The Lazarus Hotel (11 page)

Larry shouldered his way between them. ‘Then it's time she told us.' It wasn't necessarily a threat and he may not have intended violence. But the possibility sent ripples through the tense atmosphere.

Joe moved stoutly to the woman's side. ‘Now then,' he rumbled, ‘let's not get silly. It's a bit of a turn-up, but let's think what we're doing before we start throwing our weight around.'

‘Old man,' gritted Larry, ‘I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm going to find out what's going on here and who's behind it from the only person who knows – any way it takes.'

Joe's chest swelled and his voice, always gruff, dropped another note. ‘In that case I know what I'm doing too. I'm stopping you.'

If they'd come to blows there could have been only one outcome, though the athlete was past his prime and the printer still a substantial figure. But there were too many disapproving onlookers for it to degenerate that far.

Larry backed down with a bad grace. ‘She doesn't need your protection. Can't you see? She's making fools of us. We were brought here under false pretences, we're being kept here against our will, and we still don't know why. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble. He must want something. You're afraid
I
might get rough? Ask yourself what
he's
planning. Because we can't get away from here and we can't call for help.'

When Will had made the same point Richard had dismissed it as the anxiety of a naturally timid man. But Larry was a tough and pragmatic man who wouldn't feel threatened without good cause, and that shunted the situation across the shadow line into the realm of fear. The possibility couldn't safely be discounted that they had been betrayed into the hands of real malevolence. They'd been hunted down and their presence engineered by someone whose identity they didn't know, whose motives they didn't understand and whose intentions they couldn't begin to predict.

And Miriam still wasn't telling the truth. Tariq knew it too. ‘I may have been talked into it but I booked my own place, and I didn't send that photograph. Where did it come from?'

Though it amused him to play a role, actually he was both intelligent and intuitive. In fact, none of these people was as they had been described to Miriam. She made a decision. ‘Listen, everyone, this is getting out of hand. No one's in any danger, I promise. Nobody meant to keep you here by force – the lift going off really was an accident. I'll tell you what I can, all right?

‘I haven't lied to you. My friend asked my help in bringing together some people he didn't think would accept an invitation. He used various personal and business contacts to get you here – Sheelagh's client, Tariq's colleague, Tessa's journal. He offered free places to Richard's station and Larry's club knowing that because of their current difficulties they'd be the obvious choice to send. He put a postcard in Joe's magazine and invented a competition for Will to win. You all knew Cathy. More than that, you're all people on whom at one time or another she depended – her advisers, her friends, the man who almost saved her life.'

‘Why?'
rasped Larry. He seemed no happier now he was getting the answers he'd demanded. ‘Does he blame
us
for her death?'

Miriam nodded. ‘In a way. Cathy was a girl who had admirers all her life. She attracted people. They enjoyed being with her, partly because of who she was and partly because some of the glitter rubbed off. They enjoyed the benefits of her friendship. In spite of that she died alone. None of those who made personal or professional capital from knowing her during her best years were there when she needed them. My friend thinks that's why she died. Because she ended up alone.'

‘But what does he
want?'
asked Richard, his voice reedy thin. ‘Even if he's right and we let her down, we can't do anything about it now. We're all sorry for what happened to her, maybe we're all unhappy with our own performance, but we didn't kill her. It was suicide. Has he gone to all this trouble only to hear that?'

‘He wants you to understand what you did,' Miriam said carefully. ‘He's concerned that, precisely because you didn't push her in, you aren't aware of having contributed to her death. He believes that with better friends she'd still be alive.'

‘Maybe he's right,' Tariq conceded quietly. ‘Even if he is, what good can this do?'

‘And maybe he's wrong,' snarled Larry. ‘Cathy had as much going for her as anyone. What she lacked was the heart to ride out the difficult times. I taught her how to play tennis. I taught her to be a tennis-player, which isn't quite the same thing. But it wasn't my job to organize the rest of her life. When she stopped playing tennis there was nothing more I could do for her.'

