Arvo stood and shook hands. “You, too,” he said. “Any chance of a look at the crime-scene photos?”
Joe looked at his watch. “Sure, I’ll make a call and have copies sent over. And... ” Joe paused and turned on his way out. “Keep me informed.” He pointed a finger at Arvo and cocked it. “I mean it.”
“Will do. And thanks.”
When Joe had gone, Arvo found he had no desire to stay in the bar any longer. The smoke had thickened since the after-work crowd had started to arrive, and some moron had arranged “Suspicious Minds’ for accordion and strings. Probably made a fortune out of it, too. Welcome to hell.
He had some leftover pizza and a couple of bottles of Sam Adams lager in the fridge at home, and the previous night he’d set his VCR to tape I Married a Monster From Outer Space. If he hadn’t screwed up on the settings, it should be right there in the machine waiting for him. He’d seen it when he was a kid, but after Nyreen, the title took on a whole new perspective.
Arvo couldn’t see any link between a homosexual murder and the letters Sarah Broughton had been receiving. Despite the publicity given to exceptions, the rule was that celebrity stalkers were rarely violent; on the other hand, male prostitution was certainly a high-risk profession, AIDS not being the only danger. It attracted more than its fair share of violent weirdos and thrill killers. So John Heimar’s number had come up. As Joe said, that was just his bad luck.
But as he walked out onto Broadway, Arvo couldn’t help but wonder. The body had been placed where someone would have the shock of finding it, that was for certain. The killer obviously had a theatrical flair and needed an audience, if only of one. What Arvo had to ask himself was why he had selected that particular stretch of beach, where Sarah Broughton went for her morning run.
12
Sarah lay half-asleep listening to the seagulls screaming and squawking outside her window. At first, she thought she was still in her own bedroom back at the beach house. Soon she would wake up and the bad dream would be over. When she opened her eyes, though, she felt a momentary panic. Everything was different.
This room was smaller, for a start, and a thin white radiator under the drawn curtains infused the air with what little warmth it possessed. The tip of Sarah’s nose felt cold in a way it never had in Los Angeles. In the dim light, she could make out cream wallpaper patterned with poppies or red roses, matching the heavy duvet she pulled up to her chin. Her pillow smelled of lavender. Beyond the noise the gulls made, she could hear the sea pounding the wall.
Then she remembered: she was at the family cottage in Robin Hood’s Bay. It stood at the bottom of the hill, on a row to the left of the main street, and looked out right over the North Sea. That was why her father had wanted it. In clement weather, Sarah knew, Arthur Bolton liked nothing better than to sit in his wheelchair at the bottom of the garden and look out to sea. She fancied that the open horizon somehow helped make up for the years he had spent in the dark, claustrophobic coal mines.
Everything seemed unfamiliar to Sarah because she had never slept in this room before. The last time she had visited, the two adjacent cottages had not yet been knocked into one and renovated. Though she couldn’t remember the visit at all clearly, she had probably slept downstairs on the sofa-bed, stupefied with Quaaludes and cognac.
So far, she hadn’t seen either her father or Cathy and Jason. They hadn’t known what time Paula and Sarah would get back from the airport, so they had left a note saying they’d gone to visit a neighbor and wouldn’t be long.
Sarah had felt so tired that Paula had packed her off to bed immediately with a cup of tea. It was still there on the bedside table, only half drunk. Sarah slid her hand out and touched it. Cold. She huddled under the duvet again and closed her eyes.
Even though she now knew where she was, Sarah still felt disoriented. Too restless to go back to sleep, she turned over and stretched, arching so her fingers scraped the wall above her. That felt better.
She pulled back the sheets and went to open the curtains. Outside, it was getting dark. The rain had stopped and the sky looked like a dirty dishrag slashed with charcoal. The slate-colored sea sloshed heavily against the rough stone wall at the bottom of the garden. It was a sea view, all right, but light years away from the one she was used to, where bright sun bleached the vanishing point of water and sky.
Sarah turned the bedroom light on and took stock of her surroundings. Everything was fresh and clean, of course; that would be Paula’s doing. There was even the old framed print of Atkinson Grimshaw’s Park Row, Leeds 1882 from the old house in Barnsley hanging on the wall opposite her bed. Paula knew Sarah had always loved it for its eerie moon and sky and the cobbles and tramlines all wet and shiny after rain. She must have put it there specially.
In the small bookcase beside the wardrobe were Sarah’s old books. She hadn’t looked at them for years and hadn’t even known they had survived the move from Barnsley: childhood favorites like Black Beauty and The Secret Garden; Enid Blyton, mostly the Famous Five and the Secret Seven; some girls’-school and nurse stories; and one or two Mills and Boon romances.
Then came the Romantic poetry of her early teens — Keats, Shelley, Byron — followed by the plays she had read first at home then studied later at university — collections by Shakespeare, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams, along with well-thumbed copies of The Duchess of Malfi, Three Sisters and A Dream Play.
Hanging from a hook at the back of the door was the red knitted Christmas stocking her mother had made, with her name, Sally, embroidered in white. Paula must have dug it out. Perhaps her family really did want her here for Christmas after all.
Everything was quiet downstairs. Either they were still out or Paula was hushing everyone up so Sarah could sleep. Time to unpack.
Sarah hefted her suitcase onto the bed and unfastened it. Clothes and presents spilled out, and there, stuck in among them all, was the letter. She hesitated, then reached out and picked it up. This one had no stamp; it had been delivered by hand.
Just then, she heard a door bang downstairs, followed by the clamor of children’s voices. Jason called out her name. Paula told him to be quiet. Time to enter into family life again.
Sarah’s heart leapt into her throat. She had never felt so nervous, even before going on stage for a first night. She looked at the letter again and dropped it back among the pile of clothes, half pleased that she had been interrupted before opening it. After all, she was in England now, thousands of miles away from her problems in LA.
She pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt, then opened the door and started down the worn stone stairs.
What she saw made her stop halfway.
Illuminated by the hall light, a man slumped in a wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs. Beside him, attached to the chair, stood a small tank, like the kind frogmen wear, from which a transparent tube ran to his nostrils. His shoulders sloped and his body looked emaciated under the thick woollen blanket. Bluish flesh sagged and wrinkled over hollow, bony cheeks and scared, bright, feverish eyes looked up at her. Even from halfway upstairs, she could hear the soft hiss of the oxygen and the struggle as he labored for breath.
White-knuckled, she gripped the banister and took a faltering step forward. “Hello, Father,” she said.
13
I hear your actress found a body on the beach,” Maria said. “Think there’s anything in it?”