Innocent Blood (25 page)

‘What happened?'

‘An accident. A boat party, actually, on the Thames, for somebody's birthday. I was invited, too, but I was working with the Sussex Police that day, trying to find two little girls who had gone missing on the South Downs. It was such a fine summer evening that I drove all the way back to town with the top of my car down.

‘I was driving through Putney when I heard on the radio that a dredger had collided with a pleasure boat close to Westminster Pier, and that a number of young people had been drowned. Fifty-two, as it turned out, in the end; and Alison was one of them.'

‘I'm sorry. Jesus, you must have been devastated.'

‘Well, I was. I haven't really got over it, even now. I keep thinking of what she would have been like now, if she had lived. Sometimes I'm driving along the street and I catch a glimpse of her, disappearing into a doorway, or climbing into a taxi. I know it can't really be her, but I can't get her out of my mind.

‘In fact, it was two years after Alison drowned that I experienced automatic writing for myself, so that's how I know how reliable it can be.'

‘Alison wrote to you?'

Nevile nodded. ‘I was sitting by the Thames one August afternoon at Boulter's Lock. It's very peaceful there . . . several miles upstream from the City. I was writing notes for a lecture on psychic detection, but I had drunk one two many glasses of wine over lunch and I started to nod off. My writing hand started to go into a sort of a spasm, rather like a cramp, but not so painful. It circled around and around my notebook, and then it made all kinds of squiggles.

‘I suddenly felt that Alison was very close by – that she was leaning over my shoulder. I tried to resist turning around because I knew that she wasn't really there, but in the end I couldn't stop myself.'

‘And?'

‘I was right. She wasn't there.'

Nevile paused for a moment, smiling wistfully at the memory. Then he hunkered down and opened one of the drawers underneath the bookshelves. ‘Here,' he said, ‘the very piece of paper.'

Frank took it and tried to read it. All he could make out was
RO smmr AD tom FFG
.

‘Incomprehensible if you don't know what you're looking for,' Nevile admitted. ‘But most automatic writing is very personal. If you fold the paper in the middle, the letters RO and AD join together to form the word ROAD, and
The Road
by Edwin Muir was one of Alison's favorite poems.

‘It's all about passing time. “There is a road that turning always|Cuts off the country of Again.” And the verse that Alison was trying to remind me of goes: “There a man on a summer evening|Reclines at ease upon his tomb|And is his mortal effigy|And there within the womb|The cell of doom.” See . . . “smmr” is “summer”, “tom” is “tomb” and “FFG” for “effigy.”'

He took the piece of paper back and returned it to the drawer. ‘She was telling me that everybody dies. Even when we're laughing on Albert Bridge, we'll soon be dead. Even after we're dead, though, we still journey on, although only the dead know where.'

Seventeen

O
n the six o'clock network news, Police Commissioner Marvin Campbell announced that he had received a new coded message from Dar Tariki Tariqat. They had called for a total ban within seventy-two hours on ‘all films and television programs that glorify salacious or ungodly behaviors.' The consequence for disobeying this warning would be ‘Armageddon for Hollywood . . . Starting at twelve noon precisely on Friday, a series of eleven bombs will be detonated around Los Angeles at twenty-four intervals, with the intention of bringing to their knees all those who disseminate licentiousness and blasphemy.'

Commissioner Campbell said he had no reason to believe that the message was a hoax and that he was treating it with ‘the utmost gravity.' At the same time, he tried to reassure the citizens of Los Angeles that public security precautions had never been so stringent. ‘Not only that, our anti-terrorist teams are very close to making some significant arrests.'

‘You believe that?' asked Smitty, popping open another beer. They were sitting on the porch, watching the dog rolling on his back on the grass.

Frank shook his head. ‘Two detectives came around to Nevile Strange's house this afternoon, when I was there. If they're still asking a psychic for answers, they can't have any solid evidence, can they? I'm not saying that Nevile's not a
good
psychic. In fact, I think he's probably the best. It's just that communications from the spirit world are not exactly a substitute for fingerprints and DNA.'

‘You know what I think?' said Smitty. ‘I think it's the end of the world as we know it.'

Frank drove back to the Sunset Marquis. When he walked into the lobby, he found Margot waiting for him, alone, looking pale and pinched, her hair wound up in a pale mauve turban.

‘Frank,' she said, rising to her feet, ‘we really need to talk.'

‘Sure, OK.' He checked his watch. It was eight minutes of seven. He led her up to his room and opened the door. She walked in and circled around, her eyes flicking from side to side as if she were looking for clues.

‘You want a drink?' he asked her. ‘I have Chardonnay, Chardonnay or Chardonnay. Or beer.'

‘No thanks. I simply think we need to work out what we're going to do next.'

‘I don't know. What do you think we ought to do next?'

‘Frank, we've been married for nine years. Doesn't that count for anything?'

‘Of course it does. But it's no use pretending that nothing's happened.'

‘I
can
forgive you for what happened to Danny, I know I can.'

‘But not yet?'

‘I'm only asking for time, Frank.'

‘I know. And I'm not blaming you. If our positions had been reversed – if it had been
you
taking Danny to school when that bomb went off – I would probably be feeling exactly the same way that you're feeling.'

Margot hesitated, then said, ‘The reason I came here today . . . well, I just wanted you to know that in spite of everything I still love you. You talked about divorce, but I don't want to think that this is going to be the end of us.'

Frank took a half-empty bottle of white wine out of the fridge and poured himself a large glass. ‘I don't know. I'm beginning to wonder if Danny was all that was holding us together. We've been eating at the same table and sleeping in the same bed, but we haven't been talking to each other very much, have we?'

‘Was our marriage really so bad?'

‘No, it wasn't. Most of it was great. But maybe we were both changing into different people and because of Danny we didn't realize how much.'

