‘Well, what about his driving glove? I took that from his car when he picked me up at the airport that morning, and left it in my car at the beach. Didn’t you trace that back to him?’
‘It had never been worn. It was assumed to be yours.’
‘And the missing money? Didn’t the accountants pick that up?’
‘Only now.’
‘Hell.’ Luz shook her head. ‘I didn’t imagine it would be so difficult. I didn’t intend for Sandy to die, not until I found out what he did to Charlotte. Perhaps I should have stuck to designing buildings, not murders. But I’ve always believed that any design problem, no matter how intractable, has a solution, if one only has the imagination and nerve.’ She caught Kathy looking at her, the question in her eyes, and am I next? Luz turned away, and in that equivocation Kathy thought she saw the fate in store for her.
‘You’d better bed down here, while I work out what to do now,’ Luz said. ‘There’s blankets and linen in the drawers over there.’
‘If you threaten the children, Stewart and Miranda, Brock will never rest until he’s taken care of you.’
‘Of course we shan’t touch them. That was a rather clumsy initiative of George’s. He was concerned that your boss was going to persist and needed warning off. I promise you, there’s nothing to be concerned about in that area.’
Kathy nodded. ‘And the same goes for me. I’ve got an important meeting first thing tomorrow, and if I don’t show up all hell will break loose.’
It sounded feeble even as she said it, and she saw that Luz was unimpressed.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll work things out.’ She got up to call George in, but Kathy stopped her, wanting to keep her talking.
‘I’d like to know what Lizancos did to you, exactly.’
‘Everything he could think of. I was the last opportunity for an old man to display his talent, his last masterpiece. He thinks of himself as an artist too, you see, his medium being flesh and bone, and once he’d begun I didn’t have much say in the matter.’
Kathy remembered the first time she’d seen Luz in this house, and the rubber gloves. ‘Your fingerprints?’
‘Yes, he had a go at those too. It was something he’d always wanted to try, he said, to transplant toe pads to fingertips. I’m still having trouble with them. He’d have transplanted my whole hands if I’d let him-they’re too large, of course. The most difficult thing has been something he couldn’t alter, my voice. I took voice lessons in Barcelona, but I’ve been terrified that some rhythms of speech, some characteristic sounds, would be there for Charlotte or Madelaine to pick up. But they didn’t.’ Luz smiled, proud of herself.
‘And in the end, did it work? Are you a woman?’
The smile faltered, then was forced back. ‘Of course. I told you, I always have been.’
Kathy wasn’t convinced. It was a rehearsed answer, she felt, a response to Miki’s challenge that what he was attempting to do was impossible.
Luz went to the door and spoke to George, who came in and checked the windows, taking keys from the security locks. ‘Triple glazed, toughened glass,’ he told Kathy.
‘Sleep well,’ Luz said, and she and George left. Kathy heard the lock click, then made a hurried inspection of the room. There seemed no way out. She found cutlery in a kitchen drawer, and although the larger knives had been removed, there was a selection of smaller ones. She chose a couple, wrapped herself in a blanket and put out the light.
30
Kathy stirred with the first glimmer of grey dawn through the little windows. She could hear nothing, no dawn chorus through the heavy glazing, only the soft hum of the refrigerator and ducted airconditioning, and was filled with a sense of dread about theday ahead.
At one point she thought she heard the faint murmur of a vehicle starting up, then nothing but more long silence. Noticing a small intercom grille beside the door, she went over to it and pressed her thumb on the button. After a while the speaker crackled and George’s voice said, ‘Morning.’
‘What’s going on, George? It’s seven-thirty. I need to go.’ ‘Patience. There’s food in the fridge and cupboards. Make yourself some breakfast.’ ‘I don’t want breakfast, I want…’ But the line had gone dead.
She found some orange juice, and ate a piece of bread and marmalade, discovering that, despite a lingering nausea in the back of her throat, she was hungry.
Eight o’clock came and went, and Kathy experienced an odd sense of detachment, imagining the reactions when she failed to keep her appointment with Commander Sharpe. She tried the intercom again.
‘Hello? Luz, George?’ ‘Patience,’ George’s voice repeated. ‘Watch TV. Read a book.’
She made a cup of coffee, and pictured the scene in Sharpe’s office, the angry call to Brock, the consternation in Queen Anne’s Gate. Presumably, Brock had been told about her trouble in Barcelona. What was he thinking now, that she’d done a bunk? The police conference was starting today, she remembered, and she imagined Sharpe and the other top brass in full uniform discussing her case between sessions. The first of the working parties would be presenting their paper that afternoon. Hers was due the next day. She switched on breakfast TV and watched, like a prisoner spying through a keyhole, the normal world outside, remote and unattainable.
Half an hour later she stopped pacing and tried the intercom again. ‘George, I want to speak to Luz. Put her on, please.’
‘Sorry, she’s busy. We’re in the middle of delicate negotiations. She says you’re to stay calm and not worry. She’ll work things out, but it may take some time. And there’s no point buzzing me all the time. Save it for an emergency. You’ve got plenty of grub down there and stacks of channels. Put your feet up, watch a movie.’ He clicked off.
What negotiations? Were they bargaining for her life? She paced around the flat again, searching for something, an access cover, a floor duct, anything that might give her an outlet to the world outside. Nothing. The only possibility for breaking out seemed to be to find something to smash through the glass of a window. She felt for the tea-knife in her pocket and stared at the stone wall, wondering how many years it would take her to dig her way out.
By ten Brock was in a cold sweat. He’d had no contact with Kathy since Friday night, sixty hours earlier. She had seemed disappointed that the Verge investigation had been shut down, but not unduly so. Then they had parted and he had thought no more about it until he got the phone message on Sunday afternoon that one of his officers had gone berserk in Barcelona, and would he kindly get his arse back to London. He had had no sleep since. He had gone himself to meet her plane at Heathrow, but a cloudburst had jammed traffic on the M4 and by the time he had arrived the passengers were already dispersing. British Airways confirmed that she had been on the flight, and he had assumed she was making her way back to her flat in Finchley. He drove there, and spent half the night sitting outside the building, phoning people until his batteries ran down. Her phone wasn’t answering, and no one else he could think of-Bren, Leon, Suzanne, Linda Moffat-had heard from her. At three a.m. he went home, thinking she might be waiting for him there. She wasn’t, and he raised the alarm.
When Sharpe phoned at three minutes past nine to find out why the hell DS Kolla hadn’t turned up for her appointment, Brock informed him that she was now listed as missing. ‘Missing?’ Sharpe had growled. ‘Missing in the head, or what? Christ, Brock, this was supposed to be your star. What’re the rest of your cowboys like?’
When he’d rung off, Brock had sent Bren to Finchley to gain entry to Kathy’s flat, to see if there were any clues as to her whereabouts there. Apart from an altercation with a neighbour who thought he was a burglar, Bren had nothing to report. There was no sign that Kathy had returned to the flat, and nothing apart from a scribbled note of plane times to connect to the events of the weekend.
If only she’d got engaged to Leon, Kathy thought, and he’d bought her a very large diamond engagement ring, she might have been able to cut her way through the glass. She lifted the small iron she’d found in a cupboard and extended her arm. In her left hand she was gripping a steel leg that she’d managed to detach from a chair. She swung the iron at the glass. There was a solid bang that jarred her arm and reverberated through the structure of the building; a star formed in the glass. She tried again, and the star spread. With the third blow the glass shattered. But this was only the first of three layers.