You couldn’t make him out at the door, you couldn’t see through the pea soup. “It’s after one o’clock, Flo,” he said. “Are coming up?”
“Almost there, Rafael.” In this choking voice. I’m growing small. The hissing vents drown out our heavy breathing.
“Why are you doing this to me, Flo?”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay?”
Another cold gust as he closes the door.
“Help me, Cudworth,” she whispers. “Help me escape.”
A motive for murder had just inflated like an airbag, Cud’s lust for her body, his hankering to be her toy boy. Brian didn’t like the way this scenario was going. Not at all, not if the next line was, Help me get rid of him by throwing him off the deck.
He shut his eMac down, stared at his cellphone for a while. He dialed the UBC English Department, turned over the phone to Lance. “Hello, I’m ringing from The Times of London about Professor Pomeroy’s marvellous new book. I wonder if it would be possible to do a quickie interview.”
“I’m sorry, she’s away for the holidays, but if you’ll leave your number-”
“Fank you.” He hung up, went again to the window. The Need was still there. Widgeon was calling from somewhere, he could hear his voice, demanding, imperious. “Go away!” he shouted. He lurched out to the fire escape, down the rattling steps to the street, where the Need caught his eye and shook his head.
Brian walked past him into Quick Loans, into a waiting room with three wooden chairs, a travel poster, and a metal-grill window. A man in working clothes was standing at it, signing over his pay cheque. Some bills appeared on a tray beneath the grill. The borrower gathered them up and hurried out.
Brian studied the poster. The Cuban Instituto de Turismo. Palm trees draping a crescent of white sand, islands dotting the blue transparent sea. Maybe that was the solution. Get clean. Get healthy. Get ready for the trial next month.
But he’d need money for that too.
“Can I help you with something?” Kharmazi, behind the grill, his heavy accent. Square head, cold, ethnic-cleanser eyes.
Brian tried not to show he was in agony, stilled his shaking body. He begged. He needed two thousand dollars to go to Cuba. His wife had taken all his assets, but he was expecting a partnership draw soon. “I am a lawyer.”
“I know who you are. The defender of Abu Khazzam. For you, three points over prime.”
“That’s fair.”
“Per month. Sign here.”
Stuffing his wallet with hundred-dollar bills, Brian returned to the street, pointing himself toward the Golden Horizon Travel Agency. He was deliberately not seeing Harry the Need, but couldn’t help hear his invitation. “You looking, Mr. Pomeroy?”
A flash, a whispered answer. A couple of grams. That would get him on the plane. Then he’d stop.
Two hours later, in the waning daylight, he was studying a cypress tree, the one famously kissed by the Aston Martin, its trunk now swathed in a wide black bandage. Farther down twisting Lighthouse Lane he could see the chateau of Florenza LeGrand, high on the craggy cliffs of Burrard Inlet.
Brian had taxied to this wealthy waterfront barrio with a sudden surge of energy. He was on top of things again, Lance Valentine, suave and daring. He owed it to his client, to his art, to check out the scene of the crime before escaping to a palmy beach. That plan had also come like a whispered answer, as he snucked up his first toot in seven days.
With Lance-like urbanity and wit, he will charm the truth from the grieving widow. He will be blunt, candid, will announce himself not as Lance Valentine but as Cud Brown’s lawyer-a gamble but a brilliant ploy. He will say, “They’re trying to keep us apart, but it’s vital that we speak.” She will say, “I was hoping you would come.”
He advanced with confident steps toward the low stone wall that guarded the house. Then he saw a closed steel gate, a dark-skinned man guarding it…the doorman from the Palace. He had a ferocious-looking dog on a leash, a Doberman, Brian thought, or some close cousin. He stepped behind the skirts of a cedar to reconnoitre. So the tight end had been watching him, it wasn’t a delusion. His orders were to stop Pomeroy. They didn’t want Florenza talking to him, she knew too much.
He got his courage up again. He had a right to be here, a right on behalf of his client to examine the crime scene. He trespassed over a lawn and hurried across the street while the doorman was folding open a newspaper. Brian stuck his head over the stone wall, had a closer look at him-he’d put on glasses, looked different, older, shorter, thinner. Maybe Brian should get glasses.
The dog was sleeping, it didn’t look so dangerous that way. Brian’s fear of dogs-not just guard dogs, all dogs, from Mastiffs to shin-biters-was a component, his shrink explained, of his extensive paranoid mosaic. The guard and the beast were likely there to keep away reporters away. Still, they were obstacles best avoided.
On the other side of the wall were ornamental bushes, a neatly trimmed lawn, a garden shed. Staggered terraces cut into the natural rock, rising to a patio, then descending to a wide cedar deck with a four-foot railing. The deck seemed to cling precariously to the beams of a flat-roofed, heavily timbered house of many levels. View of a slender inlet, waves splintering against rocky promontories.
He found a spot where he could clamber over the wall unseen, then, glancing back-the guard was still at his newspaper, the dog not stirring-made swiftly for the terraces, for the deck, where he paused to catch his breath and ponder his next move. Look around, old boy, before seeking an audience with the lady of the house. But it seemed deserted-no lights within though it was early dusk. Here was an area of wide windows and French doors, all curtained, probably a grand salon or dining room. He tested a doorknob. Locked. He pressed on, ducking below the railing in case the guard glanced up.
He made a sharp turn toward the backyard, where he could see the three-car garage, the maid’s suite overhead. (Where was she that night? Why was Cudworth offered her room?) This had to be where Whynet-Moir went over, the jagged rocks below, waves slapping them, sighing and hissing back to the sea. The deck furniture was heavy metal, chairs and occasional tables, rust-less, stainless steel or zinc. One of these chairs had been found tipped over at this spot.
Down a sturdy staircase, the pool-still steaming, the tiles wet, towels strewn about. He felt transported back in time, October 14, the early hours, when a similar scene had greeted police. They seized the towels, didn’t they? Yes, they got DNA hits off Cud.
Someone must be in the house: flickering light through a ten-inch gap between the curtains of a bay window. Crouching close he heard muffled music, a film score from a wide-screen TV snug to the window.
It was too high to see over, so he brought one of the chairs to the window. Slowly, he raised himself up, peeked over the monitor. Caught within the screen’s stark, spastic glow were two persons on a couch. A handsome male, swarthy or maybe just well tanned, handlebar moustache. Tucked beside him, a leggy brunette, Florenza LeGrand, in a bathrobe hanging open, her bosom exposed, two ripe peaches.
Some part of Brian knew he ought to duck out of view, but he was mesmerized by Florenza’s bobbing breasts as she bent over a table to savour a ritual known only too well to the observer. She did two toots and raised her head, wiggling the residue into her nose with a finger. Brian withdrew too late from the window; he’d seen the shock as their eyes met.
Her yelp of fright was followed by an obscene torrent. “Get that fuckhead off the fucking deck! You fucker!”