Will said softly, ‘It's her father, isn't it?'

There was a measured silence. Then Miriam said, ‘What makes you think so?'

‘The photographs. Most of them could have come from her effects – mine could hardly have come from anywhere else. Also, there's no one here from her family and if he was anyone else he'd blame them too. Home's the last refuge. When everything else goes wrong – your lover walks out and your friends laugh and your boss tells you to stop crying on his stationery – you pick up the phone and call home. Cathy loved her parents. When she sent me packing I told myself at least she had her family to fall back on if things worked out badly.

‘Well, they did, worse than I ever imagined. But for some reason her family was no help. Maybe they'd drifted apart by then, or maybe they let her down too. Either way, whoever's behind this would blame them if he was anyone other than her father. Or maybe he does blame himself. Maybe we're here because he's desperate to share out the responsibility.'

Again it seemed a long time before Miriam spoke. ‘You're a perceptive man, Will. Yes, we're here because of Cathy's father. Did you ever meet him?'

Will shook his head. ‘Cathy visited them sometimes. Not often. It meant breaking her training schedule and her coach—' He stopped abruptly, his eyes meeting Larry's like a collision. All he'd known about Cathy's advisers had been second-hand. Now he had a face to put to what he'd been told and what he'd inferred. His voice dripped acid. ‘Apparently Larry disapproved.'

Larry didn't like Will much more than Will liked Larry. He shrugged. ‘It's tough at the top. You have to put everything else on hold for a while. I didn't mind her seeing them; I did mind her missing training. It would have been easier for them to come and see her but they wouldn't. Neither would you, as I recall.'

Will flushed angrily. ‘Cathy didn't want me hanging round the courts. Tennis had taken over enough of her life. She needed somewhere she could retreat where it wasn't the only topic of conversation.'

‘I was right about you,' sneered Larry, the twist of his lips sculpted in the hard musculature of his face. ‘I knew you were no good for her. I didn't have to meet you – I knew your type. You think it's all frilly knickers and silver salvers, don't you, champagne and strawberries. You think it'd be a nice way for well-brought-up young ladies to make a living if it wasn't for the boring old men in the background taking it all so seriously.

‘Let me tell you something. Cathy wasn't the girl you took her for. Tennis wasn't something pleasant to do on a sunny afternoon. It was her career. She worked at it. She pushed herself to the limits, then pushed some more. She shed sweat and tears for it, and if blood had been required she'd have bled too. And gladly, because being an athlete is a privilege. If God gives you the talent you owe Him ten years of your life in order to be as good as you can be. Not everyone makes the top, but if you give it all you've got for ten years you've paid your dues. Nothing that happens afterwards alters the fact that you were an athlete. No one can take that away.

‘But she couldn't make you understand that, could she? You thought she should be working office hours, with five weeks'holiday a year. When she was too tired to hold in the tears, instead of saying, Cathy, you can do this, it's what you want and you're strong enough to take it, you wanted her to walk away. To give up all she'd worked to achieve. You're soft and you're ordinary, Will. You wanted a nice safe ordinary wife, and you couldn't take it that she wanted to fulfil her potential more than she wanted you.'

This was the woman Will had loved they were talking about, and today he'd learned that she killed herself because her glittering career was over and she was alone. Tears spilt from his eyes. ‘I'd have done anything for her. But all she wanted was for me to leave her alone. So I did. I left her to your care. And you let her die.'

Larry had too much self-command to hit him again. But he crowded him until Will stepped backwards. His voice was thick with fury. ‘You pygmy!
I
let her die? I'd have put my hand in the fire for Cathy Beacham. For five years, everything I did was designed to improve her chances, to get her to the top. You'd have done anything for her? Well, I
did
it. Everything in my life that wasn't helping Cathy I gave up. For five years she was my purpose for living.

