Dancing With Shadows

Dancing With Shadows Lynne Pemberton The blockbuster novel of suspense, intrigue and revenge, from the celebrated author of Sleeping With Ghosts.After twenty-five years of being incarcerated in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Jay Kaminsky is out. Out to pick up the pieces of his life, and to answer the questions that have plagued, and sustained, him through his nightmare. Someone robbed him of his youth and his freedom, and someone killed his Harvard room-mate all those years ago. Jay has paid their debt to society, now he wants to know who, and why.Kelly Preston has it all – beauty, fame and wealth. With her college friends Weston and Beth, she’d forged a pact: to channel their ambitions, talents and energy into elevating each other to positions of power by the millennium. For twenty-five years they have carved reality from their dreams. Now, they stand on the threshold of success.But Jay Kaminsky is in the way, dancing with shadows of the past. He’s never forgotten his college sweetheart, Kelly, and he’s convinced that she and her friends can help him. After twenty-five years their paths are set to converge once again, in a head-on collision of passion, murder, betrayal and retribution. LYNNE PEMBERTON Dancing with Shadows Dedication (#ulink_85b2ec21-c870-5022-935b-5ea098627ad5) For Michael Pemberton Jnr, my only son, whom I love with all my heart. Contents Cover (#uf1944bb1-a5a5-538c-86d0-8a7ab9376c04) Title Page (#ue74afdf2-f0fb-58b4-af0f-435b49a42702) Dedication (#u27d94ef5-b91d-5a10-9059-d552cb1a8cac) Chapter One (#u04b42d8b-2e91-5c23-9761-8620442ffe51) Chapter Two (#u447857d5-daa8-5094-bf2f-be5b04c4b0ad) Chapter Three (#u37c269b6-65b5-5a8d-bd91-2194a49a9a2a) Chapter Four (#ufd0d943c-401a-5b03-903e-c7926a0de189) Chapter Five (#u5c54042d-315d-58df-8ef4-6cd5e97f0b0b) Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Acclaim for Lynne Pemberton (#litres_trial_promo) By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter One (#ulink_4c1e0832-28a8-5978-9b73-feb898c36de6) It was the last day of February, white and crisp, and very cold. Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, Jay remembered the saying, and how strange he’d found it the first time he’d heard it. But he’d always found Hal Jefferson’s English mannerisms inexplicable. The man had talked in riddles; Cockney rhyming slang had constantly embroidered his conversation and he’d have to translate. ‘Apples and pears – stairs; Jack and Jill – bill, geddit?’ Sure he’d got it, but he’d never understood why Hal had bothered using three words where he could have used one. Nobody had. Jay’s face creased a little, it wasn’t a smile, more the effort of trying to put a date on the time he’d first met the dapper Englishman nicknamed ‘Hal’ because of his halitosis. Once, Jay had asked him what his real name was, suggesting that he use it instead of the derogatory reference to his breath. Hal had stuck his face in Jay’s, breathing heavily, emitting a smell like rotting meat. ‘So I’ve got bad breath; who cares?’ Shaking his head Jay wondered why it mattered, then told himself it didn’t; not any more. The nightmare was over, past, done; finito. But was it? Or would he carry the faces and voices of the inmates in his head for the rest of his life? Would they always be with him, muttering the banalities that at the time had seemed of the utmost importance? In those days it somehow brought colour and character to the grey walls, the grey days, when all he had to worry about was staying alive, staying sane and getting out before he got too old. He saw her before she saw him. Her back was turned towards him. She was stooped and clothed from head to foot in crow black. He wished she’d worn something bright; red would have been heart-warming, or meadow green. A narrow shaft of late winter sun, stark in its brilliance, glanced across the top of her head where the pale pinkness of her scalp could be seen shining through a sparse covering of granite-coloured hair. Then she looked up. Her eyes were upon him, the same colour, or so they seemed in this light, as her hair. Yet as she came closer he could see they were blue; not the blue of the cornflowers he’d likened them to as a child, but a cold, milky shade, the brightness dulled by age. Jay stood very still, watching her approach. He couldn’t remember how old she was, seventy-one, seventy-two maybe? He tried to recall how old she’d been when she’d had him, almost forty-six years ago. When she was a couple of feet away she stopped and, pulling herself up ramrod straight, looked directly into his eyes. There was no tenderness there, only searching, and in that instant he knew what he’d always known yet had never allowed himself to accept. She had never believed in him; but, worse, she’d never forgiven him. He hoped she wouldn’t want to hug him, to take him in her arms, to hold him close; not yet, he wasn’t ready. Jay needn’t have worried, her hands were pushed deep into her coat pockets, and she made no further move. Neither of them spoke. Her face, he noticed, was a strange yellow colour, darker around her mouth and under her eyes. She looks sick he thought, picturing her weariness clinging to her stick limbs like moss to an ancient stone. But then he was older too, his once coal-black hair was threaded with silver, and lately he’d found white streaks in his pubic thatch. Deep lines etched from his nose to the corners of his mouth, and the crisscross tracery of fine lines around his eyes had nothing to do with laughter. He wished it had. It was Jay who broke the silence. ‘Thanks for coming, Mom.’ The words came out flat like meat forced through a mincer. A mist of breath rose, like smoke, out of her open mouth. ‘It was the least I could do, son, you ain’t got nobody else.’ He wanted to say that he had a few friends, decent men he’d met inside, who were either innocent, misguided, or just plain desperate when they’d offended. But he said nothing. ‘It sure is cold,’ she said, shuffling from side to side and pushing her hands even deeper into her pockets. She was wearing rubber-soled brown boots, the mass-produced type sold cheaply in supermarkets and discount stores across the country. They were down at heel. Jay knew she could afford new boots, but she was frugal, mean with herself, deriving immense pleasure from penny pinching. A sudden and unexpected image jumped into his mind: his mother was bent over the kitchen table, her lips muttering figures as she calculated the weekly household accounts. A lifetime of hardship, of scrimping and saving, of making do. Old habits die hard, he thought, if at all. Her eyes had now darted to the building behind Jay. She stared long and hard, as if looking at something or someone in particular. ‘You want a last look?’ A last look? What a fucking stupid question. The pile of bricks and mortar he’d just left would remain with him for the rest of his life. As would the noise, the smell, the loneliness and the fear. Every square inch of Cedar State Penitentiary was indelibly printed on his subconscious as surely as if it had been branded there with white-hot iron. Jay felt like crying. He’d dreamt of this day, this special day, planned every moment in minute detail all those countless times when loneliness had visited, and revisited, inviting him to despair. He’d longed to taste the air on the outside, certain it would smell and feel different from the stuff he gulped every morning in the exercise yard. What would he have become by now without his dreams? Whenever he’d doubted his sanity, his carefully maintained diet of hope had sustained, comforted and enriched his miserable existence. And always in his imaginings this day had been in springtime; a blossom-bursting, sun-filled morning, with deafening birdsong and an intoxicating sense of euphoria. So why did he feel like shit? Why had a black cloud slipped silently like a shroud around his shoulders? Where was the joy of freedom he’d anticipated for so long, the sense of wellbeing he’d so craved? Had he been too optimistic; but then why not? He’d been incarcerated for twenty-five years: twenty-five birthdays, twenty-five Christmasses denied. Stolen. Tears nagged at his eyes; yet something held them back. Come on, Jay; don’t feel sorry for yourself, you got over that years ago. This is the day you’ve been waiting for. So it’s an anticlimax, what the hell … It’s still the first day of the rest of your life. Rebecca repeated her question. ‘You want a parting look?’ Jay was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. ‘What do you think?’ No longer able to look at her son, Rebecca lowered her eyes. She couldn’t begin to articulate how she felt. She’d never been good with words, she’d left that to her fast-talking, no good husband. And now when she desperately needed to tell her son how sorry she was, she couldn’t find a way. She took a step closer to Jay, her face was impassive. ‘I think we should get the hell outta here.’ The drive to New York was a nightmare, the amount of traffic scary, and even more terrifying was Rebecca’s habit of looking directly at him when he spoke. Jay was convinced they were destined for a head-on collision. Having survived twenty-five years of imprisonment, he mused, how ironic if he were killed on his first day of freedom by his mother. There wasn’t much to say to each other: no common bond; no shared interests; no memories. Well, none that Jay wanted to recall, and eventually mother and son settled into an uncomfortable silence that lasted for most of the journey. Both were relieved when she finally stopped the car in front of the Lowell Hotel. Jay glanced at the uniformed doorman, then at the discreet lobby, recalling his agent’s voice: Made a reservation for you at the Lowell, 28 East 63rd Street. Smart hotel on the Eastside. You can stay there until you sort out an apartment. Your suite’s on the seventh, it’s even got a baby grand in the living room, so if you can play the keys … He got out of the car first, handed his bag to the hovering doorman, then helped his mother out of the driving seat. They stood side by side, her hand resting on the open car door. Jay was smiling, it felt awkward but he kept right on doing it, hoping it looked sincere. Then Rebecca smiled, too, for the first time. ‘You remind me of your pa, except the way you speak. You don’t talk the same as you did, Jay; you’ve got a fancy accent.’ Jay made no comment, he couldn’t be bothered to explain that he’d been nicknamed ‘the Gent’ in prison, having acquired the new intonation from Hal, the ex-butler from England who’d poisoned his employer – some rich old dame who’d left him a couple of million bucks in her will. As Rebecca’s smile faded, her mouth slackened and in that moment she looked profoundly sad. Jay thought about his father, then cursed himself and hated his mother for mentioning that he looked like Ellis Kaminsky. It was the first time he’d thought about his father since ten years ago when he’d come across an inmate who had met an Ellis Kaminsky while doing a prison stretch in Illinois. Jay had denied any connection. Ellis Kaminsky had sired him, but that was his only claim to fatherhood. For the first twelve years of Jay’s life, his father had been conspicuous by his absence. A long-suffering Rebecca had always quietly defended her husband. Your father works hard to get nice things for you and your sister. He has to spend time away from home to earn more money so we can have a better house. The move to a bigger house never came, nor did the much promised gifts, like the fishing pole Jay had asked for. After frequent similar disappointments, Jay had begged, then prayed, and eventually given up. Until the day when Kaminsky had left home to work on a construction site in Kansas, promising to bring the pole back for Jay and a bicycle for his sister Fran. They never received the presents, because Ellis Kaminsky never returned. Jay had been fourteen; Fran, twelve. After that their mother had slowly deteriorated, losing sense of who or what she was, given to fits of prolonged depression and introspection. The ‘head of the house’ role had automatically fallen on Jay’s shoulders. He’d tried to console his needy mother and be a father to young Fran. But although he’d tried to make everyone happy, he’d tried too hard and failed miserably. The effort had fuelled both his hatred for his father and his own will to succeed. Perhaps now I can finally make amends, Jay thought. But even as the thought was born, he doubted it was possible. Ellis Kaminsky had taken a large piece of Rebecca’s heart when he’d left, and Jay knew his mother had never completely recovered. And Fran was lost to him; lost to herself, if the stories his mother told were true. Sometimes he doubted this, because on each occasion when he’d enquired about his sister, his mother had been evasive to the point of downright secrecy. Fran was living in Florida, so Rebecca said. Alone, and working as a waitress. Five years after his imprisonment, Fran had moved away from Sand Springs in Montana to California. She’d only visited Jay three times after that and her weekly letters had become monthly – quickly scribbled paragraphs – gradually dwindling to annual events before stopping completely. Where was she now, he wondered, as he was gripped by a vivid recollection of his freckle-faced, plump-cheeked sister – her single pigtail, the same colour as the corn, flying out behind her. It was an age-old image, yet the only one he had. He felt a sharp pang of sadness at the realization that he doubted whether he would be able to pick her out in a crowded room now. The clich? said it all for him … Too much water under the bridge. Jay inclined his head towards the entrance to the hotel. ‘You want to come in, Mom?’ He wasn’t sure he wanted her to join him, but he was afraid to walk into the lobby alone. He felt his heart hammering. Get a grip, it’s only a hotel for Christ’s sake. When Rebecca shook her head, he felt immensely relieved. The prospect of trying to make small talk with this stranger, his mother, was too daunting. He wanted her to go, and go quickly, but inwardly berated himself for his churlishness. ‘Naw, I’ve got a long drive back. Anyway, Jay, I think you’ve got some adjusting to do. Pick up some of the pieces. You got your release, your freedom. I never thought I’d see the day. It’s going to take some time to feel right on you, and you don’t want yer old ma getting in the way.’ Jay nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right, but some time I’d like to talk; just you and I.’ He held out his hand. She took it, tentatively at first, then grasped it, and held on very tight as if she was drowning. ‘I know, son, I want to talk, too; there’s a lot to say, twenty-five years of catching up to be done. But not right now. You know me, I never was much good at talking.’ She no longer met his eyes and with a faraway expression on her face, she looked into the middle distance. ‘I’m sick, Jay, been sick for a good while now. I didn’t write you, no need, you got troubles of yer own.’ Still gripping him tight, she blinked rapidly. He looked at the back of her hand, a patchwork of white skin, knotted veins, and dark brown liver spots. ‘Sick with what?’ ‘Colon trouble, last year they gave me a handy little purse to shit into. But lately it’s not been working so well, and they want to operate again. So who knows, I might get a classy designer version this time round.’ Her stab at humour failed to mask the dread resignation he detected in her small voice. She was dying; of that he was certain. He didn’t want her to die, but he knew he wouldn’t miss her. But then who would he miss? He thought about the few friends he’d made inside, and that was it. Concerned, but not devastated, Jay reproached himself and said, ‘I’ll make some enquiries, Mom, find the best surgeon, and we’ll get you fixed up with an appointment.’ ‘You’ll do no such thing. I don’t want any fancy docs. I’m OK with the one I’ve got. Charles Cornwell is a good man, he’s doing fine by me. Listen, son, I ain’t getting any younger and we’ve all got to go some time, it’s only a matter of how.’ Jay opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when you come home.’ Jay thought about home; where was home? The ramshackle wooden house in Sand Springs, Montana that poverty had hijacked long before he’d left? It was where he was born, where he’d started his journey, and he had no intention of ending it there. His mother had refused to leave, even after he’d had his first royalty cheque, and had offered to buy her a new apartment near her sister in a better neighbourhood. ‘I’ve got a few things to sort out here,’ he said, returning to the present. ‘As soon as I’ve done that, in a couple of weeks, I’ll come home, I promise.’ They both knew he was lying. ‘Well I ain’t goin’ nowhere so when you’re good and ready, son …’ She paused. ‘Then we’ll talk.’ For a few minutes neither moved. They held hands, like lovers reluctant to part, saying nothing, lost in thought. Had they compared those thoughts, they would have been surprised at how similar they were. Both were of deep regret. ‘This is great stuff, Jay!’ Ed Hooper was tapping a deep pile of foolscap on top of his battered desk. It was the manuscript of Jay’s latest novel. With the flat of his other hand the agent stroked the mahogany surface, thinking about the day he’d bought the desk. Spring 1968. His buddy, Abe Lesser, had been selling second-hand furniture at the time and Ed recalled how he’d haggled with Abe, who’d insisted the desk was early nineteenth century. Ed had beat him down to a hundred and twenty dollars; more than he could afford at the time. The antique was intended for a big space, and it had incongruously filled his shoebox office in SoHo. He’d named it ‘Samson’, after Bill Samson his first client, and in 1976 Samson had moved uptown with him to his new office on 76th and York. The grander premises suited Big Samson admirably; solid and important, the desk dominated the twenty-foot-square room. Samson had hosted six secretaries’ butts; been party to ten mega deals, hundreds of major deals, and thousands of minor ones. One crazy night after a party, Ed had even had a blow job under the desk; and he’d fucked his first wife over it. Samson could tell a tale or two. It was part of him, the one piece of furniture he’d ever felt really attached to, the one constant in his life. Samson looked good when cluttered; two cigar boxes, one for the legal cheroots the other for black market Cubans, helped the effect. As did a monogrammed ashtray from Ed’s mother, and the eclectic mix of junk he’d collected or been given over the years, including an engraved golf ball on a silver plinth from his teenage son, Josh. And a framed photograph of himself, and Josh at fifteen, on a fishing trip in Key West. Ed liked to put his feet on Samson, happy in the knowledge that he wouldn’t receive a scathing comment from his ex-wife Carole, who had repeatedly asked why he insisted on keeping such a beat-up old relic. Thank God he’d resisted her influence; he liked his office exactly as it was. The floor was carpeted in moss green; the walls were painted white and left unadorned; there was a free-standing rosewood veneered bookcase full of titles he’d handled, and of twentieth-century classics. The room also boasted a couple of leather chairs picked up wholesale twelve years before, and a Tudor oak chest acquired by Carole in a furniture sale. She’d kicked up a stink when he’d used it as a coffee table. But then Carole, after six months of marriage, had kicked up about mostly everything he did. Ed narrowed his eyes, registering the ironic fact that next week he’d be signing divorce papers on the very same spot where he’d first had Carole six years ago almost to the day. Bitch. Double-crossing, money-grabbing, beautiful, devious bitch. Turning his attention back to the manuscript, he stroked the paper lovingly, a smile creasing his battered face. A ‘lived-in’ face, he liked to think, as he tried to convince himself every morning that what he saw in the bathroom mirror was not a short, pig-ugly, fat Yid, who’d inherited his maternal grandmother’s leathery pockmarked skin and deep-set eyes. His father, God rest his soul, had given him very little except a long hooked nose and a rubbery bottom lip. The pair of them had a lot to answer for. Ed hated being ugly. All his life he’d surrounded himself with beauty; had idolized beautiful women. This was a weakness for which he’d duly suffered, yet he kept repeating the pattern. His father always said that everybody makes mistakes; it’s only fools who don’t learn by them. If that was true then Ed had to accept that he was a prize turkey. He was addicted to beauty, basking in its reflection, hoping some of it would rub off. Just like those dumb idiots who married intellectuals on the same principle. Only it never quite worked out that way. His best friend Joe, when they were teenage kids, hanging out and trying to get laid, had said that with a face like his the only way to get beautiful women was to become successful. Make money, Ed, lots of it. Women love rich, powerful, ugly men. Look at Henry Kissinger, he’s had more pussy than he’s known what to do with. Ed smiled. It softened his features and for a split second he looked like an old teddy bear; the kind kids cherish for life. Then he was talking again, doing what he did best: negotiating; bullshitting; doing the deal; making a buck, making a million bucks. ‘When I say great, I mean fucking brilliant, Jay! Like, the best. You’re a great writer, man; you know that? You’re a fucking born-again Hemingway. You listening to me, Jay?’ There was no reply. Ed shrugged, lit a cigar, and mentally digressed back to the time he’d read Jay’s first manuscript, Killing Time. A man calling himself Ivanov had delivered the three hundred and sixty pages in a brown paper parcel tied with tatty string. He’d refused to be questioned, saying that there was a letter from the author inside which would explain everything. He was referring to Jay’s simple note explaining that he’d read about Ed Hooper in the New York Times, and wanted an honest appraisal of his first novel. He could be contacted at the Cedar State Penitentiary. The story, a harrowing account of a hitman’s revenge on the Mafia godfather who had destroyed his family, had captured Ed from page one. He would never forget the churning in his gut after the first chapter, or his mounting excitement when he’d thought the narrative couldn’t get any better, and it had. He’d put all his other work on hold, finishing the book in one sitting. The knowledge that in Jay Kaminsky, alias Will Hope, he’d discovered a great talent, and the fact that he had a hot property to sell, had kept him awake for several nights. ‘Come on, Jay, say something. I just called you another Hemingway! What more do you want?’ He was talking to Jay’s back, clothed this morning in new jacket and slacks, and a button-down cotton polo shirt that hung loosely on its wearer’s narrow frame. Jay felt uncomfortable in the designer clothes. Yesterday he’d allowed Ed to lead him into the strange and terrifying world of Madison Avenue. They had started in Ralph Lauren. To begin with, the sight of so much merchandise had been daunting; later Jay had felt like a kid again, let loose in a toy shop, unable to make up his mind what to have first. Oh, the joy of touching the huge array of suits and shirts – wool so fine it caressed the fingertips; crisp cotton, cool to the touch; the smell of polished wood, mingled with a spicy fragrance which Ed informed him was Polo aftershave. The young sales assistants, both male and female, dressed in de rigueur designer gear, impressed Jay even more than the customers who graced the sensual emporium. Heads held high; flawless skin; perfect teeth and supremely confident smiles. Short skirts; panty-hosed legs so shiny they looked gloss-painted, breasts and pecs straining against well-cut fabric. All selling sex, selling the Lauren lifestyle, the dream. Wear a Polo shirt, or a Ralph suit, and you’ll be considered upwardly mobile, recognized as tasteful, sexy, desirable. Jay had been reluctant to try on the clothes Ed picked out for him, and had agreed only after much encouragement from a very attractive girl called Jodie. He’d fumbled with zips and buttons, overcome with embarrassment when Jodie had pinned his trouser hem, and he’d felt his cock get hard. Meanwhile Ed had been surveying the back of Jay’s head. His hair, cropped to an inch long all over, revealed the end of a narrow scar that ran from the side of his left earlobe to the back of his neck. When Ed asked how he’d got it, Jay had dismissed the question curtly, muttering something about a fall in the prison yard. Ed had seen knife wounds before and knew Jay was lying, but also knew better than to pursue the subject. No point in arguing with convicted killers. He didn’t want to take any chances, even though Jay had professed his innocence, and Ed believed him. There was something profoundly honest about Jay Kaminsky; he exuded a quiet sort of dignity that Ed had encountered only rarely in his life. Photographs of Jay at twenty-one, during his trial, had shown a fresh-faced type, ripe for handsome manhood. A regular sort of guy, the one every mom wanted for her daughter’s prom date and every pop wanted for a son-in-law. Jay had looked exactly how Ed Hooper himself had always longed to look if only his gene pool had been a little more discriminating. Now, though, Jay was no longer handsome in the conventional way of his youth. Bitterness had eaten into the angular face dominated by high cheekbones, giving it a taut and slightly menacing edge that could have been described as mean but for his generous mouth and wide eyes. Those eyes had lost their sparkle, yet none of their warm amber glow. And prison regime had kept Jay in good shape; he was lean and supple with the body of a man half his age. ‘This is the best work you’ve ever done, Jay.’ Jay could hear Ed’s voice, but he wasn’t listening. Hemingway, for Christ’s sake! A few months before it had been Capote. He’d heard it all before; it was literary agent bullshit-speak. Tell the boy he’s great; make him feel good. Feed his ego; take a bigger slice of the pie. Sighing, Jay stared into an office across the street, the room clearly visible through one large sheet of plate glass. There was only one occupant, a woman in a red dress, blood red. It was short and had gold buttons running from the scooped neck to the knee. She was wearing black hose and black shoes as she moved slowly towards a computer screen, leaning forward so he couldn’t see her face. Jay willed her to look up, wanted her to be beautiful, and longed for her to smile in his direction. She had very long hair, it was black, shiny and scraped back from her face. Her head dropped slightly to one side, a long glossy tail of hair falling over one shoulder. As her fingers began to move rapidly across the keys, she chewed the end of a pencil. Computers, information age, techno babble, digital TV, communication satellites, fax: a whole new language, a confusing technological world beyond anything he could have imagined. Yes, sure he’d read everything he could lay his hands on in prison, but seeing it, being part of it, was awesome. Shit, I’ve missed so much, Jay thought as he continued to watch the woman, feeling himself get hard as he imagined undoing the buttons of that dress, exposing her breasts. He envisaged them as milk-white, and big, like melons, plump and soft, spilling out of his grasp as he pushed her face down on the desk – taking her there and then, with the screen displaying its information as he spread her smooth thighs, rounded and soft in his imagination. First he would probe into her fleshly warmth and moistness, and then the moment of exquisite bliss, when he thrust himself deep, then deeper inside. In that instant, as if on cue, the woman looked up; not at Jay, but towards a man who had entered the room. ‘Schnieder and Smith are going to –’ Ed paused. ‘Jay, could I have your attention for one minute? I’m trying to tell you something important here, we’re talking big money.’ Jay spun round. ‘Ed, I need to get laid; like soon, like right now …’ This sort of distraction Ed could understand. He puffed on his cigar a couple of times, coughed to clear his throat, then pointing the cigar in Jay’s direction he fixed him with a new-moon grin. ‘I know just the gal for you.’ ‘How long has it been, honey?’ Jay couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth. ‘A long time,’ he muttered. ‘A very long time.’ It had been over twenty-six years since he’d made love to a woman. How could he tell this to a stranger when he had no voice for such an admission, no words to describe his loss. Yes he’d had sex, if you could call it that. However hard he tried, he’d been unable to erase from his memory the face of the man who’d raped him on his second week in prison. He knew with absolute certainty he would carry that face with him to his grave. ‘Taurus’ was the prisoner’s nickname, the bull. Jay never found out his real name; he never spoke to him at all except to beg him to stop. But the more Jay had screamed, the more Taurus had enjoyed it. And it wasn’t until Luther Ross gave him something to relax his anal muscles that the excruciating pain ceased. Luther had even cleaned him up, gently stuffing him with cotton wool to staunch the flow of blood. After four months Taurus was transferred to another prison, and Jay healed on the outside anyway. Even now the thought sickened him, not of the act itself – that was disgusting enough – but of how he’d got used to it, become immune. Jay raised his eyes to the ceiling, then back to Cheri who was staring at him in an odd way. There was something in his expression she’d seen in her own face many times. This guy’s had a tough time, but it hasn’t hardened him, not totally, and he certainly doesn’t sound or act like a criminal. She felt a sudden and unexpected empathy for the man lying between her thighs. The emotion surprised her; it was a long time since she’d felt anything but distaste, at best, for a client. No time for sympathy, she reminded herself. You turned tricks, got paid, got out; no mileage in feeling sorry. Yet even as she listened to the reasoning in her own head, she found herself saying, ‘Listen, honey, Ed’s told me where you’ve been since nineteen seventy-three. He says you’re a good boy and to look after you, so you wanna go again – a blow job on the house?’ Jay buried his head in the soft folds of her cleavage; he inhaled her scent. She smelt of lavender, spiced with sweat and a strange woody odour, but above all she smelt of woman. ‘I want to go on for ever; it’s like I never want to stop.’ ‘You’re cute, but I’ve got a living to make. All night’s gonna cost you …’ The prostitute began calculating the rate. Jay moved his head to one side. ‘What did you just say?’ ‘I said it’s gonna be …’ ‘No, before that.’ She looked blank. ‘I think I said you were cute.’ Jay looked incredulous. ‘I am?’ ‘Sure, honey. If you could see some of the mothers I’ve got to go down on. Jesus! Yeah, you’re very cute, great ass.’ She patted his butt. ‘Very tight, like a young boy. And what a big boy.’ She pointed to his flaccid penis. ‘Take a word of advice from a gal who knows. Don’t let any fancy lady friends tell you that big ain’t important. For me in this line of business, well it don’t make no difference … but I’m telling you, boy, big is beautiful.’ Her lips were dark with lipstick, and there were black smudgy lines around the bright hazel beads spattered with brown flecks which were her eyes. Jay liked her. He liked her small pot belly, and plump buttocks – dimpled and spongy to the touch. Her pubic hair was cut very short and shaved into a neat mound exactly like the adolescent sprouting he’d seen when Jenny Crawford had pulled her knickers down for him in Bakers Creek when they were both twelve. Jay’s lips moved to Cheri’s right nipple. It was very pale and very pink, like that of a pubescent girl, not a thirty-four-year-old woman. He didn’t care how old she was, she was warm and soft and pliant. She was feminine, she was bliss. He began sucking the nipple, rolling it around his tongue, feeling it harden against his upper gum. ‘An allnighter is –’ Without looking up, Jay placed a finger on her open mouth. ‘I’ve got the money, baby.’ Chapter Two (#ulink_98a63d6e-8b4d-55a7-b287-fbef944d3903) After Cheri left, Jay slept like a baby. He slept like he hadn’t slept for more than twenty-five years, and when he eventually awoke he felt different. He wasn’t sure in what way, but he felt a definite change. As he lay in bed very still, chain-smoking and deep in thought, his eyes roamed the luxurious room. He felt cosseted, cocooned, safe; yet strangely detached. Eventually he rose and, naked, he padded to the window. Yesterday the world outside had seemed scary; today it looked a little less daunting. It was raining hard, slanting off the black umbrellas that moved like a swarm of insects seven floors below. A stretch limo, dark and sleek, pulled into the kerb – a fountain of water spraying the sidewalk. Transfixed, Jay watched the scene which was all in black and white like a silent movie playing in slow motion. He considered the years ahead. If he was lucky he had twenty good years left. He was almost forty-six, looked younger; at a pinch he could pass for forty. At least prison life had kept him fit: regular exercise; balanced diet; no alcohol and only the occasional foray into drugs. His intellect had been his salvation; his writing cathartic, as well as lucrative. As he thought about his future, his dreams surfaced – and he’d had plenty: fodder for the imagination; dreams of such glorious extravagance. Los Angeles, producing movies in the Californian sun. Beaches, beautiful babes, great sex. And love. Love with a wonderful woman; an intelligent, sensitive soul mate – his wife. He’d even invented his ideal mate, an enduring fantasy that had for many years inhabited his imagination; as real to him as a living person. Her name was Colette, she was petite with a cute, slightly retrouss? nose and full mouth. Her hair was the colour of old gold and it fell in soft waves to an inch below her ears. And they had a daughter who looked like him, dark haired with her mother’s cobalt blue eyes. They laughed a lot, the three of them, and loved. Oh how they loved; hugs, kisses, stroking, bathing together, picnics, walking hand in hand, always tactile, very touchy feely. And every morning he awoke covered in white cotton, in their duplex apartment overlooking the sea, with Colette’s toasty body slotted neatly beside his, the faint scent of her musky perfume awakening his senses. The scenario always ended the same way with Colette telling him he was going to be a daddy again, and the three of them celebrating the good news. The prison shrink, Doc Kramer, had confirmed what Jay already knew. His fertile imagination, aspirational dreams and erotic fantasies were normal and important. They would keep him psychologically balanced. You mean keep me from going stir crazy in this fucking zoo, Jay commented. Simon Kramer had laughed, a deep mellow sound that had warmed Jay’s heart. From that moment, the two men had struck up a rapport and they had talked about anything and everything except psychology, literature, commerce, politics and chess. It was unusual for Simon Kramer to enjoy the company of his patients, but then he recognized that Jay Kaminsky was an unusual inmate. The day before Dr Kramer had retired he’d shaken Jay’s hand and patted him on the shoulder. It was the first time Jay had been touched with affection for six years, and he’d felt tight-chested and close to tears. Kramer went on to say it was a pleasure to have met him, and that unlike most convicted felons Jay had the strength of character and the will to survive a long-term sentence. The sound of the telephone interrupted his introspection, and made him jump. For the last few months he’d been nervous, strung out. Jay knew he was paranoid about life on the outside, unknown territory changed beyond recognition since he’d been imprisoned. Would he lose his marbles like so many ex-cons did, and end up drinking himself into oblivion? The day before yesterday when the prison doors had slammed shut behind him, he’d panicked. Learning to live independently again after twenty-five years was going to be no picnic; it was a mind-blowing prospect, and he was more scared than he’d thought. As he picked up the phone, Jay realized it was going to take much longer than he’d anticipated to re-enter the human race. Even the simple task of learning how to use a digital telephone made him grimace. It was Hooper. ‘How did you get on with Cheri?’ ‘She was great, Ed, just what I needed.’ ‘What did I tell you! Cheri’s a good girl, she really goes, gives great head. I’ve known her since she started out at seventeen. Wow, then she had an ass …’ Jay interrupted, ‘Like I said she was great.’ He sighed. ‘I’d forgotten how good it feels to be inside a woman.’ Ed guffawed. ‘You and me both, buddy.’ Then without waiting for a reply, he continued, ‘Lunch is on for tomorrow, the vice president of Maxmark Productions wants to meet you. They’re pitching for the movie rights on Killing Time. This is big-time Hollywood, pal.’ ‘That’s great news, Ed! I’m on; where and when?’ ‘Indochine, Lafayette Street, take a cab, be there for twelve-thirty. Your publisher, Bob Horvitz, is coming too. Says he’s dying to meet you in person at last. Bob is one of those dudes who likes to eat the same way he talks, fast. I’m warning you he doesn’t even draw breath, let him have his head and leave me to do the negotiations.’ Jay said, ‘So who needs me?’ ‘Bob’s keen to hang on to you for Schnieder and Smith and to get the next book in the bag. I’ve told him what a great guy you are. The personal touch always helps.’ ‘Spare me the bullshit, Ed. I’m a convicted felon who’s spent the last twenty-five years in the pen on a second degree murder charge. What’s with the nice guy routine? He likes the way I write, period. Schnieder and Smith have made big bucks outta Will Hope, but I sure as hell know that Bob Horvitz couldn’t give a damn about what sort of guy I am.’ ‘You’re way too touchy, Jay, still over-sensitive. It’s gonna take time; you’re on a learning curve, man, you’ve gotta lighten up.’ ‘Yeah yeah; I hear you. Don’t worry I’ll do what I’m told. I’ll wear the nice new Brooks Brothers shirt and tie. Eat food I can’t pronounce, listen to the suit and make the right noises in the right places.’ ‘That’s my boy; see you at twelve-thirty sharp.’ Jay replaced the telephone, walked to the mini bar and, marvelling at the selection of drinks and confectionery in the small fridge, he took out a beer. He returned to the bed, and using the remote control spent twenty enjoyable minutes surfing the channels. He was about to switch off when he saw her. Like a bolt of lightning her face shot on to the screen. He jumped up, running towards the TV to get a closer look and dropping to his knees. It was Kelly, he was certain, he would recognize her anywhere. In fact she hadn’t changed much in all the intervening years. A little fuller around the middle, but the same twinkling-eyed wide smile – a tantalizing mixture of warmth and mischief. The kind of smile that turns heads, melts knees and knots guts. He felt his own insides respond now, bunched in a hard ball. Kelly was standing next to Senator Todd Prescott, the man tipped to be the next Republican president. Jay knelt rigid, mesmerized. He couldn’t hear what they were saying for the loud buzzing in his ears. Then Kelly was gone, replaced by the newscaster’s face. Kelly Tyler, Kelly Tyler, he repeated her name in his head. She’d been the girl of his dreams, the one who’d broken his heart, his first love. His thoughts sped back down the years, back to the fall of 1972. It was after a summer of the Eagles and Santana. He’d been invited to spend the day at Susie Faber’s house. He remembered that day as if it were yesterday. It had started out warm, had got more so, and by midday was perfect. He’d picked Kelly up in his beat-up Wrangler jeep. And on the way home, later, much later that evening, they’d made love on the back seat. He would never forget the way she’d looked that day. Her long dress, flowing to her ankles, the curve of her body clearly silhouetted by the sunlight through the diaphanous fabric. When he’d commented on it, she’d told him it was only cheesecloth. Fooling around, someone had put flowers in her hair, and he remembered carefully picking them out by the petals and saying something gauche about her smelling sweeter than any flower. He’d been nervous, fumbling, inept; she’d been the opposite – calm and self-assured, and guiding. He’d taken her for an accomplished lover. He was wrong; it was her first time. Yet making love, she explained afterwards, felt as natural to her as walking, eating or sleeping. She’d helped him unhook her bra and giggled when he’d been all fingers and thumbs with the buttons of his jeans. He’d never forgotten how ashamed he’d felt about his performance; even now he recalled his stumbling apologies and repeated reassurances that it had nothing to do with her. Kelly had merely smiled in an enigmatic way and reminded him that everyone said the first time was often a disappointment, so it could only get better. She was right; their love-making had improved to the point of glory. Torrid romps in his jeep; outside in some remote spot; or in her room on campus; whenever they could steal a little time together … It always felt, for him at least, totally complete, and something he wanted to repeat again and again. In the space of four months his love had blossomed to a point where he cherished her, desired her, wanted to possess her, to make her his wife. That was how Jay had felt about Kelly Tyler, and how he’d believed she felt about him. Until Matthew’s death. It was then that Kelly changed. For as long as he lived he would never forget the indifferent voice of the judge passing sentence. The noise in the courtroom had faded to a dull drone, then pin-drop silence. A crushing pain in his head had followed, as if his skull was in a vice, the cool steel getting colder and colder as it clamped tighter and tighter against his temples. Kelly had stood in the aisle staring at him, her face framed by a waterfall of golden hair. Slightly parted lips, tears falling from big luminous eyes the colour of burnt almonds. To him she had never looked so beautiful as she had in that moment, the last time he’d seen her. Then her features, except for those eyes, had become fuzzy, and textured, like those in an old photograph. In the first few years of captivity, it had been impossible to put Kelly out of his mind however hard he tried. A deep sense of betrayal had nagged his senses like a persistent dog with a bone. She never came to see him, nor did she write, not a single word. Every week for months he’d flicked through his mail, searching, longing, for a glimpse of her handwriting. Eventually, just staying alive, staying sane, came to demand all his wits and helped crowd out the memory of her. But the hunger to see her face, touch her soft skin just one more time, had never abated. And now, seeing her on screen had brought her back to life, renewing that hunger deep in his belly. It was like the ache that used to keep him awake as a young boy whenever he’d dared to answer his father back. In those days he would receive a beating and be sent to bed without food until forced to apologize. ‘I’m going to find out who killed Matthew and why, and then I’m going to write about it.’ Jay wasn’t shouting, yet his voice sounded too loud in his own ears. A title sprang instantly to mind. Remission. He liked the sound of it, it had a good ring. He repeated it again and again. ‘Remission, Remission, Remission.’ He began to pace the void between the bed and the wall, a habit he’d developed in prison. It had helped him to shut out the noise of the zoo all around, and enabled him to concentrate. With a sense of dread, he acknowledged that to find out what had really happened on that awful night, he would have to go back to when it had all started. For years he’d vowed he wouldn’t take that path, sworn he would go forward, opening only the doors that led ahead. But stronger still was his primeval urge for vengeance. Revenge was normally another luxury that prison squeezed out of you. Yet here he was, only hours on the outside and ready to hatch plots, schemes of retribution and pay-back. But it wasn’t just about revenge, Jay knew that. It was about knowing, finding out, making all the pieces fit. During his imprisonment, his vengeful schemes had been the one thing that fed his fervent intellect – until the early eighties when Al Colacello had come into his life and his writing had begun. A vision of Al, the first time Jay had seen him, crossed his mind. That face would always live with him. A big cat face, sleek and malevolent. With eyes so dark, they were almost black; so shiny, they were almost inhuman. Al had eyes that stripped you naked in seconds, read your mind. And they had looked into the faces of more than twenty-eight men before he’d killed them. All hits, good clean eliminations. ‘The best cleaner in the business.’ That was how Al had referred to himself. Al had boasted to Jay that he was so good he’d earned himself the nickname ‘Teach ‘n’ Reach’, or just ‘Teach’; there was nobody whom he couldn’t teach a lesson, nobody he couldn’t reach. Al Colacello had been Mario Petroni’s lieutenant for twelve years, and his best friend. Mario was known as the ‘Dapper Don’ after he’d been indicted on three charges of corruption and grand larceny and had appeared every day at his hearing immaculate in hand-stitched Savile Row suits, Herm?s ties and cashmere overcoats. Al had been a key witness in his defence, his testimony crucial to Mario’s subsequent acquittal. Al and Mario: both born on the same day, within hours of each other, in the mean backstreets. Al in Naples; Mario in Sicily. Both emigrated to America in the late fifties; Al with his family, and Mario to stay with his uncle. Somehow innocence managed to bypass them both, they had no time to be kids – too busy finding food to put in their empty bellies, and organizing some new scam to finance the next few days of existence. Bosom buddies, kindred spirits, until Al had made a mistake, almost a fatal mistake. He’d screwed up big time. Jay recalled Al’s voice the night he’d told him about Mario’s daughter Anna. ‘What would you have done?’ he’d asked Jay. ‘If this beautiful girl, like she’s sixteen, with huge tits, and an ass like a ripe peach, slips into bed next to you and begins going down on you. Only coming up for air and to beg you to fuck her. Like I’ve got the biggest fucking hard-on, and suddenly she’s pushing her tight little pussy down on my cock. She’s no virgin, and as I go inside she’s screaming to fuck her hard, cause that’s the way she likes it. Man, believe me I tried to stop! I tell you, I really tried. All the time, I’m telling myself she’s my best friend’s daughter. But Christ, she’s gagging for it and pumping me like crazy. ‘I stayed away from Anna after that, tried to avoid her, but she kept coming on to me. Until one night she warns me if I don’t fuck her she’s going to tell her father I raped her, took her virginity. I call her bluff. I knew it was a risk, but I’d no choice.’ At that point Jay had glimpsed a chink in Al’s armour of arrogance as he said, ‘One fuck, one simple fuck loused up everything. Mario didn’t believe me. I was lucky to hang on to my cock, and to this day he still thinks his fucking daughter is Mother Theresa.’ After this confession Al and Jay had struck up a rapport, and a friendship began to grow. Jay knew it was an incongruous pairing and one that would never have existed on the outside. Theirs was a meeting of opposites, but nevertheless he felt at ease in Al’s company as he knew Al did in his. Day after day, week after week, Al had poured his dark and innermost secrets into Jay’s greedy ears. He had kept diaries of his time with Mario, detailed and comprehensive memoirs of their twelve-year partnership. And night after night, while his cell-mate slept, Jay had stayed awake scribbling in his notebook, recording Al’s life – a life of organized crime, littered with dead bodies. It had fascinated Jay, gripped him from the first telling, and he’d listened avidly to how Al had met Mario Petroni when they were twenty-year-olds, young hell raisers with the smell of fresh blood on their hands. From the tenement basements of Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s Westside they hatched ambitious schemes of how they were to become big Mafia dons, bigger and better than any before. And during the three years he’d shared a cell with Al, Jay had also quietly observed his gradual decline into insanity. The end came when Teach was found dead in a pool of his own vomit, his face the same colour as the concrete floor of the prison cell. Al Colacello the invincible, the teacher, had done something really stupid – shot up on smack from a supplier who was known to cut his drugs with baking powder when he could get it, rat poison when he couldn’t. In a strange way Jay had missed Teach; missed his crude street humour, his outrageous arrogance. Above all he’d missed the protection Al’s friendship had afforded him. The gangster’s life and death had inspired Killing Time, and he would always be grateful to him – killing machine or not – for that at least. Jay finally stopped pacing. He stood perfectly still for several minutes as he bottled his memories, then moved back to the bed. He lit a cigarette and filled his lungs with smoke. Why go back? he asked himself. Let it be, leave it alone, let go. But then the nagging sense of injustice returned, and with it the need for revenge, as it had countless times before. An eye for an eye. Get the motherfuckers who framed you and tell the world about it. Anyway, he concluded, it wasn’t about going back, it was about going forward. Because then and only then could he begin to live again. Exhaling, he watched the smoke rise into the air and evaporate. He was feeling better already. It was Todd Prescott’s persistent erection pressing between her buttocks that finally woke his wife Kelly. With her head buried deep in linen-covered duck down she stifled a groan. Then lifting a blonde tousled head, she whispered, ‘I’ve got to pee.’ Gently Todd grabbed her hips, his fingers pressing into hard flesh. ‘You’re not getting away with that old line … Come on, honey, be nice to your baby. You know how horny I get before congress.’ Kelly pushed her ass into her husband’s groin, biting the corner of her lip as she felt his hot hands ease her buttocks open. If there was one thing she detested about Todd, it was his hands. It wasn’t the only thing, but they were high on the hate list. Hairless soft hands, the small fingers capped with tiny white nails. ‘Your husband’s got a politician’s hands – like pumping wet fish,’ her brother had commented on more than one occasion. She was forced to agree. Kelly loathed watching Todd’s limp fingers stroke her body; clamped her eyes shut when they slid into her pubic hair; and usually thought about a new Donna Karan dress, or the big beefy hands of her yoga teacher and occasional lover, when the baby fingers probed inside her. But this morning she was thinking about something she’d read late last night in the Boston Globe. The headline had been running through her brain like tickertape ever since. ‘Kaminsky Released from Cedar State Pen.’ A grainy photograph of Jay as a nineteen-year-old Harvard freshman had accompanied the article. Lantern-jawed, with heavy-lidded chestnut eyes that could look dark brown depending on his mood. Thick hair, shining like ebony, slicked back above a high tanned brow. Her prom date, her first ‘let him go all the way’ date; her sweet, considerate, innocent teenage love. As Todd pumped, she thought about Jay. She wondered if prison had destroyed his good looks. Would all that bitterness and anger have warped not only the inside, but also the outside? Todd’s shouting intruded just then. ‘Baby! My sweet baby.’ Wiggling her bottom, Kelly contracted her internal muscles at the same time to hurry her husband along on his final lap. Two more thrusts and it would all be over. Kelly was counting. It took four. Until the next time, she thought, and there always was a next time. It was the story of her life. Ever since her father’s death when she was nineteen, then losing Jay, she had been filling in the gaps in a desperate quest for the one thing that constantly eluded her. Love. The word rang in her head, bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball. She felt Todd’s hands on her shoulders, and suppressed the urge to recoil. His voice was whispering in her ear, but it was her father’s words she could hear. Kelly, you are a beautiful princess, and there will always be men who want you. But you were one of the lucky ones. God was generous; he gave you a brain as well. And so there’s nothing you can’t have, no place you can’t go. Don’t waste a minute. Paul Tyler had been right. At forty-three, there were few places she hadn’t been and there had always been a man. Her first husband, Maynard Fraser Jnr, a wealthy Wasp businessman, had showered her with gifts. Jewels were his thing, and Kelly wore his success. The purchase of a new tower block would be followed by Kelly’s glittering appearance in an antique diamond choker. But three years into the marriage, when Maynard was fifty-two and Kelly a few days off her twenty-ninth birthday, he was killed in a light aircraft somewhere in British Honduras. His body was never found. Kelly had never loved Maynard; she’d been fond of him which was a totally different thing. Yet she was genuinely sorry to lose him, and in the first few months of bereavement she missed his ebullient presence in their vast apartment on Manhattan’s Eastside, and their sprawling beach house in East Hampton. To ease the loss, Kelly threw herself into Maynard’s electronics business, doubling the profits in the next two years as the technological age began to grip the entire world. A merger with the giant multi-national Cirax diluted her stake, and the much-publicized battles between its megalomaniacal head and Kelly Fraser made ‘Beauty and the Beast’ headlines more than once in the Wall Street Journal. In 1986 Kelly had sold out and bought a house in the Caribbean, where six months later she met the man who was to become her second husband. Tim Reynolds, two years younger than herself, was a budding film producer, overflowing with creative angst and poetic romanticism. They met on the beach: she was searching for shells, and he was pretending to read whilst watching her over the top of his book, catching her off guard. This time, with Tim, she had told herself, it’s for real, like in all the schmaltzy movies and love songs. And for two years Kelly believed in the myth, convinced herself that she was loved and in love. Whenever yet another bizarre film scheme floundered, she backed her husband both emotionally and financially – until the final straw, the one that breaks even the most ardent camel’s back. She found Tim in their bed with one of her so-called best friends, a guy called Jack Silvers. In the next few years Kelly had managed as much as humanly possible to forget. Yet occasionally something would remind her of what she privately referred to as her ‘twilight time’. She couldn’t remember half of the men she’d slept with; they’d all merged into one huge grey mass. It was her friend Weston Kane who had rescued her, rebuilt her self-esteem and persuaded her to go back into business, and in 1990 Tyler Publications was born. The media had proved a natural arena for the gregarious and charmingly devious Kelly. At last she had found her forte, and she could honestly say that the last few years as head of Tyler had been the happiest of her life. Kelly slid out of bed, ignoring Todd’s glancing peck on her right shoulder, and his muttered, ‘That was great, baby.’ She crossed the large room, her bare feet making no sound on the deep pile carpet. As she stepped into the bathroom, she felt Todd’s hot sperm dribbling down her inner thighs and shuddered with distaste. The door closed behind her with a quiet click and she walked towards the shower at the far end, passing white walls, white handbasins and stacks of white towels. Even the travertine marble that cooled the soles of her feet was white. Everything was white and, according to the interior designer, the absolute last word in minimalist chic. It looked like a luxurious hospital theatre on first impression, and Kelly’s comment to Todd that it was ridiculously large for one person had produced a dismissive shrug. She’d gone on to say that an entire family could live in her bedroom and dressing room; combined, they were bigger than the average apartment. Then she’d quickly reminded herself that this was where she’d always wanted to be. The ultimate ‘Chez nous’, the biggie, the colonial spread on Capitol Hill: M Street, Georgetown, Washington DC. Complete with European antiques, impressionist paintings, fully equipped gym and a state-of-the-art kitchen that she rarely went into. Suddenly a voice sprang into her mind, interrupting Kelly’s musings. It was saying something she had buried deep, so deep that it sometimes felt as if it had happened to someone else. Kelly wanted to scream like she had as a child when she’d turned over a stone to find a teeming mass of worms underneath. She turned on the shower, but made no attempt to step into the cubicle. Placing both hands against her ears she pressed hard, humming a tune, but the words would not go away. ‘Jay Kaminsky, you have been found guilty of the manslaughter of Matthew Fierstein. I have no option but to …’ Kelly blinked, and at the same time a shutter clicked in her brain: she saw Jay on the day he’d been sentenced, his face a study of total incomprehension. He looked like a frightened little boy who’d misunderstood the sentence and was certain the judge and jury would tell him they’d made an awful mistake and he could go home soon. Jay’s shocked expression had plagued her for months afterwards; so much so, she’d thought at one point she would go mad. When the image had finally disappeared, she’d prayed it would never return. And it hadn’t until today. Kelly stepped into the steaming cabinet and turned the temperature up high. She pushed her right hand into an exfoliating glove, and with slow deliberate movements she began to scrub her body. Round and round she rubbed, until her skin smarted. Yet she continued to rub, harder and harder, and with each circular motion she repeated in her head the maxim, the one the Pact always used in times of stress. Stay calm, stay cool but above all stay in control. Chapter Three (#ulink_13bc9b07-7cbe-5415-8e65-d57e6efca2f3) Weston Kane arrived at the restaurant ten minutes. early. Carlos, the owner, waved, adopted his most ingratiating smile and extracted himself from a tight knot of chattering people. Swiftly he negotiated the closely packed tables, greeting Weston with what she knew was genuine warmth. She had known him since her father, Sinclair Kane, had first taken her to Umberto’s on her eighth birthday. Then Carlos had been a young ma?tre d’ with the looks of a matin?e idol and the kind of quick wit and instant charm that made whoever he was talking to feel special; as if he’d known the person all his life. Carlos had approached Sinclair Kane to finance a new restaurant; there had been no hesitation, and ten months later Carlos had opened the doors of Umberto’s. Now, thirty-four years and five restaurants later, Carlos was no longer handsome. His love of food and late nights had added an extra thirty pounds of all too solid flesh. And age, though he swore it was worry, had taken most of his once thick hair. But time had not dulled his enthusiasm, nor had it robbed him of his sense of humour and unquenchable zest for life. ‘Miss Kane, you look younger every time I see you. How do you do it?’ Weston found herself smiling in response to his trademark flattery. ‘It’s in the genes.’ She pinched his arm. ‘The same as your charm.’ It was his turn to smile. ‘You’re the first, Miss Kane; you want to wait in the bar?’ ‘I’ll go straight to the table, Carlos, thanks, and I’ll have my usual.’ Carlos gestured to a passing waiter. ‘A vodka martini, shaken, with a twist for Miss Kane. Her usual table.’ Several heads turned as Weston Kane crossed the crowded room to a corner spot where she always sat. After leaving college she’d often lunched with her father in the several top restaurants he used in Manhattan. In each establishment Sinclair always had the same table. If it wasn’t available for him, which was rare, he didn’t eat there. And on one occasion when he was promised his table and didn’t get it, he left and never set foot inside again. He called it the power table, the best one in the house – far from the noise and activity of the kitchen, far enough from the door to avoid the hustle and bustle, yet close enough to see exactly who was coming and going, as well as being able to scrutinize the entire restaurant in one sweeping glance. Part of the game, the social hierarchy game. Weston slid her long legs under the table. She was tall, over six foot in high heels, with a square handsome face. The azure blue eyes she’d inherited from her mother scanned the room as always. They were spaced wide under a high brow and complemented the collar-length Titian hair which was her legacy from her father’s Scottish forebears. The tight auburn curls she’d hated as a child had been hacked off several times, once with a kitchen knife when she was eight, and on many occasions since. As a teenager, she had ached for long straight blonde hair, the silken type, without a vestige of curl, and had tried every straightening method known to mankind – from reverse perming to a hot iron and greaseproof paper. She shifted on her seat, picked a fleck of cotton off the taupe skirt of a suit she’d had for ten years. It still fitted perfectly. Weston cared little for clothes; in fact she was happiest in jeans and T’s in summer, and jeans with good cashmere sweaters in winter. When she did buy clothes, she bought good ones. It was the only lasting influence her mother Annette had achieved over her. On their rare shopping trips she was constantly accompanied by Annette’s high-pitched sing-song sighs of approval or disdain. Such forays had filled her wardrobe with practical, simple well-cut outfits. Pants, invariably St Laurent; Armani jackets; and Valentino or Dior for evening. She knew she was a disappointment to her impeccably dressed mother, but then Weston had no desire to follow Annette on to the ‘Ten Best Dressed Women in America’ list; she didn’t need to. Her height, presence and minimalist style turned heads without fanciful flourishes. The two were completely different in every respect, so much so Weston often doubted her parentage; how could the capricious, totally vacuous Annette Elizabeth Sinclair be her mother? A woman whose main interests ranged from shopping and lunch to more shopping, followed by hair and beauty treatments. And when the shops were shut, Annette’s time seemed to be dedicated to modelling her purchases. How the bored young Weston used to hate the preening and pouting in front of the dressing-room mirror as her mother fished for compliments, interrogating her daughter in search of approval and adoration. She grew to abhor her mother’s lifestyle, her loathing only increased by her father’s worship of the empty-headed beauty he’d loved passionately for forty-six years. Weston had often longed instead for a fun mom, and later in her teens she’d longed for a friend. From as young as six Weston had lain awake long after she was supposed to be asleep, planning how she could create mischief and mayhem to gain attention. But by the time she was sixteen, she had simply decided that the lifestyle of her mother and her contemporaries was a ridiculous charade. Massaging precious egos, and playing sex games with philandering power brokers was not to be her fate. She set out to become highly successful, extremely rich and very powerful in her own right, and in that order. By twenty-eight she had produced her first television series; it was nominated for three Emmys and won two. A year later she’d joined forces with Imogen Irving, a fifty-two-year-old Hollywood legend and movie producer, who taught her all she knew about motion pictures and also initiated Weston into the joys of sapphism. Weston had never looked back. She had gone on to head up her own production company Summit, and had recently negotiated a billion-dollar merger with Avesta Inc, a multi-national media giant spanning digital TV, cable, satellite and the Internet. Now she was hungry for more power, more control. It was like a potent drug, addictive, the ultimate high. But be careful, Weston, power also corrupts, she could hear her father’s voice whispering in her ear. The waiter had arrived with her drink; she swirled the olive around the glass before taking a sip, her thoughts digressing to her two closest friends, Beth Morgan and Kelly Prescott, who were both joining her for lunch. They were the two most important people in her life, the result of a friendship that had survived untarnished through three decades, since they’d all met at Wellesley College. This year was the twenty-sixth annual celebration of the special bond the three women had forged in their sophomore year. They had been hedonistic young feminists with far-reaching ambitions and ruthless energy, and had formed an immediate rapport. While other girls discussed vacations, boys or clothes, they had spent long hours working out how they would help each other achieve positions of real power. They agreed it would take time, it was a man’s world and they had to find a way to crack it, each giving the others a leg up the ladder whenever they could. The end of the century was their deadline – the millennium. And that was the pact they secretly swore: the Millennium Pact. Way back in 1972 when they had called themselves sisters, the world was still waking up to female equality and as the balance of power between the sexes began to shift, they had been ideally placed to take advantage of the changing times. At that time the year 2000 had seemed so distant, yet here they all were nearly at the dawn of a new century, having achieved even more than they had aspired to in those early heady days. They still met six times a year, but their lunches never involved small talk or gossip. They spoke only about themselves, their careers, the next rung, and how each could help the other. Their get-togethers were more like board meetings, brainstorming sessions in which each new move was planned with the sharp precision of a military campaign. And now on the birthday of the Pact they could at last congratulate themselves, give each other a resounding pat on the back. They had made it. They had beaten men at their own game, and come out on top. Weston glanced at her watch. Beth, she knew, would be on time; she was punctual to a fault. Kelly, on the other hand, would be late for her own funeral. But she was so beautiful, so adorable, Weston would have forgiven her anything – especially after that night, that perfect night in the Hamptons. A vision of Kelly lying by the pool last summer entered her mind. Weston had been swimming and had surfaced where Kelly lay gloriously naked, milky white triangles of soft flesh emphasizing the secret places the sun hadn’t seen. Weston had warned her to wear sun screen, and then had moistened her lips with naked lust as she’d watched Kelly smooth the cream into her delicate skin, massaging it into her full and home-grown thirty-six DD breasts. She was a natural blonde, the all-American dream girl. The one all the guys talked about in the showers after the game, the one they thought about when jerking off, the girl every smart-assed jock had wanted to take to the prom. Weston moaned inwardly as the vision remained before her eyes. She blinked but Kelly was still there, opening her legs wide to apply the cream to her inner thighs. She felt the heat rise between her own, and her belly begin to ache thanks to that never-to-be-forgotten memory. It was six years ago, spring 1992; Weston had hosted an intimate dinner party at her house in South Hampton. A select gathering, spelling power and influence. It was a celebration: Kelly’s publishing company had just won two prestigious awards; one for a cutting-edge, investigative magazine that she had purchased three years previously for next to nothing, increasing the circulation to over half a million; and another for Editor of the Year. Weston had closely observed Kelly chatting to Todd Prescott, an extremely wealthy senator. The naturally gregarious Kelly had been in a strange mood all evening, and Weston had thought her distracted and withdrawn. After dinner Todd left, and Kelly had asked to stay the night. She and Weston had sniffed a few lines of cocaine, and listened to music. It was Marvin Gaye singing ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ that prompted Kelly to dance. With her long hair whipped across her face, she had laughed, urging Weston to join her. Weston had refused, happy to watch her friend gyrate; happy to bask in the warm flush that spread from her nipples to her groin when Kelly began to take off her clothes. Stripped to her panties, hips swaying, she’d danced till the end of the tape, then she stood very still in the middle of the room, panting, breasts rising and falling, her hands running up and down the entire length of her body leaving glistening trails in the sheen that clothed her. Kelly, not taking her eyes off Weston, had slowly slipped her panties down her legs and, sinking to her knees, she crawled to the sofa where Weston sat. ‘You want to eat me, don’t you?’ Kelly had said. Weston, her mouth suddenly very dry, had merely nodded and watched, lost in desire and anticipation. When Kelly turned round, for a moment she’d thought she was going to crawl away. But instead she bent over gracefully, provocatively, and arched her back, thrusting her tight ass in the air. Weston had gasped when Kelly spread her legs, hands reaching back to ease her buttocks apart and tracing a line that ran down to the bud of her clitoris, which was being rubbed by one finger. Weston could recall muttering, ‘You’re so beautiful,’ as she opened her mouth to taste Kelly. A fresh and faintly peachy sensation. The following morning, over breakfast, Kelly had dismissed the encounter. She’d wanted to have a woman, been curious; the cocaine had made her feel horny, she’d needed to come, nothing more. They never mentioned it again. Weston now took another sip of her drink to drown the memory before it engulfed her. Looking up afterwards, she spotted Beth coming into the restaurant – true to form on the dot of one o’clock. Weston saw her friend before a waiter directed her to the table, and had the opportunity to observe her unawares. Beth was wearing what she always wore, a badly fitting suit. She had appalling dress sense, and no idea what was right for her big-boned, pear-shaped frame. In summer she favoured either a cotton or linen suit, always with a sleeveless tank. The winter version was invariably in wool and usually worn with an assortment of bright polo-neck sweaters, or high-necked starched white shirts. Today she had opted for a black pinstripe, with a long jacket and knee-length skirt. Underneath she had chosen a canary yellow cable sweater, with a brightly patterned scarf tied at the neck. Her freshly cropped dark hair was gelled flat to her head, she wore no make-up save a slash of scarlet lipstick that made her white face look like a death mask. As Beth neared the table, Weston rose. ‘How long have you been here?’ Beth asked between kisses. ‘Not long, I got out of my meeting early so I thought …’ Weston pointed to the half-empty glass, ‘why not have myself a quick shot before you guys arrive.’ Beth dropped to a chair, black eyes darting round the restaurant. The pupils always reminded Weston of shiny jet beads. ‘I need a drink, too. Douglas is the prize prick of the month. I’m telling you the man is a shit, and if I wasn’t such a lady I’d punch him in the mouth.’ Weston laughed, teasing Beth as she summoned a waiter. ‘Being a lady’s never stopped you in the past.’ Beth grinned. ‘He’s bigger than me.’ Then to the waiter who was hovering, ‘Get me a Scotch on the rocks.’ ‘Since when did you start drinking Scotch?’ ‘Just. That Douglas creep has driven me to drink.’ ‘So tell me about it. On second thoughts, I think you already have. The last time he dumped on you, and the time before that. I did warn you not to marry him. Come on, Beth, the man is gorgeous; women come on to him, he can’t resist. Why don’t you take my advice, and lose him? Like once and for all.’ ‘Would you believe me if I told you we still have a great sex life? And that I love the louse?’ Weston raised her eyes. ‘Now that I can accept. It’s as good a reason as any for staying with the sonofabitch.’ The Scotch arrived and Beth took a sip, wrinkling up her tiny nose as it hit the back of her throat. ‘No, you’re right of course, I should dump him. But a gal’s got to do what a gal’s got to do, and I need a little pleasure in life. Running the numbers, playing the financial markets, acquisitions and mergers … moving billions of dollars around the world; believe me, it gets mighty tedious. And after fourteen hours of that every day, getting smashed and getting laid becomes top priority. Doug is convenient and he does it good, better than anyone I’ve ever known; he knows exactly how to ring my bells.’ Beth winked. ‘Know what I mean?’ Weston was about to retort that it had cost Beth dearly, both financially and emotionally, when Kelly swept into the restaurant – causing heads to swivel and subdued appreciative whispers. Weston felt her heart leap. Kelly had that effect on most people, men and women alike. She was, to say the least, beautiful. But more than just on the surface; she had a radiance, a charismatic aura that was tangible. It was a rare man who was not immediately intoxicated by her; a rare woman who didn’t immediately want to be her. Today she was wearing her long hair piled high on her head in a fashionably messy topknot, several strands fell on to her oval face and down the nape of her long neck. When she reached the table she was smiling, but it wasn’t with her usual all-consuming warmth. This smile was taut, forced, polite, the type normally reserved for an unwelcome or distant acquaintance. Weston knew instinctively there was something awry. Reaching across, she covered Kelly’s hand with her own. ‘What is it, Kelly, is there something wrong?’ Kelly nodded, meeting Weston’s enquiring eyes and acknowledging Beth with a sigh. ‘I need a drink.’ She sat silently until a large glass of white wine was placed in front of her. Then she raised it. ‘First and foremost I want to drink to the Pact.’ The three women raised their glasses and drank. Weston was impatient but she knew not to press Kelly, she would tell all in her own time. ‘To the Pact.’ They said it in unison. Kelly took three deep gulps of wine, placed her glass down carefully and looked first at Weston, then Beth. ‘Three guesses who I’ve just seen on the corner of Fifth and Fifty-second?’ ‘Kevin Costner?’ Beth piped up, giggling. ‘This is serious, Beth.’ With a shrug of her shoulders, Beth retorted, ‘So don’t play games; who did you see?’ ‘Jay Kaminsky.’ Weston and Beth both stiffened. Nobody spoke. Eventually Weston broke the silence. ‘I knew he was out. You got my fax? I read the piece in the Globe.’ Kelly nodded. ‘He’s here, in Manhattan, and –’ She stopped speaking, squeezing Weston’s hand tight. ‘It was a shock seeing him like that, just hanging out at a news-stand buying a paper, looking for all the world like he was on his way to an office on Madison or Park. He was dressed like an uptown lawyer or advertising exec. He’s only a few blocks from here right now. In fact he could walk into this restaurant at any moment. I knew he’d got out, because all the papers announced it. And we all knew his sentence was up. But to see him like that, so close, after so long; wow, it freaked me out.’ Beth had paled. ‘And today of all days.’ ‘Yes, today of all days,’ Kelly repeated. ‘So what if Jay Kaminsky is out, what difference does it make?’ Weston tried to calm the other two. ‘How can he harm us? What can he do? He’s a convicted felon, an ex-con; who’s going to take any notice of him? Come on, Kelly, relax.’ When Kelly did not respond she turned her attention to Beth. ‘This year is the twenty-sixth anniversary of our Pact; this is celebration time. We can’t let Kaminsky get in the way. We didn’t back then, so we’re certainly not going to now.’ Weston looked from one apprehensive face to the other. ‘Come on, what’s done is done, no turning back. We’re going forward into the twenty-first century on top, in power, in control.’ Keeping hold of Kelly’s hand, she took Beth’s from her lap and holding it reassuringly tight said, ‘We’ve got each other, nothing and no one is going to change that. Let’s drink to our continuing friendship, and our journey into the next century. Together we can surmount anything: we’re strong, empowered, united.’ Weston raised her glass and drained the last dregs. Kelly took a sip of iced water, and Beth finished her whisky. Their hands were still joined as Carlos came to the table. ‘Message for Mrs Prescott.’ Kelly was handed a slip of paper. On it was one line, neatly handwritten in black ink: The past always has a future. The flight to Washington landed on time. As she walked through the arrivals terminal, Kelly searched the sea of faces for her driver, Jim. A moment later she spotted him rushing through the revolving entrance doors. He waved and stood still watching her approach. Kelly felt tired; thoughts of Jay and too much white wine had combined to keep her awake for most of the previous night. Todd was out of town, and wouldn’t be back until later that evening. She moved towards the chauffeur, determinedly pushing all thoughts of Jay to the darkest recesses of her mind. When she walks She’s like a samba That sways so sweet, And moves so gentle, And when she passes He smiles but she doesn’t see … Jay hummed the tune but the words that rumba’d through his head were not about ‘The Girl from Ipanema’. They were about the girl from Temple Texas who went on to become the girl from Capitol Hill. Long-limbed, with an ease of movement more usual in a Polynesian princess than an apple-pie, homespun American girl, Kelly looked graceful, sleek and majestic to Jay as he watched her cross the arrivals hall. He had a clear view from his vantage position in a telephone booth facing the busy concourse. She was carrying a fur coat and a small tan leather bag. Clad in a midnight blue suit, jacket nipped into the waist, straight skirt skimming her knees, Kelly held her neat head high – flaxen hair like a slick of gold paint across her shoulders. Several male heads turned, eyes bewitched, blatantly undressing her, and for a brief possessive moment Jay wanted to hit one particularly lecherous pot-bellied executive. Yet the object of all the attention was totally oblivious. Jay supposed it was the nature of the beast: such a combination of beauty, charisma and raw sex appeal was bound to be so acquainted with admiring glances and goggle eyes that it becomes immune to them. He fell into a quick trot behind her, only holding back as she strode out into the sunlight and dipped into a waiting limousine. Moments later, Jay was in the back of a taxi. The black stretch, three cars ahead, inched forward, indicating left. The taxi followed, fitting in behind on the Beltway leading to the I-75 that went into Washington. As the limo picked up speed, Jay imagined Kelly in the back sitting with legs crossed. Idly he wondered if she was wearing pantyhose or stockings, and, if the latter, whether her garter belt was white, black or the flesh colour of her skin. In prison every time he’d seen a film clip of a couple in the back seat of a limo, he’d had erotic fantasies of hitching up a full skirt to find stocking tops and milky white thighs belonging to a beautiful, scented woman who wanted him. Always, he would go down on her, while the driver politely readjusted his rear view mirror and turned up the radio. The cab had followed the limo across the Potomac river, passing the Marriott Hotel where he was staying as of late last night. When they entered Georgetown they got snarled up in traffic, losing the limo for a few nervous moments. Then Jay caught sight of it again and directed the cab driver into M Street, where the limo was gliding to a halt outside an imposing colonial-style house. Jay looked with a pang of envy at the red brick fa?ade, white portico and gleaming sash windows. The house was seriously elegant, it reeked of money and understated grandeur. He watched Kelly get out of the car and go inside before he asked his cabbie to take him back to the Marriott. An hour later he was in his room, freshly showered, wearing a towelling bathrobe and sitting in front of a club sandwich and French fries. He’d just taken the first bite when the phone rang. Jay picked it up after four rings. It was the call he’d been waiting for. ‘Good to hear you, Luther. When did you get in? Hotel OK?’ Luther’s voice sounded jaunty. ‘It sure beats the dump I’ve been living in for the last eight months.’ ‘Good, I suggest we meet for breakfast here in the coffee shop – eight-thirty in the morning.’ ‘Have you located the –’ ‘Yes,’ Jay interrupted abruptly; he didn’t trust telephones. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’ ‘I’ll be there.’ Jay replaced the telephone and sat down on the bed, closing his eyes. But he had too much going on inside his head to contemplate sleep. In prison the nights had been his time for solitary contemplation. How he’d longed for the zookeepers to lock the cages, to shut out the incessant and repetitive male babble. The close of another monotonous day in hell had always been, for him, a relief. Time to dream. But tonight, on the outside at last, there was no time for dreams or introspection, tonight was for plans. Jay believed in careful and strategic planning. Every move had to be thought out, like chess of which he was a master, with precision and patience. He had both and he relished the long hours ahead; while others slept he would plot. And by dawn he knew he would be more alert than if he’d had eight hours’ undisturbed sleep. Jay hadn’t seen Luther Ross for six years, but he would have recognized his big head anywhere. It was still shaven and gleaming like a bowling ball. When Jay approached the corner table, Luther looked up and his button black eyes were the same, if a little duller, and the gap-toothed grin hadn’t changed – it was as broad and as warm as Jay remembered. He’d used bits of Luther for a character in his first book; not the best bits either, yet Luther had been delighted, thrilled to taste a meagre morsel of fame. When the other man stood up he seemed smaller than Jay recalled, but maybe that was the outside – on the outside the world seemed to dwarf everyone in it. As if to compensate Luther had gained a lot of weight and his stomach protruded over the top of his trousers. He extended his hand. ‘Jay, man! Good to see you.’ Jay felt Luther’s firm grip. Genuinely pleased to see the ex-boxer, he returned the greeting. ‘It’s good to see you too, Luther.’ Luther was smiling as Jay slid into a chair. He began the ritual of ex-cons everywhere. ‘You been out long?’ ‘Just a few days, but it seems like years. Hell, it feels strange after all that hoping, waiting, longing for a normal life on the outside. Living through movies and books doesn’t exactly prepare you for the real thing, does it? I wake up in the middle of the night convinced I’m still in the pen, waiting for the familiar sounds, and it takes me hours to get back to sleep – if ever. Some days I feel like I’m acting, like this is not real life and I’m going back inside when it’s over. Weird. I suppose it’s going to take a long, long time. I’ve been locked away for a quarter of a fucking century.’ Silently Luther nodded, he’d heard the same story too many times, from too many friends encountered on the outside. He let Jay continue. ‘Thank God I started to write; when I think back I don’t know what I’d have done without that as an escape. My sales are doing well, so my agent tells me. According to him, I’m the Hemingway of the nineties, and – check this – Hollywood is interested in Killing Time.’ ‘Geez, man, you’re doing good! Fucking great, Jay. Waddya say I look after security on the set. Uh?’ Luther laughed. A waiter approached and Jay ordered coffee, eggs sunny-side up, bacon and toast. ‘So how have things been for you, Luther?’ ‘Not so good, buddy; but then …’ He pointed to his temple, ‘You’ve got a great brain, man. I got no muscle up there. I think when Randy Lewis knocked me out in sixty-eight, I left a whole heap of brain cells on the canvas and forgot to pick ’em up.’ Grinning, Jay said, ‘You working?’ ‘Kind of.’ Luther paused, sipped his coffee, then said, ‘I was straight for three years.’ He stuck three fingers in the air. ‘Worked as a kitchen porter, room service waiter, and a cab driver. I was real straight, man; no shit. I met a woman, a good woman. A great-looking broad with a good job, a duty manageress in the St Regis Hotel.’ He whistled. ‘Legs, like you’ve never seen legs! Long enough to be continued. And an amazing butt, big and beautiful. Oh yeah, and the face of an angel. Believe it or not, Jay, this incredible chick fell for Luther Ross. Can you imagine? She’s crazy about me. It’s enough to send anyone straight. So we get ourselves an apartment together. Not a bad place on the lower Eastside. Shirley, she does it up real smart – white sofas and white cotton sheets. I ain’t never slept on cotton like that … yunno? White folk cotton. Anyway I have the best time of my life – I mean the best, man. And just when I’m telling myself it can’t get any better, Shirley goes and quits on me.’ He clicked his fingers with a loud snap, lowering his head at the same time. ‘Big C, man. First it’s in her right breast, they take that away. Then they find some more of the shit. But this time they don’t operate cause it’s gone into her lymph glands, and spreading fast; like fucking weed, man. She was dead within six months.’ Luther took a deep breath and there was a long pause until Jay said that he was sorry. Luther looked into the bottom of his empty cup. ‘I knew it couldn’t last.’ The eggs and bacon arrived. Jay took one look at it, and pushed the plate to one side. ‘I lost it after that. Did some drugs, went a little crazy, got in touch with a couple of old contacts. I’ve done a few odd jobs. Nothing big, I’m getting too old for the really heavy stuff. Just small heists. Clean. Easy. In, out. It pays the rent.’ Jay bit into a slice of toast as Luther looked at the discarded plate ‘You not eating?’ ‘I just lost my appetite.’ ‘I ain’t lost mine, you mind?’ Jay pushed the plate in front of him. ‘Be my guest.’ Luther sawed into a strip of bacon before speaking again. ‘So whaddya need, buddy?’ ‘I need a wire job on Senator Todd Prescott’s house. I don’t want to hear what the senator has to say, I’m more interested in what his wife is up to.’ As Jay slid a photograph of Kelly across the table, Luther let out a low whistle. ‘Ouch! I sure know what I’d like to say to this babe.’ Jay nodded but made no comment. He was afraid his voice would betray him. ‘I need a neat job, and I need it done now. I know from the press that the senator’s away campaigning from next week.’ Egg yolk trickled from the corner of Luther’s mouth as he looked at the photograph again, then pointed at Jay with his fork. ‘It’s a hot gig, heavy security; high risk, I’m not sure.’ Jay’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s why I want you. You’re the best.’ Luther’s grin confirmed to Jay that the big man’s ego had kicked in. ‘How much?’ ‘I’ll pay you three grand,’ Jay said, knowing Luther would ask for five at least. ‘Come on, man, this is a senator’s pad; they can be mean bastards, as mean as the mob when they get upset.’ ‘OK, five,’ said Jay, knowing Luther would have asked for ten if he’d offered five thousand bucks in the first place. ‘Five, plus expenses,’ urged Luther. Jay nodded and held out his hand, aware as he did so that Luther was wondering if he’d asked too little. ‘OK, five plus expenses it is. We got a deal?’ Luther wiped his right hand on the table top, before holding up a meaty paw in front of Jay. ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’ Jay trusted him. ‘I was in love with this woman.’ He pointed to the photograph. ‘So was the man I’m supposed to have murdered. She was very close friends with two other women; she still is. At the time of my trial I had a hunch they were hiding something. It’s only a hunch, but I’ve got to start somewhere. Kelly seems as good a place as any.’ Jay’s eyes had not left the picture of Kelly and Luther had noticed. ‘You sure that’s all it is, man?’ Jay seemed dazed. ‘It’ll do for starters. You on or not, Luther?’ ‘What do you think? Gimme five for five, man.’ Jay slapped palms as he was told, ‘We should be on line this time next week.’ Both men smiled. Chapter Four (#ulink_9bf458b7-ee6a-5b87-b29d-79eaab398208) Weston woke up at six-thirty a.m. with a hangover. She rarely had headaches, in fact she’d been ill on only half a dozen occasions in her entire life. ‘Weston’s as strong as an ox,’ her father had been fond of saying. ‘Kane genes! Gets it from me.’ Sinclair Kane was still bragging about his own consistent good health when he dropped dead of a coronary thrombosis at sixty-five. Weston missed him more than she would have believed possible. She had lost count of the times she’d longed to speak to him again. Her father was the only man she’d ever loved and long before realizing she was a lesbian, she’d known with a certainty that scared her that he would remain so. The phone rang and she staggered to the bathroom, allowing the answer machine to intercept the call. As she threw up she vowed never to drink champagne again; well, at least not two bottles on an empty stomach. She spoke to her reflection, ‘Oh God, you look about a hundred.’ Not a pretty sight, she thought as red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes stared back at her out of a face the same colour as the white marble of her vanity basin. Her stomach made an odd gurgling sound, and she braced herself as a wave of nausea swept through her body. I wouldn’t care if thebitch had been worth it, she thought, her mind returning to last night – spent with a girl she’d met the previous weekend. A very young girl, nineteen, twenty at most, she’d forgotten to ask; far more interested in her full lips and soft body – so smooth it was childlike. A beautiful yet unresponsive body. Weston breathed deeply, uttering through clenched teeth, ‘Shit, why am I such a sucker for the young ones? And why do I always want heterosexual women; what am I trying to prove?’ Scraping her hair back, she moved closer to the mirror. Time for a face lift, she thought, then instantly rejected the idea. Her mother had recently had her third: a seventy-one going on fifty-something femme fatale, who reminded Weston of a lamp she’d had in her hall – tall and wooden with a parchment shade that looked best at night when lit. The last time she’d visited Annette Sinclair, Weston had been shocked to discover a pack of tampons in the bathroom. When questioned, Annette had given one of her prim, ‘Nothing to do with you, dear,’ looks and giggled girlishly without making any comment. The thought had made Weston feel physically sick; her seventy-one-year-old mother still menstruating, presumably with the aid of hormones. Grabbing a couple of extra-strength painkillers, and a 1000 gram Vitamin C tablet, she washed them down with a slug of Evian, then went back to bed. Three hours later Weston woke feeling infinitely better, and ready to face lunch with Rob Steiner who ran the LA office of Avesta. She had met him only a couple of times since the recent merger of her own Summit television with Avesta, but each time she’d renewed her first impression of Rob. Extremely bright, enthusiastic and intuitive, with the sort of incisive brain that could cut through the crap and stay on track. She liked him, and intended to offer him a fat pay rise to head up her proposed Pacific Rim operation. She showered and dressed in a long-sleeved simple brown wool dress, draping a camel cashmere sweater over her shoulders in preparation for lunch at Le Cirque, where the super-efficient air conditioning almost required fur coats in summer and sleeveless shifts in winter. Armed with her bulging briefcase, she left her bedroom and walked briskly down a wide hallway, heels clicking on the polished ash floor. The first thing she saw as she entered her vast living room was her maid Carmita who was coming out of the kitchen, her head obscured by a large floral arrangement covered in crisp cellophane wrapping. ‘Morning, Miss Weston, these just arrived.’ ‘Morning, Carmita. Or afternoon, almost …’ ‘I careful not to vacuum, I think that you ’ave a late night.’ ‘I had an early morning, Carmita. I feel a little worse for wear, could you make me a strong coffee? Use that Colombian blend you got last week.’ ‘All gone, your friend Taylor drank most of it at the weekend.’ Mildly irritated, Weston snapped, ‘Use any kind of coffee, Carmita, just make it.’ Muttering under her breath, Carmita left the room. Weston poked her nose into the cellophane wrapping, jumping back with a sharp intake of breath when she saw all the flowers were dead and shrivelled, brown-stained lilies. She hated lilies. They reminded her of death, and of her father’s funeral when her mother had filled the house with them. Nonchalantly she tore the accompanying card off, thinking that Martin the commissionaire had probably forgotten to deliver the flowers to her apartment. It wouldn’t be the first time, and she made a mental note to question him about it on her way out. Slowly she moved towards a large white sofa situated in the centre of the room. As she did so, her eyes wandered over the pristine elegance of her apartment, checking for dust. Moving a vase a millimetre as she passed a table, she registered the absence of the Aubusson rug that was supposed to have been delivered from the specialist cleaners two days ago. Weston loved order, was fastidiously tidy and obsessed with her own inimitable sense of style: understated and expensive. Whenever her friend Beth came to the apartment, she always said that she was afraid to sit down in case she looked too messy, or not colour-coordinated with the beige on white, and shades of eau de nil and pewter. Weston was just as unaffected by these playful jibes as she was by her mother’s resentful taunts. It had long been her dream to live on Central Park West, an aspirational thing, something she’d promised herself at eighteen when she’d stayed in a similar apartment owned by the family of a friend from college. It would have been very easy, too easy, to have let her father help her climb the property ladder. Sinclair Kane could well afford it. But Weston had wanted to get there on her own. Setting herself goals and meeting challenges were meat and drink to Weston. And the day she’d moved into the nine thousand square feet of lofty space high above Central Park, she had felt very good indeed. Her only regret? Her father hadn’t lived long enough to witness her achievement. When Carmita returned with the coffee, Weston was standing next to the vast floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window, the top of her head glowing like a ball of fire in a sudden burst of brilliant sunlight. The maid busied herself moving a pile of glossy magazines to make room for the tray on the coffee table. ‘Will that be all, Miss Weston?’ When Weston twisted around, Carmita was shocked to see her employer’s face. ‘You all right, Miss Weston? You look like you saw a ghost.’ ‘Ironic you should say that,’ Weston whispered almost to herself, then without another word she walked past her maid and out of the apartment. Carmita shrugged, poured herself a cup of coffee and was about to drink it when she spotted a white card on the floor, close to where Weston had been standing. Dropping to her knees, she picked it up and read the message: Freedom is a precious gift. Carmita propped the card up against the dead flowers before leaving the room. An hour before Weston received her flowers, Beth also had a gift. She was in her office on Wall Street, a fortieth-floor eyrie with far-reaching views out to Staten Island; on a good day she could see the tourists peering out of the viewing platform high up on Liberty’s crown. On a bad day she tried not to look out of the window. Five years previously she had commissioned an English interior designer to transform the large floor space. The brief was simple: lived-in, old English money, but not stuffy. And the result was a pseudo turn-of-the-century style, more suited to a crusty old barrister in London than a high-flying female banker in Manhattan. But Beth loved it. She loved the mellow oak-panelled walls, specially distressed to look old; the painted faux bookshelves and the original Chesterfield she’d found by accident in a funky little shop selling Indian artefacts in the Village. It was her inner sanctum, giving her a feeling of such calm it was almost spiritual. It was the only room she’d ever inhabited that’d had that effect. Most of her English childhood had been spent to-ing and fro-ing between a rambling, elegantly shabby country house near Cirencester, St Mary’s Wantage boarding school, and her father’s smart Cheyne Row townhouse in the fashionable end of Chelsea. Until 1968, when her mother had met and married an American TV producer and had dragged Beth, at fourteen, kicking and screaming from her English school to the East Coast American equivalent. The transition had been much easier than Beth could have hoped for. Her American counterparts had welcomed her like a long-lost sister, and she was forced to admit it would not have been as easy if it had been the other way round. Beth was drinking her fourth double espresso of the day, and thinking that she should give up all toxic substances, when her secretary Julia buzzed. ‘Special delivery for you, Ms Morgan; shall I bring it in?’ ‘What is it?’ Beth asked. ‘No idea, it was delivered by Fed Ex, it looks like a gift.’ ‘Sounds intriguing, wheel it in.’ A few seconds later Julia entered the office, carrying a box the size of a wine case. It was expensively wrapped in dark brown paper, tied with black ribbon and raffia. Beth exhaled smoke, as her methodical mind started to eliminate the reasons why she should be receiving a gift. ‘It’s not my birthday, thank God, and I can’t think of any good turns I’ve done recently. My husband is pissed with me, so I doubt he’s bought me a present. And I don’t have a lover.’ She began to undo the wrapping, a smile of mild anticipation directed at Julia who looked on eagerly awaiting the revelation. With some ferocity, Beth tore at the paper, standing back with a pant when she pulled it off to reveal the top of a small birdcage. With its yellow handle and red seed tray, it resembled a cage her mother’s sister had kept a budgerigar in when Beth was a little girl. The recollection of opening that cage and letting the bird out filled her mind. She had forgotten all about it until now, but she shuddered as she recalled how all hell had been let loose when the bird had escaped. Julia took a step closer, her nose wrinkled as she pointed at the cage. ‘There’s something in there.’ Beth stepped forward; she looked down to the bottom of the cage where a baby dove lay in the corner. Its neck was broken; one blood-encrusted eye stared upward. There was a message tagged to the bird’s foot; it said simply: I died inside. The box was on the hall table, on top of the Washington Post and the unopened mail. It was wrapped in white paper, tied with red velvet ribbon, scarlet red. Kelly didn’t see it until she was about to leave the house at ten after twelve. She was screaming orders at her cook from the hall, and checking she had everything she needed for the charity luncheon she was due to attend in less than fifteen minutes. This was the first meeting of the fund-raising committee; what would it be this time, she wondered. A black-tie ball for three thousand of Washington’s ?lite? A musical soir?e? A masked carnival? A fashion show? All the same repetitive stuff, and as usual Kelly was dreading the tedious debate and the well-meaning, sanctimonious chatter of the other members. She would much rather be having lunch with her friend Sally Oritz, who made her laugh with her crude bar-room humour. Kelly grabbed the box on her way out and was comfortably settled in the back seat of the car when she examined the package. It was about a foot long, and a couple of inches wide. There was no message tag, and she suspected by the weight and shape it was an orchid or a rose. The ribbon came off easily, as did the fine tissue gift wrap. Inside was a wooden box, it was midnight blue and resembled a long jewellery case. She lifted the lid; the interior was a lighter shade of blue. At first glance Kelly thought it was empty. On closer inspection she realized it contained a string, a musical instrument string, probably part of a violin or cello. It was broken, one end coiled around a card lying underneath. When she picked up the card, her hand was trembling as she read it: You broke my heart. Chapter Five (#ulink_56b99534-ea88-568c-af2f-c45715246461) He was lucky to get the apartment. It had come back on the market two days ago, after being let for two years. ‘A snip,’ the agent had said, several times. ‘A two-bed, fully furnished duplex on M Street for six thousand bucks a month is a steal.’ Jay had merely nodded silently and handed over three months’ rent in advance. The apartment was comfortable in a white-on-white, young designer hot-out-of-school and eager-to-impress sort of way. ‘Chic’ was the agent’s description. Jay didn’t know chic from crass, good taste from bad. But it was enough that he was within spitting distance of Kelly and, as of today, on line. With a self-satisfied grin in Jay’s direction, Luther pointed to the equipment he’d set up on a marble-topped console table in the corner of the large living room. Jay was sitting on the arm of the chair, a cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘You wanna hear?’ Jay exhaled, and nodded at the same time. Luther flicked a switch, and Jay heard a man speak. ‘Hi, Kelly.’ ‘You OK, Todd? You sound out of breath.’ Kelly’s voice, throaty and deep, caused Jay to have a physical pain in his gut. ‘I’m fine, and you, what did the doc say?’ There was a long silence then, ‘Kelly, you still there?’ In a very small voice she replied, ‘Yes I’m still here. And no, you’re not going to be a daddy.’ There was another long silence, longer than the last, followed by a deep sigh. Jay wasn’t sure whether it was Kelly or Todd sighing. A second later Todd spoke, the enforced joviality in his tone failing to mask acute disappointment. ‘That’s OK, honey, we can try again.’ ‘Todd I –’ Kelly paused. ‘Todd, I’m sorry.’ ‘It’s not your fault. Like I just said, we’ll try again. It’s fun practising.’ ‘Tell me the truth. Are you very disappointed?’ Another long sigh then, ‘I would love to have a baby with you, Kelly, but if it’s not possible it won’t stop me loving you, nor will it change our relationship. We’ve got each other.’ ‘I’m so pleased you said that, Todd. Because it’s exactly how I feel.’ Jay detected something in her tone that didn’t quite ring true, but then he rejected it as overreacting. It was, after all, the first time he’d heard her voice for over twenty-five years. ‘You get some rest now, Kel, I’ll call you in the morning.’ ‘Night, Todd.’ ‘And by the way, Kelly. I love you.’ Jay did not hear Kelly’s reply as the line went dead. Luther flicked a switch and, finger poised, said, ‘You want to hear some more?’ ‘What else is there?’ ‘A call to her hairdresser, the rest is business. A real cute operator, Mrs Prescott. Did you know that the little lady is about to launch a tabloid called the Georgetown Gazette?’ Jay grinned. ‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. But now that this little baby is in place,’ he pointed with his cigarette to the electronic playback, ‘there isn’t much about Mrs Prescott that I won’t know.’ ‘I saw her leave the house this morning.’ Luther whistled. ‘Sure is one beautiful dame. He added quickly, ‘Too much for a dumb ass nigger boy like me.’ ‘For a dumb ass nigger boy,’ Jay grinned and touched Luther’s arm, ‘you’re one hell of an electronics genius.’ But by now Jay was really thinking about Kelly. The sound of her voice had plucked another chord in his memory. It was the fall of 72; they had been invited to a friend’s house at the beach for the weekend. Late in the evening Kelly had suggested a walk on the beach. He’d agreed and hand in hand they had crossed a wide sweeping terrace, bordered on three sides by terracotta pots overflowing with white and occasional pink geraniums. He recalled saying to Kelly that it was how the other half lived. She’d grinned and replied, ‘This is how we’re going to live, Jay.’ The sound of surf crashing on to the shore at the foot of the garden had mingled with the giggling of two naked couples in the pool, and that of several entwined bodies on the pool side. They never did get to walk on the beach, because Kelly discovered the privacy of the poolroom. And if anything else had been said that night, he’d forgotten it. Luther noticed Jay’s distraction, instinctively aware that he was still in love with Kelly Prescott. He, too, knew how it felt to love a woman and lose her, and at that moment he longed to have Shirley’s knack of saying the right thing at the right time. Jay had befriended him on his first week in prison, talking to him like an equal, like he was a fellow college graduate, someone of substance – instead of a punch-drunk ex-boxer, a terminal loser and thrice-convicted felon. He would never forget Jay’s painstaking patience when he’d taught him chess. He watched Jay stand up, stretch and walk across the sitting room of the small apartment, located on the opposite side of M Street, two hundred metres from the Prescott house. Luther spoke to his back. ‘You happy with the reproduction?’ Without turning around, Jay said, ‘It’s great, you did a good job.’ ‘It was easier than I first thought.’ ‘Does that mean I get a discount?’ A guffaw filled the room. ‘Come on, man, gimme a break; you’re already getting a discount, genius don’t come this cheap normally. Anyway it wasn’t that goddamn easy. The senator was away, and the maid was one of those dumb underpaid greaseback broads who don’t give a damn if the rich folks get ripped off, but the security boys took a bit of Luther boy charm to get past. And the telephone company uniform was difficult to get a hold of; you try nicking anything in my size. I had to follow a big black brother around for three days; thank God his security and I.D. card were in the pocket. Discount my ass, I should double the fee!’ Jay turned to face Luther. ‘A deal’s a deal, my friend. You should’ve held out for more; I was willing to pay you three times as much.’ He watched Luther frown, he knew he was trying to work out if he was joking or not. Then Jay took a fat brown envelope from his inside pocket and handed it over. ‘Count it if you like, but it’s all there.’ Luther took the package. ‘I don’t need to count it.’ A look of mutual trust passed between the two men. Jay smiled; he knew Luther would count it later and wished he could be there to see his face when he realized he’d been paid three times what they’d agreed. ‘I hope it all works out for you, brother.’ ‘Thanks, Lu, you take care and never forget what I told you in the pen. If you don’t love yourself, why should anyone else.’ In that moment Luther was reminded of Shirley, she’d said something very similar on their second date. Not trusting his own voice, he stumbled out of the apartment, promising to keep in touch. Afterwards Jay sat next to the window, watching Luther’s back until he rounded the corner of M Street and was out of sight. He then switched his view to Kelly’s house. He counted the lights in the windows, five in total. Sitting in silence, watchful and predatory, gave him a perverse sense of anticipation. What was he expecting? he asked himself. Why the stake-out, what did he hope to achieve? After twenty-five years would Kelly, Weston or Beth give him even a second thought? And if they did know something about Matthew Fierstein’s murder, would they risk talking about it on the telephone? He doubted it, yet maybe if he could rattle their cages, one of them might let something slip in an unguarded moment. By now they would have received his gifts; step one in the flushing out process. He tried to imagine their reactions: Weston would be dismissive; Beth, intimidated; and Kelly … ah Kelly, try as he might, he couldn’t imagine how she would feel when she opened the box to find the broken cello string and his message. He felt sure she would know the sender though, and he hoped she would experience a twinge of remorse at the very least. The cat was now among the pigeons. Jay could not resist a wry smile, and with it came the realization that he was actually enjoying himself. His r?le was not unlike that of Mike Flint, the fictitious FBI agent he’d created in Killing Time. And where was Mike Flint’s alter ego now? he mused. Ron Longman, the FBI operative who’d worked with Al Colacello to indict Mario Petroni, had taken the godfather’s money and run. Jay experienced a surge of anger whenever he thought about Petroni who, against all odds, had won. Why is it that good things happen to bad people, and bad to good? He’d asked himself the question many times before, and was always unable to come up with an answer. It reinforced his belief that there was no God. As he stood up and stretched his torso, the digital clock on the desk was blinking six-fifteen. He moved into the hall and through a door leading to the long narrow, galley-type kitchen – all polished elm units and gleaming stainless steel. Jay made himself a pot of strong espresso, and carrying the coffee in one hand and a large mug in the other, he made his way back into the living room. Once there he sat down in front of the small desk that housed his laptop. He then stared at the blank screen for a few minutes before starting to write. REMISSION. Notes: September 1972 onwards. [Me, Matthew and Kelly.] There was an electric storm the night before I went up to Harvard. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I watched in fascination from my bedroom window; forked lightning branding the big Montana night sky, and thunder so loud I was reminded of my grandmother’s words: ‘It’s the devil clapping sinners, boy.’ Then the rain came, hard and slanting, ricocheting off my window like a constant barrage of machine-gun fire. I stayed awake all that night, long after the storm had subsided, and at the first glimmer of dawn, while the rest of the house slept, I crept outside. It had been a long hot summer; relentlessly the sun had sucked at the earth, day after scorching day, and now the parched crust was sodden, a great thirst sated; the air moist and still, so still you could hear a leaf fall. As I stood there completely alone, a rainbow appeared, the colours so vivid they looked like freshly mixed oilpaint. I was spellbound; that colourful ladder to heaven was beautiful beyond belief. I remember feeling very small, a nondescript character in the big scheme of things, and in that moment I believed in God. I don’t any longer. I’d kept my promise to my mother: I’d brought in the harvest, breaking my back and eating dust for weeks, and now I had my very own crop; the beginning of what I hoped would be a great and fulfilling adventure. My feet felt as light as air. In fact my whole body felt light, weightless, elevated. I was ready for anything. My dream, my longed for, hard-fought dream was realized. Jay Kaminsky, second-generation Polish immigrant from Hicksville, USA, had been given his chance. No, not given it; achieved it. Harvard and I were made for each other, never before or since have I felt so at one with myself and my surroundings. That first day and for many subsequent days I was full of an indescribable sense of wellbeing, a belonging to that hallowed place of learning. I was so full of ideas, ambition and arrogance. Ah, to be back there! In that place and time, not knowing what was in store, what was to be my fate. To taste once more, if only for a moment, that euphoric optimism. I didn’t hope I would be successful; I knew I would be. September 1973 Matthew Fierstein was the same, a scientific genius destined for great things. Or so we thought. Ingenious Matthew, the brilliant boffin constantly bubbling with enthusiasm for some bizarre new invention. We were campus room-mates; I was in my second year, he was a freshman. I wouldn’t have chosen Matt, and I doubt he would have chosen me. We were chalk and cheese: me all sportive and Matthew bespectacled and puny, a Born Again Woody Allen type. He would often joke that we made a great team. I could attract the women, and he could make them laugh. It was during his first semester that I began to notice glimpses of Matthew’s dark side. It was after his mother’s visit to Harvard. Matthew was strung out for two days before her arrival and a visible nervous wreck on the morning before she was due. My first impression of Isabel Fierstein was that she was very un-Jewish, if there is such a thing. What I mean is she was Jewish, but not the usual stereotype. Tall, blonde and stunning in an icy Slavic way, and a bit dippy. She reminded me of a second-rate Hollywood starlet from the thirties. Something that Samuel Goldwyn might have auditioned on his casting couch and then cast in B movies. I noticed Matthew recoil when she kissed him, and he seemed withdrawn when she spoke to him. Her every sentence was banal, every word delivered in a jaded, ‘I’m very bored with life’ kind of way. I thought she was extremely cold, and felt sorry for Matthew who obviously felt ill at ease in her company. After she left he said that he thought his mother was the most beautiful creature in the world, and the most despicable. I was shocked and then Matthew began to bang his head against the wall. Before I could stop him he stopped himself, but when he turned around to face me he was crying. There was a narrow rivulet of blood winding from a graze on his temple to the corner of his eye. He touched it, looked at his red fingertip, then at me. ‘I hate my mother,’ was all he said before leaving the room without another word. Matthew didn’t come back that day, or the next, and by the third day I was about to report his disappearance when he bounced into a lecture looking and acting as if nothing untoward had happened. I never mentioned his mother, but I did ask him where he’d been. He was evasive and, when I pushed, downright aggressive. With a strange mad look in his eyes, he tweaked the end of my nose saying, ‘Ask no questions, get no lies. It’s my business, OK?’ Then he laughed at my concern, saying, ‘Come on, Jay; lighten up. I met a hot girl, we did it for three days, never got out of bed. So I should have called to let you know? I’m sorry; so hit me if you can.’ It was the old Matthew again, and he stayed like that for the remainder of the week. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lynne-pemberton/dancing-with-shadows/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.