Rupert Thomson - Death of a Murderer

“So Peter’s not a gambler, then,” Billy said slyly.

Lulu sipped her champagne. “I met him at a party,” she said. “On a yacht.”

As they were talking, Newman appeared in the garden below, stepping backwards, then sideways, a woman in his arms. It took Billy a few moments to realise that it was Sue, and he felt an instant surge of resentment. There was no reason why they shouldn’t dance together, of course — for all he knew, it was a ritual of theirs — and yet, somehow, everything Newman did seemed calculated to exclude him. No, it was more pointed than that. He behaved as though he was quite unaware of Billy — as though Billy didn’t actually exist.

“Fathers and daughters,” Lulu said, following his gaze. “Always special.”

Billy looked at her smooth face — the wide cheekbones, the eyes that seemed so bottomless, the luscious crushed rose of a mouth.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked.

“You’re lovely,” he told her.

He was speaking as an older man, and not one who wanted anything from her, and she understood this perfectly.

“Thank you,” she said. “Would you like to dance as well?”

He shook his head. “I’d only tread on your toes.”

“Maybe I should open more champagne.”

“Now you’re talking.”

He was smiling now. The same smile. Apart from that one flash of jealousy, which Lulu had extinguished with just five words, the evening had been marked by a rare innocence, an utter lack of subterfuge. Something so unusually pure about the whole experience.

It didn’t last.

In the morning he woke when Sue got up, but lulled by the crisp, plump sound of a tennis ball being knocked about on the court next door he dropped back into a deep sleep, and by the time he dressed and went downstairs, Sue and Emma had gone out. In the dining-room, Newman and Lulu were having breakfast.

Newman waited until Billy was seated, then fixed him with a gloating look. “You ever had a Korean?”

Billy glanced across the table at Lulu, but she was paying close attention to the kiwi fruit on her plate. Slicing the end off, she carefully peeled the rough brown skin. The sleeve of her robe had fallen back on her right forearm, and he could see a raw red mark encircling her wrist.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Newman said.

Gazing out into the garden, Lulu placed a segment of fruit in her mouth. She gave the impression that she was alone at the table — or that she didn’t understand the language that was being spoken.

“If you’re interested,” Newman went on, “I’m sure I could set something up…”

There are certain people who have to be treated with extreme caution, or else avoided altogether. They’re like toadstools, or coral snakes — all bright colours on the surface, and poison underneath.

Billy wanted to apologise to Lulu, but he didn’t have the chance to speak to her again. She left that morning, and didn’t say goodbye — not even to Emma, whose face crumpled when she was told. She stood all alone on the drive in the brilliant sunlight, head thrown forwards, fingers splayed. “Lulu,” she bellowed. “Want Lulu.”

It took most of the day to console her.

The following evening they flew back to England.

Afterwards, Billy would often wonder if Lulu had been coerced. Could she have been drugged, for instance, or blackmailed? Or had she been a willing participant? She could have been trying to please Newman, he supposed, she could have done it out of love for him — though she didn’t have the look, at breakfast, of somebody in love…It was always possible, of course, that she’d been paid. How much would that cost, he wondered, on the Côte d’Azur? Then again, what if it was something Lulu had specifically requested? It was what excited her. She needed it. The situation was so ripe with ambiguity that Billy never felt he got any closer to a definitive interpretation. In the end, all he could be sure of was the extent of Newman’s corruption, and the ambivalent, insidious nature of the world he inhabited, how it could both repel you and seduce you.

He glanced at his watch. Only twenty minutes to go, and then he’d have an hour off. He was nearly halfway through his shift. He could afford to relax a little.

He couldn’t remember leaving the hospital, but clearly he was no longer there. He didn’t panic, though. He wasn’t even anxious. Instead, he seemed to give himself up to his new surroundings. He was sitting at a wooden table. In front of him was a tin ashtray and a lighted candle in a red glass dish. Near the ashtray was a small dark ring where somebody had put a drink down. The brightly coloured paper-chains that looped above his head told him that it would soon be Christmas. People stood in groups all round him, talking and laughing. It was the saloon bar in a pub, he thought, or the private-function room in a hotel. Or, possibly, it was the back room in a working-men’s club. What had he come here for? And who with? He didn’t know; he had no memory of having arrived. There was a loud crackling sound, then an early Beatles number blared out of the speakers that were mounted on brackets halfway up the wall. He recognised the song. He even knew some of the words. A young woman in a floral print dress leaned down and spoke to him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Was she asking him to dance? He watched as she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and turned away from him.

As he sat there, enjoying the music — it was years since he had listened to the Beatles — a couple stepped out on to the dance floor. They were young, no more than twenty or twenty-one. The man wore a grey suit with wide lapels. His complexion was pasty, and there was something loose and twisted about his mouth. The girl’s hair was a bright-blonde beehive, and she was dressed in a pink sleeveless blouse, a white skirt decorated with small pink squares, and white-leather boots that almost reached her knees. They danced rock-and-roll-style. The man held the girl at arm’s length, bringing her in close and twirling her round, then allowing the gap between them to open up again, but no matter how fast they moved, no matter how recklessly they whirled and spun, his right hand never let go of hers. The contact was always there.

Once, though, halfway through a song, the girl spoke into the man’s ear, then broke away from him. Walking to the edge of the dance floor, she picked up a cigarette that was already alight, tapped a length of ash off the end of it and brought it to her lips. The man watched her from where he was, feet shifting in time to the music, loosely clenched hands held close to his chest. A lock of hair fell across his forehead. He reached up to push it back. The girl took a long, slow drag from her cigarette and blew the smoke in his direction. Almost immediately, she inhaled again, the tip of the cigarette a vivid red now. She lit a new cigarette from the old one, which she crushed out beneath the heel of her boot, then she rested the new cigarette on the rim of an ashtray and moved back towards her partner, smoke pouring from her nostrils. They went on dancing as before, stepping close to each other, then stepping back, the distance between them tense and yet elastic, the connection plain for all to see…

Then, without any warning, there was a shriek as the needle was roughly snatched from the record. Someone switched the house lights on. The young couple came to a standstill, his right hand gripping hers, their faces motionless, and bleached of all expression by the harsh white glare. It was so quiet that Billy thought he could hear them panting. Smoke lifted casually from the cigarette she’d balanced on the ashtray.

Billy half rose out of his chair, unable to work out where he was or what had happened. The green of the mortuary doors, the smudged white of the fridges. The intermittent beeping of the answer-machine…Ah yes. Yes, of course. He grinned almost foolishly, then blinked and rubbed his eyes. What time was it? Three minutes to midnight. Lowering himself back down into his chair, he waited for somebody to come and relieve him.