‘She was an official at the Quatch trial.’
The breath seemed to flow out of him. ‘What’s Jason going to do?’ he said slowly.
She stood opposite him, her hands deep in her Barbour jacket, the melted snow glistening on the waxed material.
‘He’s called a meeting of the committee. If the girl convinces them, and she will, then they’ll call the police.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘You know why, Cy.’
‘I’m going to need your help, Mary. I’m going to need money.’
He moved towards her but she stepped back, raising a hand between them. ‘I want those pictures, Cy. Bring me the negatives and I’ll get you money.’
‘Negatives…’ He shook his head slowly. ‘You know better than that, Mary. The modern world, I could have made a million copies already. Just get me the money. Your guarantee that those pictures won’t spring out of the box depends on you keeping the money flowing.’
‘Please, Cy…’ she said. ‘Everything I’ve lived for is here in Meyerick. You can just disappear. I can’t do that.’
‘Go to Jason’s committee meeting, Mary.’ His head was clearing magically. Survival was one thing he was good at. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Go to the meeting. Tell them what a bastard I must have been. I’ll call you in a week or two and let you know how to make arrangements for the money. You and me are going to be partners for life, Mary.’ He stepped towards her and took her cheeks between his hands, squeezing hard. ‘I might even let you bring the money in person,’ he said, planting a kiss on the distorted pout of her lips.
Alone in Jason’s study, Nan Luc stood before the French windows and watched the snow falling outside.
For minutes she watched the soft, unhurried fall through the yellow terrace light, noticing how the flakes scurried between the flagstones, still uncertain how anything so light and fragile could build to the deep drifts she had seen in photographs.
She had found him.
She had found him. But now, could she kill him?
As the superintendent opened the door the phone was ringing inside the apartment. Running past him through the hall Max reached the living room and picked up the receiver.
Her voice was pitched low. He could hear no background noise, no music, no voices. ‘Max,’ she said. ‘I just rang Edward. I knew you’d be there.’
He found his voice catching in this throat. ‘Where are you?’ he said. ‘Tell me where you are.’
‘It doesn’t matter where. I didn’t want to run away from you last night. But I had to. I knew you were trying to stop me.’
‘Nan, please listen to me. You’ve got the wrong man.’
‘I’ve got the right man.’
‘You’ve found Stevenson?’
‘I’ve found him, Max.’ Her voice had a sudden metallic ring to it.
‘For God’s sake, Nan, Cy Stevenson is not your father. And even if he is, you’ve no right to do this yourself. Shattered dreams aren’t reason enough.’
‘Louise was murdered last night.’
‘I know that, too. But don’t you see what it means? It means that the moment you show yourself to Stevenson, you force him to act. He’s a killer, Nan. Call the police, for God’s sake.’
‘No.’
‘Then what in God’s name are you talking to me for now?’
At the other end of the line there was a long silence. ‘I want you to understand, Max. He killed my mother. As good as killed her.’
‘I don’t understand, Nan. You told me that your mother committed suicide. Whatever part Stevenson played in that, it’s not worth you sacrificing your own life for revenge. To me it’s simple. He killed Louise Cartwright. So call the cops.’ He stopped. ‘Or is there something else to tell, Nan. Is that right?’
‘There’s something else to tell,’ she said flatly. ‘I need you to know, Max. A film. Made by Stevenson. A made-to-order scenario written by Quatch. It’s on the machine.’
‘You want me to watch it?’
‘Yes.’
He sensed she had said everything she wanted to say. ‘Don’t hang up,’ he said. ‘Tell me where you are.’ No answer. ‘Where?’ Again the silence. ‘Where are you, Nan?’ He clenched the phone, willing her to answer.
‘I’m going to hang up, Max,’ she said.
‘Nan, I’m pleading with you now. Nothing’s worth it. Not all the insults, the dishonour. Nothing’s worth taking the law into you own hands.’
He counted the seconds. Then her voice said: ‘Watch the film.’
‘OK. Then what?’
‘Then ask yourself why my mother killed herself. Ask whether you could have gone unavenged.’
In Jason Rose’s study she replaced the phone, brushing tears from her face. It was snowing harder now with heavier, thicker flakes. She stepped forward and opened the glazed door to the terrace. A blast of cold air hit her and she felt the strange, unfamiliar fingering of the snowflakes on her cheeks.
Closing the door behind her she ran along the side of the house to the drive where she had left her car.
Chapter Forty
An enormous pink Vietnamese moon hung in the sky.
Very slowly, as Max watched the screen, the camera pulled back across the rooftops of Saigon. Above the sound of music and laughter and squealing girls was laid a heavy, menacing heartbeat.
Over the image of the moonlit roofs the title came up in Gothic letters: The House of Eros. The camera’s eye blinked and it was the interior of the Eros Bar. To the music of the Stones, giant American servicemen danced with slender Vietnamese partners. It was a scene of incredible noise and confusion. Groups of soldiers sat round tables loaded with bottles and glasses. Girls serving them were fondled routinely or, amid gales of laughter, pulled on to their laps. Bottles of whisky were passed from mouth to mouth. Fat, conical joints were inhaled, releasing swirling blue smoke into the already smoke-laden room. To Max everything suggested the Gotterdammerung, the twilight of the gods, the last days of the gigantic American adventure in the East.
The camera panned a line of girls on bar stools, pretty twenty-year-olds in tight skirts and meshed stockings, their dark hair glistening, their teeth white against scarlet lipstick. Resting on each girl for a moment or two, debating, deciding, rejecting, the camera’s gaze passed on.
The camera was a creature now, darting into corners with a voyeur’s intensity of purpose. On a hand down the scooped out front of a girl’s dress; on a much smaller hand deep in an open fly as a GI sprawled, rocked back in his seat, a bottle to his lips. Then the camera’s gaze moved again. To the foot of the winding stairs, then up slowly to the balustered landing.
A six-year-old child sat there, on the top step, looking down impassively at the scene below. As beads of sweat poured from Max’s forehead, Nan Luc stood up and began to climb the stairs.
Her long hair hung down in a single plait over her green uniform dress. While Max watched in anguish she glanced down once more, indifferently, on the world of the adults below.
Then the heartbeat expanded above the sounds in the bar. And the camera detached itself and glided forward, stealthily following Nan Luc up the stairs.
Chapter Forty-One
Following the line of the Meyerick River Nan Luc checked the area map clipped next to the steering wheel. She had folded it into a section which covered the east of the county. Coming over the brow of a hill she could see the long silvery sweep of the Meyerick River below her and the lights of the town in the distance. The Stevenson house, Jason had told her, stood on the slopes of the river above the village of Piebald two or three miles outside Meyerick City itself.