Iris Johansen - Eight Days To Live

Or she might reach for that AK-47, Jane thought, as Caleb talked to Lina on the phone. It was difficult to accept that the woman who lived here gardening and working in seclusion could possibly be violent. But who could blame her for protecting herself after the life she had lived?

She could see the front door of the cottage open and Lina’s slender figure silhouetted against the lamplight as they drew up before the cottage.

“I’m not quite finished,” she said, as they got out of the car and walked toward her. “I’ll give you what I have, but you’ll have to wait for the rest.”

“How long?” Jane asked.

Lina shrugged. “A few hours. It was more difficult than I thought it would be. Come in and have a cup of tea. Do you have the time?”

“We have the time,” Caleb said. “We have no choice. Jane has something else for you to translate.”

“Not tonight. I’ll finish the first book that I promised you I’d do. But I need some time away from Adah Ziller.” Her lips tightened. “I don’t understand her. She liked it.”

“What?”

“Pain.” She turned and went back into the house. “She was twisted.”

“S and M?”

“Oh, yes.” She put on the kettle. “Some of the passages are very descriptive. Particularly the ones that have to do with Jack Millet. What he did to her was unbelievable.”

“He was her lover?” Jane asked.

“That’s not love,” Lina said. “And she didn’t care. She liked it.” She got cups down. “You said that she’d been murdered? Maybe it was just that one of her lovers went too far. She said that Millet almost killed her several times while they were playing their games.”

“No, that wasn’t how it happened,” Jane said. “And it’s not another ledger we found in the safety-deposit box. There was a tablet that we need translated.” She took the black container out of her tote and set it on the table. “As you can see, it’s pretty large, and the script is very tiny. Caleb thinks that it may be very old.”

“A tablet?” She looked suddenly thoughtful. Then she shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“It would help us,” Jock said quietly. “I know you don’t want us here, but we can’t leave until we know.”

“I don’t mind you being here. I’m not that much of a hermit.” She glanced at Caleb. “But don’t bring me any more of this ugliness. It brought back too many memories.”

“I didn’t have any idea what I was bringing, or I would have warned you,” Caleb said. “We know very little about Adah Ziller.”

“Well, I know quite a bit.” She poured tea over the leaves in the pot. “You can start with the printout on the table over there, but you’ll have to plow through it. As I told you, it’s disjointed.”

“Can you summarize?”

“As long as you don’t make me describe her sexual perversions.”

“Sit down,” Jock said as he crossed the room and nudged her away from the teapot. “Relax. I’ll take care of this.”

“I won’t argue. I like to see a man do domestic chores.” She dropped down in the easy chair. “It was strictly forbidden to let any male lift his hand in the house where I grew up.”

“And my mother made sure that I helped out,” Jock said. “Or I got boxed on the ears.” He poured tea into cups. “So watch all you please. You won’t see me shirk.”

Lina gazed at him thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think you would.”

“Adah,” Jane prompted.

Lina nodded. “The ledger begins when she’s fourteen. She grew up in Syria. Her father was a merchant and was moderately well-to-do. She had a Western upbringing and was sent to England when she was sixteen to complete her education.”

“Where did she meet Millet?”

“Before she left Syria. She met him at something called the Offering.”

“What’s that?”

“She doesn’t elaborate much. A sort of meeting her family went to every year since she was a child. She always found it exciting, but when she met Millet there, that was the only thing she could think about. She called him the Guardian. He was older than she, in his early twenties, and she kept talking about his power and what she wanted to do with him. She seduced him.”

“At sixteen?”

“She was no virgin. She had been experimenting since she was thirteen. But Millet was special to her. At last she’d found someone who had the same tastes. She was upset when she had to leave Syria.” She took the cup Jock handed her. “But she replaced him quickly. She’d acquired a taste for power and knew that was the fast lane. She honed her sexual talents while she was at school and took a job with Med-Coast Oil. She climbed the ladder quickly there.”

“What about Millet?”

“She still saw him occasionally. And they’d spend weekends together whenever she went back to Syria for this Offering meeting every year.”

“She went back every year?”

“Sometimes she didn’t want to go, but she said that she had to do it. It was her duty.”

“Judging by what you’ve said, I wouldn’t think she would pay much attention to duty.”

“She paid attention to the Offering.”

“And she never described exactly what kind of meeting it was?”

Lina shook her head. “No, but she usually liked the meetings once she was there. It was exciting. She said that she was able to make contacts she’d never have made otherwise. She said that rich and powerful people came who were completely out of her reach in everyday life.”

“When she wasn’t screwing Millet,” Caleb said.

“He was entertainment. The other men she met there were business.”

“Did she mention names?”

Lina nodded. “Two movie stars. A Wall Street financier. A fast-food chain CEO. She wasn’t choosy as long as they could move her ahead.” She paused. “But toward the end of the ledger, she talked about one man quite a bit. He was going to grease her way to the top. All she had to do was to do what he ordered, and he’d give her whatever she wanted.”

“Who?”

“Alan Roland. She said he was a mover and shaker in the financial world. Very rich, tremendously powerful.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Jane said. “And was he talking about sexual favors?”

“She went to bed with him, but that wasn’t what she was talking about. She evidently found someone who was using her as much as she used everyone else.”

“To do what?”

She glanced at the box on the table. “A tablet. Something called Hadar’s Tablet. Roland wanted her to steal the tablet from Millet, who was evidently its custodian.”

“Why?”

Lina shook her head. “She didn’t go into reasons. But it was very valuable, and she knew it would be dangerous. It was kept in a special cabinet in the Offering Room, and she had access because of her affair with Millet. But if she were caught, he would kill her. She was going to make Roland pay.”

“It seems that she did it.” Jane’s gaze was on the black container on the table. “That tablet we found in the safety-deposit box.”

“Yes. She was to give it to Roland. That was part of their deal. He was to take possession, but Millet wasn’t to know that she no longer had it. Which meant that she had to run the entire risk.”

“Charming.”

“She was willing to do it. He gave her two hundred thousand dollars to steal the tablet and promised her another five if she kept her mouth shut about his involvement. But she double-crossed him. She kept the tablet herself and was trying to squeeze Millet for every dime she could get.” Her lips twisted. “And she was getting hush money from Roland for not telling Millet that he’d paid her to steal the tablet. Money was rolling in from every direction.”

“How could she get away with it? Millet would think nothing of grabbing her and torturing her until she told him where she’d hidden the tablet.”