellow patients were pampered wives. When Lorraine had said she might be looking to rent a new office shortly, the woman had insisted on knowing Lorraine’s full name and the name of her company, Lorraine remembered, and she remembered, too, how she had thought of trying to draw the bandaged woman into their conversation, but some separateness and aloofness in her demeanour had deterred her from doing so. It was that indefinable froideur, as much as anything in Sonja Nathan’s physical appearance, that now made Lorraine certain it had been her.

  Sonja Nathan had left the clinic knowing exactly who Lorraine was and, weeks later, had been able to recall those details.

  Sonja had said that she had not been in Los Angeles at all for the previous year. That was a lie, and Lorraine was positive now that Sonja had also lied when she had said she had not made the call to Lorraine’s office on the morning of the murder. Lorraine already had documentary evidence – presumably lying in her apartment, she thought, in her briefcase – that Sonja and Harry Nathan were in contact after their divorce. Now she had the last piece of the jigsaw: proof that Sonja Nathan had been in LA the day her ex-husband was killed. She was sure now that if she ever got out of this goddamn hospital and was able to get voice experts to analyse the recording Decker had made of the call which had to be somewhere on that tape, they could identify some feature of Sonja’s mid-Atlantic, faintly European accent. That would be the final link and would put the woman behind bars.

  It was painful to drag up each memory, worse than any headache she had ever known. The pain was excruciating, but Lorraine wouldn’t, couldn’t stop. Now everything had fallen into place, and Lorraine understood Sonja’s odd concern about Cindy, her saying that she wished she had given her more time – ‘or assistance’. Sonja’s lack of interest in the fact that so much money was missing from the estate had also seemed strange – but not, Lorraine thought wryly, when one knew that the assets had been taken before the bizarre sequence of events that had left Sonja, ironically, Harry Nathan’s legitimate heir.

  Sonja Nathan knew the house, the gardens, and more than likely her ex-husband’s routine – or she could readily have arranged to meet him in advance. Sonja was clearly capable of premeditation, as she must deliberately have hired a jeep identical to Kendall’s to conceal her comings and goings at Nathan’s house – perhaps she had even hoped to incriminate Kendall, Lorraine thought, and she had managed to take every nickel of the woman’s money through the art fraud. Even if Kendall’s death really had been accidental, Sonja bore some indirect responsibility, as it had been after realizing that she had lost her stake in the paintings that Kendall had been tempted to try to burn down the gallery for the insurance. That must have given Sonja considerable satisfaction, Lorraine thought, for, as Arthur had said, she was all too human – or inhuman – under the cool, superior façade, and had clearly hated Kendall as intensely as she had ever loved Nathan.

  As for the paintings, Lorraine now knew that Harry Nathan had been to Germany, to make preparations for the sale of the real works of art, and she was sure, too, that once she got out of here and could get to Berlin, she could find out exactly how Sonja and Arthur, the expert copier, had stepped into Nathan’s shoes and netted the proceeds of sale.

  Lorraine’s head throbbed, but she carried on, piecing the jigsaw together. All the dead faces floated in front of her – Harry Nathan, Cindy, Kendall,
Vallance – faded, and then became clearer, but her concentration was wavering like a guttering torch. It was on Vallance’s death that she tried to shed the last of its light. Lorraine knew now how Sonja had killed him – or made him kill himself – by threatening to release the porn videos, the murder weapon Jake Burton had innocently sent her. Sonja could not, of course, be made to bear legal responsibility for that murder, or for Cindy’s death, for which she was also morally responsible: Vallance had strangled his former mistress, believing mistakenly that she, not Sonja, had killed the man he had idolized and lusted after all his life. Christ, Lorraine thought, that this should be the woman to whom she had poured out her own most private griefs to turn Sonja’s mind from suicide – but once she got out of here . . . The faces blurred and parts of the conversations she was trying to recall began to crackle and echo in Lorraine’s brain. The pain grew worse and worse: she was losing her grip, unable to think any more. She screamed in agony, as if a red-hot iron were forging up from her spine, blinding her, exhausting her, and she couldn’t take it any more.