‘I let her die?' Again the threatening advance, the powerful body looming, before which Will had no choice but retreat. ‘I loved that girl in a way you can't begin to comprehend. I understood her and felt for her. I knew what she was going through, and I knew where she was going to. I was closer to her than anyone she ever knew. How
dare
you say I let her die?'

Their slow two-step had taken them to the edge of the room. Larry reached for Will's shoulders. Will flinched, Richard started forward, but physical violence was not his intention. Larry turned the smaller man to the window, pressed his face against the glass. All the city spread below them, far down where the buses were like tiny preoccupied insects and the people were too small to see at all.

‘See that?' Larry hissed in his ear. ‘That's the view of eagles. That's how athletes see the world – from halfway to the sun. And it scares you shitless, doesn't it?'

Behind them the room stirred with indignation. But Larry ignored the angry remonstrance and held Will against the glass forty storeys above the street while his protests grew feeble and incoherent, his face went from pale to ashy and his eyes began to roll.

‘Excuse me,' said Tariq, moving Miriam aside. He fisted one big hand in the neck of Larry's track suit and yanked.

‘If we start pecking at one another,' Tariq said levelly, ‘there's going to be blood and feathers everywhere. We're likely to be here two more days and three nights. By then we'll be sick of the sight of each other. If we don't exercise a bit of restraint somebody's going to get hurt. That's the big danger – not what Cathy's father might do to us but what we might do to one another. Violence is a self-indulgence we can't afford.'

‘Violence!' snorted Larry; but his derision somehow lacked conviction. He'd been as shocked as anyone at what he'd done. He was a physical man, a gladiator, and he didn't like to be reminded how close these manly virtues approached to vices. He wasn't a thug but he'd behaved like one and he was ashamed. He blamed the stress they were under. He blamed Will for provoking him. He blamed Cathy Beacham's father for bringing them here and the carelessness of the British workman for making them stay.

Will recovered his composure quicker than his colour. Once away from the window he had fewer qualms about looking at Larry than Larry had about looking at him. There was a glint of wry humour in his intelligent eyes. ‘We should also try to avoid blaming each other. What I said was unfair. We're all pretty shocked – it's no wonder we're saying and doing stupid things. But we should remember we're not enemies. Our quarrel isn't with one another.'

‘No.' Larry returned to the earlier theme with the relief of a man floundering out of a bog. He nodded at the psychologist. ‘It's with her.'

‘Yes,' agreed Will. He regarded Miriam coolly. ‘Have you told us everything this time?'

She thought for a moment. ‘Pretty well.'

‘What are you expecting from us?'

‘Nothing.'

‘It doesn't matter to you that as soon as the lift comes on we're all going to leave?'

‘Will, as soon as the lift comes on
I'm
going to leave. This hasn't exactly been a triumph for me, you know. I thought I could manage it better. It's true, I was using you, but I thought I could give you something in return. Self-knowledge, reconciliation, something. And then, you're not the people I was expecting. My friend—'

‘Cathy's father.'

She acquiesced. ‘Cathy's father has a rather jaundiced view of you. Naturally enough. He doesn't know you personally – all he knew was from Cathy and when things started going wrong she too was looking for people to blame. He saw you as callous exploitive people who'd taken his daughter for all she was worth then dumped her. I shouldn't have accepted that at face value. Maybe you could have done better but that's life, isn't it? – handling things badly and having regrets afterwards. As I'm doing now.

‘So I suggest we tolerate one another till Monday, then part and hope not to meet again. Anyone who's out of pocket will of course be reimbursed. You have my apologies. You have my assurance that when I get him alone my friend will have some explaining to do. There's not much more I can say. As to how we spend the next sixty hours, I'm in your hands.'

The same idea came into everybody's head, and after a minute's resistance – it seemed crazy to do from choice what they'd been shanghaied into doing – Sheelagh voiced it. ‘I'd like to hear more about Cathy. We were good friends once, I wish we'd kept in touch. You all knew her after I did – can you, I don't know, fill in the gaps? What happened to her? What went wrong?'