Питер Робинсон: No Cure for Love

Again she tried to think what Anita would do, then something snapped inside her, the way it had in the trailer that day. Dammit, he wasn’t Van Gogh and she wasn’t Anita O’Rourke. She was Sally Bolton, fighting for her life. And she would bloody well win. After all, he had given her the means. Holding the knife out in front of her with both hands, she pushed it forward with all her strength into his stomach.

For a moment, he didn’t move, then shock spread across his features and he fell to his knees, the blade sticking out of his flesh. It hadn’t gone very far in, Sarah noticed, but it was far enough. She felt sick. She had never hurt anyone before, let alone stabbed them, and as soon as she had done it she felt an awful guilt start to grow inside her. She had hurt another human being, however bad, however twisted he had been. He looked so pathetic now, on his knees in the foam. Not the monster who had written those letters, stalked her, murdered John Heimar and Jack Marillo, stabbed Stuart. He couldn’t be the man who had made her life hell for the past few weeks; he was just a lonely and pathetic figure, hurting, dying.

She looked around. There were cops with flashlights swarming all over the beach now, and the helicopter had landed about a hundred yards away. It was like a scene from a war, she thought, or the invasion of a small island. Men in military fatigues jumped out onto the beach, sand whipping up in the downwind from the helicopter blades, and hurried forward, rifles in their hands. Behind her, she could hear voices barking loud orders.

She was safe now. But when she looked back at the man on his knees in the sea, she still felt that she was caught in some sort of perverse mummers’ play that hadn’t reached its final act yet.

He got to his feet and stood in front of her, swaying a little. He had pulled out the knife and was holding it loosely by his side, but she wasn’t afraid any more. He wasn’t going to try to kill her now. His great vision, his intricate web of delusions, had collapsed, shattered. She had smashed it. They weren’t going anywhere together.

What did he see now, she wondered? Her betrayal or his triumph? His expression was almost unreadable — the religious ecstacy of a St. Sebastian pierced by arrows, crossed with all-too-human shock and surprise. Had he really expected her to cut off an ear and hand it to him? She knew that he had.

His eyes brimmed with pain, sadness and loss. He stretched his hand out to her again and she became so mesmerized by his eyes that she found her own hand reaching out to take it. She could see blood from where he had clutched at the stomach wound, blood shining in the moonlight.

She almost put her hand in his, almost got his blood on her. Christ, now she felt that she wanted to hold him, rock him in her arms, say she was sorry she stabbed him, tell him everything was going to be all right, sing him a lullaby.

What the hell was wrong with her? This man had terrorized her, killed people in her name. And all she wanted to do was hold him and ease his pain, maybe let him take his illusions to the grave. Then she snapped out of the spell and snatched back her hand before it touched his.

“No!” she yelled. But she didn’t know if he heard her or not. Arvo and Maria had come up behind and grabbed her by her arms. They were leading her back toward the police line. He was backing the other way, toward the ocean.

So many men, and they all had their guns out, pointing past Arvo, Maria and Sarah at the man. “Jesus Christ,” Sarah heard one of the uniformed policemen say as she neared him. “What the fuck do we do, shoot him to stop him from killing himself?”

Like Lot’s wife, Sarah looked back.

She saw the knife blade flash in the moonlight before he plunged it into his abdomen, just below the stomach wound, with all his remaining strength. Then, with both hands, he dragged it slowly up as far as his breastbone.

She was only about twenty feet away from him, and the moonlight and flashlights gave his eyes an eerie glow, like an animal’s eyes caught in the headlights.

All the time he was pulling the knife through his flesh, he was looking at Sarah, and at the last moment, as something dark and glistening slid out of his stomach into the moonlit water like a grotesque parody of birth, he opened his mouth and emitted a long, high-pitched wail and fell to his knees. It was the only sound she had ever heard him utter and it sounded like “Sally.” Then the light in his eyes went out like a spent candle, a strong wave knocked him over, and the water covered him.

Chicken pieces sizzled as they hit the hot grill and released the mingled smells of cumin, coriander, garlic and ginger. Fat and marinade dribbled onto the coals, hissed and turned to smoke. Above, a few milky swirls of cloud decorated the pale blue sky. Seabirds wheeled and squealed over the rippled blue water, which winked with diamonds of sun. Breakers crashed in a chaos of foam on the beach. Like the postcards said, it was “Just another day in paradise.”

It was only two weeks after that terrifying night on the same beach, and even now Sarah found it hard to look out there in the moonlight, especially when she was alone.

But she wasn’t alone now. As soon as Sarah had given her a brief account of what had happened, Paula had taken the kids out of school and brought them and her father over to visit.

They had been here a week now and were taking off to see the Grand Canyon for a few days before coming back to LA then heading home. Paula had some idea that the air in Arizona would be beneficial for their father’s health. Sarah doubted it. Her father was probably past that kind of help; besides, from what she had read, the air in Arizona was getting just as bad as it was in Los Angeles, thanks to all the Angelenos and their automobiles moving out there. But she didn’t say anything; she didn’t want to discourage Paula, especially when she seemed to be on a rare optimistic streak.

Paula had seemed like a woman with a mission the moment she arrived. Gently, she had assumed command, given Sarah space to heal and talk when she wanted to talk. She had already rented a car and taken the kids to Disneyland and all the way to Sea World in San Diego. She seemed to have taken to driving on the wrong side of the road, even on the freeways, like a fish to water.

Sarah was amazed at the transformation in her sister. The last time she had seen Paula, at Christmas, she had been bitter, mean and unadventurous. Also, like a lot of Brits, she hadn’t had a good word to say for Americans or anything American.

Still, it was a good thing that Paula had determined to be so independent over here, because Sarah had been so busy on the series most days that she hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her family as she would have liked. She had fixed up a visit to the studio, of course, and the kids had loved that. Paula had been impressed, too, Sarah could tell. In fact, she could also tell that Paula liked it here.

Visitors often did, Sarah knew, maybe because they only saw the paradise and not the inferno, just as she had for so long. And, of course, Brits loved the weather. Especially in January. As it turned out, they were in the fourth day of a heatwave — the high 80s — after a week of heavy rains had washed half of Malibu onto the Coast Highway. Paula hadn’t even complained about the rain.

If her father had still been well he would probably have been spending his time in the King’s Head in Santa Monica, Sarah thought, drinking Boddington’s pub ale. Maybe he would even join the cricket club. He had been a fair pace bowler in his day. Still, he had seen the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, and that had brought a smile to his face and a tear to Sarah’s eye.