Lovers and Liars Trilogy (190 page)

‘I need the
facts
,’ Angelica said, pouring coffee. ‘Tell me the things you left out when you spoke to Natasha.’ She gave him one of her black-eyed, scornful glances. ‘I know your techniques. You never tell a story straight; you fast forward past the awkward facts; you back track; you throw in these diversions—well, that won’t work with
me
. I’ve seen you do it too many times. You do it all the time in your movies.’

‘Yes, well you’re not too likely to understand my movies.’ Taking his coffee and moving away from her, Court gave her a dismissive glance. ‘Stick to your women’s magazines if you want a simple story.’

‘Romance, crime; that’s what I like.’ She gave him an unapologetic stare. ‘I like true love. I like a mystery solved. I like happy endings.’

‘You surprise me. And life isn’t like that unfortunately, so, no romance, no ending yet—happy or otherwise. I fear this mystery may not be solved, but I’ll give you the facts, such as they are, including the ones I didn’t tell Natasha, and you can play detective.’

Angelica gave him a look of sour amusement. She sat down heavily and spread her hands on her thighs, turning her slab of a face towards him.

‘So why
didn
’
t
you tell Natasha the whole story?’

‘Because I want to protect her. I don’t want her to worry any more than she needs…’

‘And?’

‘And, all right, the more worried about King she is, the more convinced she is that he could still be alive, the likelier she is to make this move to the Conrad. I don’t want her going there.’

‘I don’t like it there either,’ Angelica said, surprising him. ‘No point in saying so. The more you argue with her, the more she digs her toes in. I figured—keep my mouth
shut
. They probably won’t let her take that apartment anyway.’

‘Jonathan’s afraid of it. Does Natasha know that?’

‘She knows and she doesn’t know. I guess she thinks he’ll come round to it.’ She paused. ‘And it is secure; it’s a real secure building. Famous for it. Keep anybody out, that building would. I guess that’s why she chose it.’

Court gave her a pale glance. The taunt under her words was obvious enough, and she made little attempt to disguise it.

‘Well, it won’t keep
me
out,’ he replied quietly, ‘not as long as my son’s there, and Natasha would do well to remember that.’ He turned away. ‘Now, do you want these facts, or don’t you?’

‘Sure I do.’ She paused. ‘What Natasha told me, I couldn’t really understand. Why all these tests and checks? It seems pretty clear to me—I mean, they found the
body
…’

She continued speaking for some while, and Court listened, interested to see just how accurately his explanation to his wife had been reported back. As he had expected, few details had been left out—but then Natasha had always confided in Angelica minutely. He had never had any privacy in this marriage, he thought with a flare of anger. Natasha ran to Angelica the way a good Catholic ran to the confessional; he was certain that Angelica knew Natasha’s version of every one of his infidelities.

It had always seemed to him that Angelica would find them undisturbing, and just what she would expect from a member of the male sex. Angelica did not
judge
, he sometimes felt, she just watched, and very little either surprised or shocked her. He wondered now, watching her as she spoke without emotion of violent death and the details of that body in Glacier, whether Angelica knew of, and understood, the final paradox: that it was the advent of Joseph King that had cured him of the need for adulteries.

Had Angelica’s keen hard mind made that connection? He thought it probably had. He thought Angelica would have seen the link between a letter or call from King and his own haste, immediately afterwards, to get his wife back upstairs to their bedroom. He felt sometimes that Angelica had been able to see through those walls and locked doors, and that she had known, as precisely as he did, what then provoked the ensuing excitement, desperation and physical abandon.

‘He’s
sick
,’ Angelica was saying now, gazing off into space, her slab of a face hard with concentration. ‘He’s sick and obsessed, and the way I figure it is, he went out to Montana because he knew Jonathan was there, then he finally cracked. He went out to Glacier and found a real quiet private place, and he
jumped
. Good riddance. It took him a while to die—I hope it did. I figure…’

Had
Angelica made that connection? Court wondered, looking at her, then moving away as she continued speaking. Sometimes he felt she had not only seen the link, but pointed it out to Natasha. At other times, he felt that his wife had understood that link and had done so alone and unaided. It would not have been difficult; besides, it had seemed to him that Natasha shared his needs initially. He had been able to see a certain dark excitement in her eyes, which, on occasion, she had disguised with weeping.