  Rooney went pale. Even though he was outside Intensive Care, on his way to see Lorraine, he knew something had happened. Nurses and doctors, running as if for their own lives, entered the unit, and the curtains were drawn across the viewing window. Lorraine was shielded from his sight, and the last thing he saw as they clustered around her was the heart monitor, bleeping loudly.

  A little later, Jake Burton walked up the corridor with fresh flowers, and Rooney turned to him. ‘Something’s happened, I don’t know what, but they shut the curtains and there’s got to be eight of them round her. I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s her heart.’

  Sonja had had one white wedding, and she had decided that this time she would get married in deep red, a rich colour more suitable for both a Swiss wedding in winter, she thought, and for a mature bride. The close-fitting crimson suit, with rich brown fur collar and cuffs, accentuated her tall, slim figure, while she had bought a frighteningly expensive hussar’s cap in the same fur, which she was now wondering whether or not to wear.

  She put it on, took it off, fluffed out her hair, then crossed to the far side of the room across the expanse of pale green carpet: she and Arthur had booked the Grace Kelly Suite in the best hotel in Geneva, with private sitting and dining rooms and a marvellous view of the lake. She walked towards her reflection in the long cheval mirror, studying it intently.

  ‘Too much fur?’ she asked, as Arthur appeared. ‘I don’t know whether or not to wear the hat.’

  He was wearing a smart suit, with a rose in the buttonhole, and a matching waistcoat, and was knotting his tie. ‘Put it on and let me see,’ he said.

  Sonja did as he asked and turned to face him: she looked beautiful, he thought, but she was different now, and it wasn’t just the unfamiliar new costume. For all these years he had yearned to possess her without Harry Nathan, but now that Nathan’s shadow had gone, she was not the same woman, less driven, less intense, as though someone had dropped the end of a rope she had pulled against for years, sometimes seeming younger, sometimes older. Was she free now, he wondered, or adrift?

  She had always been able to read his moods, almost his thoughts, and it was as though she sensed his scrutiny. ‘You’re sure you want to do this?’ she said quietly. ‘You know you can still back out.’

  ‘I don’t want to back out,’ he said. You could never tell with love, he thought, whether it would last or fade, stay constant or change. You just had to trust and step in. ‘Wear the hat.’

  Sonja looked at herself again in the mirror, then turned. ‘Shall we go?’ she said, her expression grave.

  Arthur tossed something towards her. ‘Here – this time it’s not a fake.’ She caught the ring box in both hands, knowing that the price of the jewel didn’t matter now: all the money had been transferred to Switzerland, and they would decide later how to move it back to the United States if and when they needed it.

  He watched her take the ring from the box, admire it, then hold it out. ‘You put it on.’

  He took it and held her hand, slipping it onto her wedding finger. Then he bent down to kiss her.

  ‘Well, we did it,’ he said softly, then smiled. ‘And we got away with it. Was it worth the wait?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it was.’ She was not looking at him. ‘Believe me, it was worth it.’

  She turned away to catch another glimpse of herself as Arthur checked the time. They should go down to Reception, the limo would be waiting. Arthur crossed to the doors: as a small surprise, he had ordered some deep red roses as a bridal bouquet.

  ‘Give me two minutes . . . I’ll join you,’ she called.

  He held the door half open.

  ‘Two minutes. See you down there.’

  She waited for him to leave, adjusted her hat, needing a moment alone to look in her room of memories one last time before she turned the key. She remembered crossing the lawn, seeing Harry towelling himself dry after his swim. She had not decided then that that would be the day she killed him – a day she had been thinking about for a long time, and neither of them had known then that everything Harry Nathan did that day he was doing for the last time. It was when she had seen the gun on the table, one of Nathan’s own guns, and had known that there would be no difficulty in disposing of a weapon, that she had felt she had received the signal to put the plan into action, had known that there would never be a better chance.

