Линда Ла Плант - Cold Heart

I sincerely thank Suzanne Baboneau, Arabella Stein and Philippa McEwan at Macmillan, and the real Lorraine Page whose name I borrowed. Thanks to Gill Coleridge, Esther Newberg, Peter Benedek, and especially to Hazel Orme. I’d also like to thank my team at La Plante Productions: Liz Thorburn, Vaughan Kinghan, script and book editor, Alice Asquith, researcher, Nikki Smith, Christine Harmar-Brown, and Ciara McIlvenny.

With thanks for their contribution to:

Geoffrey Smith

East Hampton Police Department

Sergeant Gilmore and Lieutenant Salcido of the Beverly Hills Police Department

Dr Ian Hill, Department of Forensic Medicine, Guy’s Hospital

George W. Clarke, San Diego District Attorney’s Office

Tom Rowland of Thomas Rowland Associates

Kathy Byrne of the Chicago Film Office

J. B. Smith of the New Mexico Film Commission

Kerstin Chmielewski from the Berlin Tourist Office

Sotheby’s Press Office, New York

But above all my thanks go to a very admirable lady who brought me the story of her life.

The bullet blew off virtually his entire face. He was naked, but he appeared to be wearing swimming trunks because of the band of untanned skin which they usually covered. His arms and legs were spread open and his body floated face down. She watched with sick fascination as the blood continued to spread like the petals of a poppy, wider and wider; he was brain dead, but his heart still pumped, and continued for longer than she had calculated. Suddenly his outstretched arms jerked, his fingers clenched and unclenched, and he gave a strange guttural snorting sound, as if his throat were clogged with blood. A few seconds more, and she knew he was dead. Only then did she move away from the edge of the pool.

The bentwood sun chairs were replaced neatly, his towel folded. His sunglasses she put back in their case, and his half-smoked cigarette she left in the ashtray to smoulder and die — slowly, as he had. She wrapped her hand carefully in the edge of her floating silk chiffon wrap to remove the glass she had used, slipped it into the deep pocket of her jacket, then walked soundlessly across the velvety lawn, past the sheets of lead and lumps of rock that Harry Nathan had considered to be sculpture, to enter the house through the garden doors. She took the glass from her pocket, rinsed it and replaced it in the kitchen cabinet. She was fast, meticulous, knowing every inch of the kitchen, even wiping the taps in case she had touched them inadvertently. She surveyed the immaculate kitchen, making sure nothing was left out of place, and then, still barefoot, she returned to the garden the way she had come. By now, Nathan’s cigarette had burned itself out, the ash extending for a curved inch and a half in front of the butt. She made her way round the edge of the pool, not even looking at the body, which still floated face down but was now drifting almost in the centre of the deep end. She looked round furtively before picking up the weapon, a heavy Desert Eagle, still wrapped in a silk headscarf. Then she hurried towards a small shrubbery, full of topiary trees clipped into strange geometric shapes that were clearly meant to echo the sculpture. She was careful not to step on the soil but to remain on the grass verge. She fired the gun into the shrubs then quickly tossed it free of the scarf, to land just in front of the first row of plants.

A bird screeched as the sound echoed of the weapon firing, and she thought she heard someone scream in the house, but she didn’t go to investigate, didn’t even glance back, intent on getting out of Nathan’s estate and knowing it would take her at least five minutes to reach her car, parked further down the avenue. She did not put on her shoes until she was standing beside the Mitsubishi jeep. She bleeped it open with the alarm key and gave only a brief, guarded look around to make sure she had not been seen by anyone before she got inside and inserted the key, her hands rock steady as she turned it. The engine sparked into life and she drove off. Harry Nathan was dead and she was now a wealthy woman, about to regain everything he had taken from her and more. She would savour for ever the look in his eyes when he had seen her take out the heavy gun, seen him step back, half lifting his hands in submission, and then, as she pulled the trigger, there had been a second when she saw fear. She would relish the fear, because she believed that, without doubt, she had just committed the perfect murder.

August 12, 1997

Lorraine Page of Page Investigations had not, as yet, moved into a new office, though she had already used part of her cut of the million-dollar bonus from her last case to move from the tiny apartment in Los Angeles she had shared with her former partner Rosie, who had now married Bill Rooney, the ex-police captain who also worked with them. The couple had recently departed for an extended honeymoon in Europe.

The lost feeling hadn’t happened for a few days. She had been so caught up in making plans for the wedding, choosing what they would both wear, and the laughter when they forced Rooney to splash out on an expensive suit that had made the rotund man look quite handsome. Everything had been ‘fun’, particularly now that they had money to spend.

It was not until Rosie and Rooney had departed for their honeymoon that it really hit home: Lorraine missed them. Waving goodbye at the airport had almost brought the tears that didn’t come until a few days later. She had been sitting in Rosie’s old apartment, now hers, looking at the wedding photographs, and she had no one to share them with, no one to laugh and point out how funny it had been when Rooney spilt champagne on his precious new suit. There was no one who would understand the three of them standing with solemn faces and their glasses raised. Rosie’s and Lorraine’s had, of course, contained non-alcoholic champagne, but they had raised their glasses for a private toast to their absent friend, Nick Bartello, who had died on their last case.

The photographs, like the small apartment, held such memories, some sweet, some so very sad, but they had made Lorraine decide to buy another place. It had not been an easy decision but she couldn’t stand the ghosts — it made the loneliness even worse.

Lorraine’s new apartment was on the upper floor of a two-storey condominium built on an old beach-house lot right on the ocean front in Venice Beach, one of four or five blocks where the little houses were so closely packed together that there was no room for front or back yards. Walking round the kooky old bohemian neighbourhood, she found she had already fallen for its lively energy and charm, and she loved the close proximity of the beach. Lorraine didn’t think of herself as ‘kooky’ or ‘bohemian’; in fact, in her neat suit and blouse she looked slightly out of place, but the neighbourhood reminded her of when she had been married. It had been tough, trying to juggle her job as a rookie cop and bring up two young kids while her husband studied at home and worked nights in the local liquor store. Money had always been tight, but friends had not, and there had been so much love. Lorraine had money now and she wanted, needed, more friends like Rosie and Rooney. Deep down she ached for all the love she had lost.

While viewing the new apartment, she had caught a glimpse of herself in a full-length mirror. Staring at her image, from the well-cut blonde hair down to her slim ankles in low Cuban heels, the ache had suddenly surfaced, making her gasp. It didn’t matter how long ago she and Mike had been divorced, how long it had been since she had seen her daughters, the pain was still raw. In the past she had obliterated it by getting drunk but she was stronger now. She could still feel the dreaded dryness in her mouth and feel herself shaking, but she forced herself to follow the real-estate agent round the rest of the apartment.