Marilyn Todd - Second Act

‘Oh, you’re like a draught. You sneak in anywhere.’

‘Thanks. It makes a change from being told I’m a load of hot air. But the point is, Claudia, I’m worried.’

‘Orbilio, I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.’

‘If you were able to take care of yourself,’ he countered mildly, ‘you wouldn’t be so wary of the Security Police. But shabby as it is to admit to such base needs, it’s not just you I’m thinking of.’ He drew a deep breath and held it. ‘There’s been a shift in policy at Headquarters. My boss insists it’s purely political, but whatever the reason, he’s handed the case over to Dymas.’

‘Then let Dymas have the headache of solving it.’

‘I can’t,’ Marcus rasped, and suddenly he looked ten years older. ‘Because of me, an innocent man went to the lions. I have to make that right.’

Claudia pleated the folds of her dress. That’s the trouble when you keep saving the world, Marcus. After a while, the world comes to expect it.

‘Silly question,’ she said, ‘but you have spoken to last year’s victims?’

‘Some.’ He rose to his feet and called for an encore, but she could see his mind was elsewhere. ‘Unfortunately, so deep was the trauma that it’s virtually impossible to draw the girls out.’

He spiked his hands through his hair. As a member of the same sex as the beast who’d perpetrated those brutalities, how could he explain how it felt when he saw the victims recoil physically-and sometimes violently-when he and Dymas had knocked on their doors?

‘All we’re doing is forcing the victims to relive the agony,’ he said thickly. ‘They don’t deserve that.’

One had trembled and started to whimper. Another curled herself into a ball and howled like a wolf. One screamed her lungs out. One clawed at her own flesh, drawing blood. Worst of all, one, like the Damascan girl Deva, had even tried to commit suicide. Only that poor bitch had more success.

‘What makes you so certain you didn’t put the culprit on trial last time?’

‘That’s the trouble. I was sure.’

He waited until the intermission between the second and final routine before outlining the evidence that had nailed the man he and Dymas believed to be the Halcyon Rapist. Information through street contacts that led them to a suspect. The mask beneath the suspect’s bed, which tallied with the description the victims had given. The strong smell of aniseed on his clothes.

‘Crucially, of course, the suspect signed a confession.’

‘Wouldn’t you, under torture?’ Claudia countered.

‘He was a citizen,’ Orbilio replied with the ghost of a grin. ‘Not Captain Moschus. He was never put to the torture. And anyway, it was immaterial. Three of the victims identified him.’

As Fenja and Erinna wound up their routine, Claudia digested the information. Well, if those were the facts, those were the facts. Unless…

Unless -

She thought of the mask and the creeping around, the rapist’s ability to merge with his surroundings, the mentality of the man who committed such visceral crimes. Secrets, secrets, so many secrets.

Then, suddenly, as though a lamp had been lit, everything fell into place.

*

‘Master Orbilio?’ The messenger nodded apologetically to Claudia. ‘Sorry, sir, but the steward says you’re to come home as a matter of urgency.’

Jupiter, Juno and Mars, should she tell him now, Claudia wondered. Or think it through first? Later, she decided. She’d tell him about her suspicions later, because Mr Upright-Conscientious-and-Thorough had made what he believed was one terrible mistake on this case. He’d need to be one hundred and ten per cent convinced next time round.

The arrival of the messenger provided the very breathing space that she needed. Yes, of course, she thought she was right. But far preferable to jumping to conclusions and forcing the pieces of the puzzle to fit, wasn’t it better to lay the evidence out in her own mind first? Check any cracks in her theory?

Claudia watched Marcus go. And prayed to Jupiter that her hunch was wrong.

*

‘The lady is in your bedroom, sir,’ Orbilio’s steward announced.

‘Lady?’ he queried. ‘What lady?’

But he might have known. Angelina lay sprawled across his wide double couch in a diaphanous silver gown.

‘I think we should paint these walls green,’ she purred, ‘and have clouds on the ceiling, so we can pretend we’re making love outdoors, under the open sky.’

‘Define we,’ he said, bundling up her belongings.

‘We could get a couple of dogs, too. They’ll be company for me while you’re out at work-’

‘The only thing that’s going out, Angelina, is you. Right this minute.’

‘-and in the evenings we can walk them in the public parks and-’

‘Mother of Tarquin, woman, there is no “we”, there never was, so let’s hit this thing dead here and now.’

‘I’ll have to give up dancing, of course-’

‘Did you hear one bloody word? I want you out of my house, Angelina, and out of my life. Now.’

The pixie drew a little-girl-lost circle on the coverlet with her forefinger. ‘Don’t tease me, Marcus,’ she pouted. ‘I know how much you love me, I can tell by the way you make love to me.’

‘I never made love to you, Angelina. You drugged me, god knows why, but-’

‘Don’t! Don’t say such horrible things!’ She sat up, her hands over her ears. ‘I would never do anything so mean and so horrible. I love you, just the same as you love me.’

‘Is it money you want?’

‘Look, I know you’ve been working hard lately, Marcus, but please don’t be bloody. You know the only thing I want is you. I adore you, Marcus. I’d give you the world if I could.’ She patted the couch. ‘Come to bed now. Pretty please?’

Croesus, the woman was absolutely barking! Well, no point in employing rational argument with a lunatic. Orbilio hauled her off the bed, dragged her screaming across the atrium and threw her bodily into the street, tossing her clothes and her baggage behind her and slamming the door as hard as he could.

Cruel, humiliating, and it made him feel a right bastard, but there was no other way to get his message across.

Stalkers not welcome.

In her bedroom, Claudia snuffed the flames of her oil lamps. Too bright. Far too bright. Instead, a single beeswax candle notched with the hour burned in the corner, its flame flickering in the reflection of the enamel inlays of her jewellery boxes, bringing the gold and silver engravings to life. A fawn with its mother. A trio of geese. A dog chasing its tail. Claudia sighed. Sat on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest. Beside her, curled into a ball, her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat slept peacefully, dreaming of crunchy voles and crispy sparrows and biding her time until the street mice felt safe enough to venture out of their holes.

Time passed, the candle burned lower, and Claudia Seferius stared into space.

Orbilio hadn’t returned and within a matter of hours, another girl would be pulled off the streets The responsibility pressed down on Claudia’s chest like a weight, stifled the air in her lungs. If she took action herself and her hunch turned out to be wrong, the fall-out would be horrendous. To accuse an innocent man of being a rapist was tantamount to destroying him. Was she prepared to condemn someone on a mere hunch? On the basis of stringing a few ill-thought-out conclusions together? The hell she was. She would need proof. Concrete evidence. A cast-iron case to present.

All the same, in a few hours, another innocent victim would be walking along minding her own business Drusilla’s paws twitched in her sleep, dark whiskers flicked back and forth. She barely stirred when her mistress swung her legs off the bed and wrapped herself in her furs. Like snowflakes in a blizzard, the same thoughts kept going round and round in her head, getting nowhere, and out on her balcony Claudia forced the Halcyon Rapist out of her mind. There was nothing she could do until she spoke to Orbilio. What was keeping him?