‘Oh, I can’t bear this,’ she would say, letting one of King’s letters fall from her hands. ‘Take me upstairs, Tomas. I want to be with you.’

Being with him was a euphemism. The instant the door had closed and they were alone, he had seen her face light; she might not admit it, but he had known that she responded as strongly as he did to promptings others might have judged perverse or transgressive.

‘So he finally went over the edge,’ Angelica was now saying, still frowning off into space. ‘But what I don’t understand is, how come he was always so well informed? How come he knew where you’d been? Where Natasha had been? I mean, that wasn’t guesswork. He must have been following. He must have been
watching
…’

Court turned his back to Angelica. He leaned up against a table; he could hear his wife’s voice very clearly. ‘He must have been
watching
, Tomas.’ She closed the bedroom door, and, beginning to tremble, turned to face him. ‘How else could he have known that? He must have watched you with that boy. In a
parking lot
? Tomas, how could you do that? It makes me
ache
. I can’t bear—you
let
him? What did he do? Is it different when a man does that to you? Did he do it more than once? How long did it take him? Tell me…’

Her husband had told her. Her response, agitated and disguised, was immediate; he had been able to feel the electricity in her hands when, bolder than the boy had been, she began to touch him.

‘But what I can’t figure out,’ Angelica was saying. ‘I can’t figure out why it
stopped
. I mean, why would he give up so suddenly? Like this has been going on five
years
, and then he ups and kills himself? How come?’

Court passed his hands across his face. He stared at a pale wall hung with watercolours. For three of those five years this new charged relationship with his wife had continued; then he had made a very foolish mistake—he had admitted, under close questioning from his wife, that for the last two and a half of those years he had had no other sexual partners; he had neither wanted nor needed them; he had desired only her, and had been faithful. She had wept in his arms with apparent joy; her bedroom door had been closed to him thereafter.

Separation had ensued; divorce had swiftly followed. In the period since the divorce—and it was nearly two years—he had remained celibate, if not in the strictest sense, at least in the sense of having no other sexual partners. He was beginning to see that this too was an error; when it was admitted to his wife, here in this room, a week ago now, her lovely eyes had darkened with an expression of sympathy and disappointment. He had reacted as he always did: angry yet filled with longing for her, he returned to TriBeCa and lay there alone in the darkness, listening to those tapes, finding some release as he communed with ghosts and took his wife by proxy.

‘You still keeping all those King tapes?’

Angelica voiced the direct question suddenly, as if even while speaking she had been able to follow his thoughts with unerring accuracy. ‘You still listen to them the way you used to do?’

Colouring, Court kept his back to her.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘the police have most of them. I never listen to them now. I’m over that.’

‘He had you hooked.’ There was a malicious triumph in her voice; in this weakness of his she also exhulted.

‘Night after night you used to listen and reread the letters. I told you then, it wasn’t healthy.’

‘I can remember what you said.’

‘It was all lies anyway. Filthy lies.’ She spoke with sudden venom. ‘All those lies about Natasha. She isn’t like that—never has been.’

She paused, as if waiting for confirmation of this statement. When she received none, she gave a sigh.

‘Accurate about
you
, though. Chapter and verse. Where you’d been, who you’d been with…’

‘Accurate in some ways.’ He turned and gave her a pale steady look. ‘And those tapes told Natasha nothing that I hadn’t already told her. You might remember that, Angelica.’

‘You’re honest with her, I give you that.’ She paused,—eyeing him. ‘She won’t take you back, you know.’

‘Then I shall have to find a way of taking
her
back,’ he replied evenly. ‘Believe me, I will. And when I do, I won’t be consulting or informing you, Angelica.’

That angered her; he saw the blood creep up into her neck and suffuse her face. Her expression became set.

‘She’s free of you now.’

‘I wouldn’t count on that.’

