Fischer turned back to her, folding the sheet. ‘Yes, she ordered a helicopter to take her to New York. We’re arranging for her car to be returned, after the police get through with it.’
‘Did they also remove Mr Vallance’s luggage? You said you were arranging to take it to the car, so it wasn’t in the car already?’
His mouth opened a fraction, and he frowned. ‘Well, it must be still here, unless...’ He walked across the room to a large double-doored cupboard, opened it and looked inside. ‘It’s still here.’
He took out an old-fashioned pigskin case and matching briefcase. ‘I’d better contact the police. I think the confusion may have been caused by Mrs Forwood because she took hers with her.’
‘Could I see it?’ Lorraine asked, stepping forward. Fischer tried to open the case, but it was locked. He set it down and took the briefcase to his desk: Lorraine saw that it fastened with a zipper, had flat, beaten metal handles and two outside pockets — in one of which was a mobile telephone.
‘Could I see that?’ She already had her hand out. The manager hesitated, then passed her the phone. She pressed the green power button, then Recall. The telephone bleeped, and Lorraine began to scroll through the digits logged in the memory.
‘Should you be doing that?’ Fischer asked nervously.
‘It’s all right, I’m not using it to make a call, just checking something.’
She took out her notebook and jotted down number after number — none she recognized — then tried to bring up the last number dialled, but got a blank screen and a bleep. She noted the make and serial number of the phone, then turned it off. ‘Thank you.’ She handed it back, and the man put it back where he had taken it from.
‘Perhaps there’s a note inside the briefcase,’ he said.
He was now very uneasy, but Lorraine moved quickly to unzip the case. Like the locked suitcase, the briefcase was old and worn, but had been expensive. It opened into two halves and Vallance’s name had been monogrammed on one corner. The compartments on one side contained writing paper and envelopes, some letters held together with a rubber band, a paperback novel, a manicure set, some hotel toiletries, and a Cartier pen. On the other side were three scripts, some flattering publicity photographs of Vallance, some postcards of India and, tucked deep inside, a worn manilla envelope.
Lorraine removed the old movie stills, and another photograph of Harry Nathan and Vallance together, arms around one another, smiling into the camera. A third person had been crudely cut out of the photo, but Lorraine could see the edge of a woman’s dress and a picture hat: he had been unable to cut the section off completely because the woman’s arm was resting on Nathan’s shoulder. Lorraine recognized the strong hand and close-trimmed nails as Sonja Nathan’s.
There was another larger, plain envelope, and Lorraine opened it to reveal several sheets of expensive, flimsy paper in a feminine pink, which she recognized at once. Her pulse speeded up as she took them out and unfolded them carefully. The bottom of the first sheet of paper was missing — it had been cut in two after the words ‘Dear Raymond’ and the date, some six months previously, scrawled in ink in Cindy Nathan’s childish script. Lorraine flipped open the manicure set, knowing what she would find: a small pair of round-tipped scissors, the blades less than an inch long, with which Vallance had cut one of the desperate letters in half to fake a suicide note.
Poor Cindy, Lorraine thought. Her hunch had been right. The girl hadn’t committed suicide: the last of the parade of men who had entered her life, first to desire, then to abuse her, had destroyed her. Not that it mattered now: there could be no doubt as to Vallance’s guilt, and now he was dead himself. That he had murdered Cindy made it more likely that he had killed Harry Nathan too. Perhaps she had the solution to the Nathan case right there in her hands, and she could leave the affair now with a clear conscience, do her best to find Feinstein’s art, and go back to her own life.
But why had Vallance killed Cindy? Lorraine thought back to the morning he had come to her office, the night after Cindy died, with a wafer-thin veneer of normality concealing a state of considerable emotional turmoil. He had talked compulsively about Nathan and the past and, as she replayed the conversation in her mind, virtually the first words out of his mouth had been hatred and condemnation of the women around Nathan. He had raved about how they had cheapened and damaged his idol, and how he believed Cindy had been responsible for her husband’s death, though she would never have been convicted of his murder. The motive that seemed most likely was a desire on Vallance’s part to exact vengeance for Nathan on the woman who killed him, which made it most unlikely that Vallance had shot Nathan himself, unless he had completely lost his mind. But having spoken to him shortly before his death, Lorraine knew that that wasn’t so. So who had killed Nathan? Would Kendall have killed him to prevent the porn tapes becoming public? Or could it somehow have been Sonja? Lorraine found it hard to believe that it was pure coincidence that Vallance shot himself in the Hamptons, within a few miles of Sonja Nathan’s house, shortly after calling her...
Lorraine replaced everything as she had found it, and zipped up the case. She wanted to get out and was already planning a diversion to Santa Fe. She said to the manager, ‘Don’t let me prevent you any longer from attending to business, and thank you very much for your help. I’d pass these on to the police.’ Then she hurried out to avoid any further conversation. She had found nothing relating to paintings or secret bank accounts, and no reason why Vallance had shot himself.
Lorraine sat down at a vacant table in the sun lounge and ordered a Coke and a prosciutto sandwich. She looked over the list of phone numbers she had taken down from Vallance’s mobile, then circled one. She was sure the code was for Santa Fe. She was so immersed in her own thoughts that she jumped when Fischer slid down beside her, and told her in conspiratorial tones that the police were sending someone to collect Mr Vallance’s luggage. She felt the man’s breath on her face as he whispered that he had not mentioned that she had opened it.
‘Good, and perhaps you’d better not mention that I was asking questions either — you know, there’s always competition between the police in different counties.’
‘Oh... well, yes, if you say so.’
‘Is this a Santa Fe code?’ she asked, repeating the number.
‘I believe so, but I can check it out for you.’
‘You could go one better and call the number for me. I’d like to know who it’s registered to.’ She gave him a cool smile, and he glided away. Lorraine finished her Coke and sandwich, then walked out to Reception to collect her luggage.
A uniformed police officer was standing at the desk talking to Carina, who was handing over Vallance’s cases, and Lorraine made out the same words that had been on everyone’s lips all day — terrible, tragedy, unexpected — and Sonja Nathan’s name.
‘Of course, she’d known him more than twenty years,’ she heard the officer say. ‘She looked like she’d seen a ghost when I gave her the news.’
‘Excuse me,’ Lorraine said, glancing around quickly to make sure that Fischer was not nearby — she did not want him to see her talking to the officer and deduce that she was not, as she had said, working in association with the local police. ‘Did you say you had to break the news of Raymond Vallance’s death to Mrs Nathan?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Muller said, viewing her with interest.
‘I know Mrs Nathan, I visited with her yesterday, and I wondered if perhaps I should call her. Was she very distressed?’ Lorraine said, concern in her voice.