  Harry had tossed aside his towel, not bothering to cover his nakedness in front of her, vain as ever of his body. Sonja had taken a handkerchief out of her pocket. He had paid no attention when she picked up the gun, turning it in her hand and covering it with the cloth. It felt cold and heavy – like her heart. She had raised it first to his chest, then a little higher, and he had smiled, told her to be careful as it was loaded. Then his face had slowly drained of colour as she aimed it at his neck, then tilted the barrel to his face.

  ‘I’ve wanted to kill you for a long time, Harry, and until now I never thought I could. But you know something, Harry, I can.’

  He had backed away, terror visible in his face, as his eyes widened in fear. Then she had pulled the trigger, and he stumbled two steps forward, then toppled into the pool. She had stood there, watching the petals of blood unfold from his head, as he floated face down, arms outstretched, the image that had never left her, and that she had felt driven to replicate, partly as a triumphal shout, a final exorcism – and partly as a confession that no one had heard.

  She had then picked up her shoes, and walked back across the gardens, returning to the rented Mitsubishi jeep – Harry had agreed she should get one as close to Kendall’s as possible just in case anyone saw her driving in and out of the house for their meetings and to remove the paintings. Suddenly she knew how fortunate that was. Sonja could not have cared less if the phoney, odious Kendall ended up paying the penalty for Harry Nathan’s death.

  No one else could possibly be incriminated, she had thought – but Cindy had been her one mistake. She had thought Nathan had told her on the phone, when they arranged the meeting, that he and Cindy had had a fight and she had left. It was only when she had heard the girl’s scream after the killing that she had realized that she must have misunderstood. He must have said that Cindy had threatened to go, or was about to. Poor Cindy, she had thought. She had had no desire to see the pathetic, abused girl stand trial, and it must have been fate that had ensured she had not only met a local private investigator a few weeks previously but had remembered the woman’s name. She had stopped the jeep at once, had got the number from Information, then called Lorraine Page’s office from a public phone.

  Her plane trip back to New York was, as always, booked in a different name, and she had carried the paintings like posters in rolls of cardboard. She was never stopped or questioned.

  By the time she had returned to the Hamptons, the news had broken that Harry Nathan had been murdered and Cindy Nathan arrested. Next day, it had transpired
that things were worse than Sonja had thought: the gun she had used had been Cindy’s.

  After that she had just sat back and watched the aftermath. Now there was no one left to hate, no one left to blame. She had told the world of her guilt, but no one had noticed, and it was over at last, she thought. Quietus est.

  *

  Rosie was out of breath as she joined Burton and Rooney – she’d rushed to the hospital as soon as she had heard.

  ‘What happened? Is she all right?’

  Rooney sat her down. ‘There’ve been complications. Her breathing has deteriorated, and her temperature’s started rising. She’s holding her own, but now they’re worrying that her heart’s been under too much strain.’

  Jake took Rosie’s hand. ‘Mike’s on his way in, and the girls. It’s just a matter of time now.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t believe it – she was getting better. They said her breathing wouldn’t stabilize – well, it did. She’ll get over this relapse – it’s just a kind of a relapse, right? Look, I know her, I know her, and . . .’ Rosie’s face crumpled but she kept on talking about how she and Lorraine had first met – how ill Lorraine had been, how she was so thin and weak that no one would have ever believed she could recover, quit her alcohol addiction . . .

  ‘It’s part of the problem, Rosie, sweetheart. Her body took so much punishment for so long, it’s just tired out.’ Rosie started to sob and Rooney gripped her hand tightly. ‘Now you listen to me, her daughters are coming in, and we don’t want them upset and scared. Just pull yourself together – there’s been enough tears, and you don’t want Lorraine to see you crying.’