He gave the doorman a pleasant smile, folded his newspaper and walked out onto the street. He leaned back against the wall, as Decker went to the entrance to the motor court, and took a slim leather address book from an inside pocket.
No numbers were ever deleted from Raymond Vallance’s little black book: you never knew when you might want to look up an old friend, perhaps for a favour or, even better, suggest something that might be mutually beneficial. Not that this party was a friend exactly, but he had been useful to both Harry and himself on a number of occasions in the past with respect to little matters of entertainment — company or chemicals. But this was more serious. He dialled the number and the young man picked up almost at once.
‘Yo, bro,’ Vallance began in the slangy sing-song voice and Brooklyn accent he adopted when talking to black people. ‘You busy tonight? Got a little job for you...’
Chapter 3
Next day when Decker walked into the building he noticed that the door to Page Investigations was a fraction open and assumed that Lorraine must have called in on her way to the funeral. He extended his hand to open the door further and his nostrils burned with the smell of acid. Decker stepped back and kicked it open instead.
The packing cases remained where he had stacked them on the floor, but the cardboard was sodden, and the tapes still smouldered as the acid destroyed even their plastic surrounds. Not one was salvageable — yet nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. He entered Lorraine’s office with trepidation — had she disturbed the intruder:
The desk drawers were open and a few papers littered the floor. At first sight nothing else seemed to have been damaged except for a photograph of Lorraine, which lay behind the desk, acid eating into the face, burning and twisting the features grotesquely.
‘Jesus,’ he said quietly, and picked up the phone, about to call the police department, then hesitated. Even after working for Lorraine for such a short time, he knew that she would want any decision to involve the police to be hers alone. Instead he dialled Reception and asked casually if there had been any security problems during the night. The doorman assured him that there had not. Decker hung up and dialled Lorraine’s mobile number. He swore as an electronic voice advised him that the phone was switched off.
Lorraine drove past the fountains and through the gates of Forest Lawn. She had never been to the exclusive cemetery before and found herself in what looked like a cross between the park of an eccentric nobleman and an outdoor department store of death. All tastes were clearly catered for, she observed, as she passed birdhouses, replicas of classical temples and ‘dignified’ churches. It had an air of frivolity and consumerism rather than reverence or repose.
The Nathan funeral was clearly taking place in the ‘Bostonian’ church, from which a long line of parked cars tailed back. As Lorraine got closer, she observed a number of people standing about outside. Most were pretending not to notice that they were being photographed by a little knot of journalists, but some were unashamedly smiling and posing. She tried not to stare at the wannabe actresses who had been unable to resist the chance to wear the shortest of short skirts, evening sandals, nipple-skimming necklines and elaborate hats.
The men had mostly confined themselves to dark jackets and ties, but Lorraine noted one with a straggling ponytail in a black Nehru jacket over dirty black jeans and Birkenstock sandals — a sort of ageing rock star ensemble completed by little round John Lennon sunglasses. As he turned his head to speak to the older woman beside him, his resemblance in profile to Harry Nathan was striking. They must be the family, Lorraine thought, an impression confirmed when she saw that Kendall Nathan was standing in front of the pair making exaggerated expressions of sympathy and grief.
She, too, was dressed like a Christmas tree, in a fussy black evening dress with chiffon yoke and sleeves, and dowdy pleated skirt. Apart from Lorraine, Harry Nathan’s mother, in a conventional dress and coat in black wool crêpe, was the only person whose appearance had been influenced by the sombreness of the occasion. She also seemed to be the only person genuinely distressed by Harry Nathan’s death.
Lorraine turned to watch as a limousine drew up, followed by an ordinary taxi-cab. The cab disgorged its occupants first, the middle-aged Mexican woman who had let Lorraine into the Nathan house and a Hispanic man, evidently her husband, who made their way straight into the church, ignored by everyone. As soon as the staff were out of the way, the limousine door opened to reveal Cindy Nathan in a long black sleeveless dress — Empire line to accommodate her undetectable pregnancy — and black velvet platform boots. Her blonde hair was elaborately dressed into a plaited coronet on top of her head, her wrists laden with pearl and jet. A silver snake bracelet encircled one of her slim upper arms, perfectly matching the black cobra tattooed around the other. She looked like a young pagan goddess, and all the nearby long lenses were immediately trained on her.
The girl stood motionless in front of the crowd. No one approached or spoke to her — in fact, Nathan’s family and Kendall looked away pointedly. My God, she must have been crying all night, Lorraine thought, as she observed the deep shadows around Cindy’s eyes. But as she got near enough to the girl to smile and greet her, she realized that the effect was deliberate: Cindy’s startling blue eyes and full, flower-like mouth had both been expertly made up in fashionable metallic pink.
Cindy did not speak, but gave Lorraine a strange, controlled smile, like that of a beautiful alien, and carefully arranged a black lace mantilla over her head. With a gesture bizarrely reminiscent of a wedding, she took Lorraine’s arm and the crowd parted in front of them as they made their way into the church, leaving a wake of exquisite lily scent and audible hisses of outrage.
‘Fuck ’em,’ Cindy said, under her breath, as they reached the porch. Her lovely face remained immobile as she spoke. ‘Fuck the whole damn lot of them.’
They made their way up the aisle towards the front pew, and the clergyman approached, rearranging his amazed stare into an expression of sympathy. Lorraine also noticed a tall, grey-haired man give the young widow an icy glance and immediately move way.
‘Who was that?’ Lorraine asked, when they had sat down.
‘Raymond Vallance,’ Cindy said coolly, staring straight ahead at the enormous wreath on her husband’s coffin.
The rest of the mourners began to file in, the Nathan family occupying the front pew on the other side of the church from Cindy.
Once everyone was settled, the minister announced a hymn, which no one bothered to sing. Most of those present were more interested in craning their necks to see who else was there. They were eventually brought back to the purpose of the gathering by the clergyman’s invitation to remember Harry in silence for a few minutes while they listened to one of his favourite songs, a rendition of ‘Light My Fire’, arranged as elaborately as an oratorio and played like a dirge on an electronic organ.
Then the minister paid tribute to Nathan’s personal charm, energy and talent. As he moved on to talk about his civic virtues and unstinting support for many good causes, Lorraine was conscious of a stir at the back of the church. She turned to see a tall woman with strangely white hair, elegant as a borzoi, who had walked in alone. She came slowly up to the front of the church, her high heels clicking on the stone floor, and sat down with great dignity in the front pew, some six feet away from Cindy. She inclined her head, smiled slightly at the girl, and Lorraine caught a glimpse of a pair of remote, unnerving eyes.
She immediately recognized Sonja Sorenson, the first Mrs Nathan, and tried to study the older woman unobtrusively. She was about fifty, Lorraine guessed, and although her immaculately cut, jaw-length hair was white, her lashes and brows were still dark. Her clothes were formal and elegant, a military-style black wool suit worn with black gloves, hose and shoes, and no visible jewellery. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the congregation’s scrutiny.