‘She’s free of King as well. She can start a new life. He’s dead; he has to be
dead
. Not one call, not one letter, in nearly five months. They found that body. They found the ID with it.’ Her voice had risen. ‘I have to
know
, is it
finished
? Is he dead, or isn’t he?’

Court gave her a long, still look. He wondered if she were aware of the duality of her own question; he thought not. She wanted to believe King was dead because, for some primitive reason, some reason buried deep in her mind, she believed that if King were dead, Natasha’s marriage would similarly be dead. It was himself, he thought, as well as King that she wanted to eradicate from Natasha’s future.

‘The indications are that he
is
dead,’ he replied, ‘as you’ve been saying, and as I told Natasha.’ He paused. ‘But I don’t believe he is. I believe he’s very much alive…’

‘Biding his time?’ Angelica leaned forward.

‘Precisely.’

‘But they found the body…’

‘They found
a
body,’ Court corrected.

Giving her what Colin Lascelles would have described as one of his Prospero looks, he crossed the room. With a sigh, seating himself opposite her and speaking quietly, he began to tell her the story.

‘I didn’t tell Natasha this,’ he began, ‘but I know the place in Glacier where they found the body—and I know it well. I went there, Angelica. I went there last July first, with Jonathan, while he was staying with me in Montana. We went with a bodyguard, because I’d promised Natasha I would do that, and we took a back-country trail. It takes you through the mountains and on down to Kintia Lake…’

‘You camped.’ Angelica nodded. ‘I know, Jonathan loved it there; he told me.’

‘We were away three days. It’s a very beautiful part of Glacier and it’s remote—hardly anyone uses that trail. Even in high season you can walk all day and not see a single person. We had…’ He hesitated, looking away and seeing the place in his mind’s eye as he spoke. ‘They were three of the best days of my life. We walked, we fished, we had cook-outs—it took me back to my childhood. We slept out under the stars; we didn’t even need the tents. We had three days and nights of perfect weather and absolute peace, and I was glad of that—for Jonathan.’

‘He’d spent months cooped up here in this city,’ he continued. ‘I wanted to show him that there’s another America; a place where he could breathe pure air, where he didn’t have to worry about telephone calls, or what the mail might bring. A place where he didn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.’

He paused. ‘At the end of those three days, we went back to the ranch, and then, months later, when the body was found, I discovered we hadn’t been alone in Glacier. We’d been watched and followed—and someone went to considerable lengths to ensure I knew that. Do you know where they found the man’s body, Angelica? What was left of his body?’

‘By some water, in scrub. Right under this great wall of rock—that’s what you told Natasha.’

‘Yes—and that was accurate, up to a point. What I
didn
’
t
tell her was where that rock wall was located. The trail we took goes over it, Angelica. They found that body by the lake shore, not two hundred yards from one of our overnight camping sites. The body had been smashed up by the fall and left there to rot; and I’m certain that wasn’t accidental. It was a place where I’d been happy, where Jonathan had been happy—and anyone watching him there could have seen how happy he was. So they took that place and they polluted it. They’ve certainly ensured I’ll never go back there.’

‘Ah, Jesus.’ Angelica made one of her superstitious little signs. ‘He’d followed you there, then.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that, as you’ll see in a minute. Wait a while. Look at the chronology. In October, the rangers patrol the park before the snows come, and it’s closed for the winter. That’s when the body was found; by which time, it had been lying there, they think, for around four months, in the heat of a Glacier summer. There are bears in Glacier, Angelica. You can imagine; there’d been decomposition, animal interference, some bones were missing. The only way they’re going to make an identification is through dental chart records. It could take months, longer, before they find a match—if they ever do. At the moment, they’re going through the records for missing persons state by state—it’s slow, and it may well lead nowhere. Meantime, shortly after the body was found, I was contacted. You know why? Because someone had gone to considerable lengths to suggest an identification for that body. Someone wanted to suggest, to the police, to me, to Natasha, that the body was Joseph King’s. Now, you know how careful King is, and how ingenious. How do you think he did that?’