‘All I want to know is if I made you happy or not.'

‘Jesus, Margot. That's like coming up to somebody who's just walked away from a plane crash and asking them if they had a comfortable seat.'

‘I need to know what you're thinking, Frank. I need to know what you're intending to do.'

‘I don't know
what
I'm going to do. Neither does anybody else in Los Angeles, until they catch these terrorists. The way things are going, we're all going to wind up jobless and bankrupt.'

‘I'm not talking about your work. I'm talking about
us
.'

Frank thought about that for a while, while Margot waited. He glanced at her but her expression gave very little away. He went over to the balcony door, slid it open, and stood in the marmalade-colored light of the setting sun. Eventually he turned back to her and said, ‘Nevile did another séance for me. He talked to Danny, and Danny said that I should try to start a new life.'

‘He talked to Danny and Danny said that?'

‘That's right.'

‘You don't really believe that Danny would want us to separate, do you?'

Frank didn't have time to answer. The door opened and Astrid came in, wearing dark glasses, a buckskin jacket and a tight white tube dress.

‘Oh! I'm sorry!' she said when she saw Margot.

Margot turned back to Frank. ‘I think I might have made a fool of myself.'

‘Of course you haven't. This is Astrid, she was at The Cedars, too.'

‘We've already met, thank you. I'd better be going.'

‘Margot, if you want to talk tomorrow . . .'

‘No, Frank. I don't think I do. I obviously came here to ask you a redundant question.'

He felt irritable that evening. It wasn't just Margot; it was Astrid, too. He took her for
pollo a tegame
at Tony Ascari's but she ate hardly anything. She seemed twitchy and upset and she kept looking around the restaurant as if she were expecting to see somebody she didn't want to see.

‘This is not to the lady's taste?' asked Marco, the head waiter, when their plates were collected.

‘I'm sorry,' said Astrid. ‘Just not hungry, I guess.'

‘So what's wrong?' Frank asked her. ‘You haven't eaten anything and you've hardly said two words since we came here.'

‘Nothing's wrong, OK?'

‘So what did you do today? Did somebody upset you?'

‘I went to Venice and met some friends, that's all.'

‘Venice?'

‘That's right. We had pizza at Tomato UFO.'

‘Oh . . . That accounts for you not being hungry. You should have said.'

He held her hand over the red checkered tablecloth. He couldn't see her eyes because of her dark glasses; all he could see was two swiveling candle flames. But he still found her as arousing as cat's fur stroked backward – not only because of her perfume, not only because of the way she looked, but because she had lied to him. She hadn't gone to Venice to meet friends. She had gone to Star-TV, and why? To meet the man who had beaten her so badly? To be beaten again? To tell him how much she hated him?

That night, when they went to bed, he was even more sexually charged than she was. They struggled and fought, but he gripped her wrists to prevent her from twisting herself free, and then he pushed himself into her, inch by inch, and kept himself there, as deep as he could possibly go.

‘That hurts,' she gasped, her hair bedraggled, her cheek slippery with sweat.

‘Lies hurt, too.'

‘Lies? What lies? What are you talking about?'

‘Lies like, “I went to Venice to meet my friends, that's all. And we all had pizza at Tomato UFO.”'

‘Why should you care?'

‘Because I do. Especially when you come back covered with bruises.'

‘You don't own me, Frank.'

‘I never said that I did. But I don't like to see you being hurt.'

‘You mean you don't like to see me being hurt by another man. It's all right if you do it.'

Frank eased himself out of her. Immediately she wrapped the sheet tightly around herself and rolled over to the other side of the bed. ‘You shit,' she said, her voice muffled.

He tried to put his arm around her but she slapped him away. In the end he turned his back to her and tried to get some sleep. It took him two or three hours, because the musician with the beaky nose was playing Bruce Springsteen songs at top volume, and somebody was having a party around the pool, and screaming like a horror movie.

In the very dead of night, he was woken by something touching his cheek. He thought it was a mosquito at first – he had heard one mizzling around the room before he fell asleep. He flapped his hand to brush it away, and then he pulled up the sheet so that it covered his face. He didn't want to wake up in the morning covered in bites.

But he had been lying there for only a minute or two longer before the sheet was slowly pulled down again. He opened his eyes, his skin shrinking with alarm. The bedroom was dark, but there was sufficient light for him to see that somebody was standing close beside the bed, looking down at him. A child, with its eyes glittering in the gloom.

‘
Daddy hurt me.'

Jesus, it was Danny. Frank lay there and stared at him, not daring to move.

‘
Daddy hurt me.'

‘It wasn't my fault, Danny,' Frank replied. He had to clear his throat because he had been sleeping on his back. ‘It was a bomb, Danny. I didn't know that you'd been injured. There was no way for me to tell.'

‘
He beat me and then he said he was sorry and then he made me do all those bad things.
'

‘Danny, I didn't beat you and I never made you do anything bad. You know that.'

The figure continued to stare at him. As his eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness, he could make out of Danny's mop-top haircut and his pale, triangular face. God, he looked so much like Margot.

‘
He beat me and he made me do all those bad things. But I loved him. I loved him so much. Afterward he used to cry and say that he was sorry and that he was never going to hurt me again.'

Frank eased himself up into a sitting position. Beside him, Astrid stayed deeply asleep, breathing softly and evenly as if she were crossing the universe in the cargo ship
Nostromo
. He was frightened, because his dead son had appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night, but his fear was equaled by his urgent need to know
why
. If he didn't find out why, he felt that something catastrophic was going to happen to him, and everybody around him.

‘Danny . . . I didn't beat you, did I? And I never hurt you in any other way?'

‘
Daddy hurt me.'

Frank reached out into the darkness. ‘Here . . . take my hand.'