Cold Heart

Chapter 3

Next day when Decker walked into the building he noticed that the door to Page Investigations was a fraction open and assumed that Lorraine must have called in on her way to the funeral. He extended his hand to open the door further and his nostrils burned with the smell of acid. Decker stepped back and kicked it open instead.

The packing cases remained where he had stacked them on the floor, but the cardboard was sodden, and the tapes still smouldered as the acid destroyed even their plastic surrounds. Not one was salvageable — yet nothing else seemed to have been disturbed. He entered Lorraine’s office with trepidation — had she disturbed the intruder:

The desk drawers were open and a few papers littered the floor. At first sight nothing else seemed to have been damaged except for a photograph of Lorraine, which lay behind the desk, acid eating into the face, burning and twisting the features grotesquely.

‘Jesus,’ he said quietly, and picked up the phone, about to call the police department, then hesitated. Even after working for Lorraine for such a short time, he knew that she would want any decision to involve the police to be hers alone. Instead he dialled Reception and asked casually if there had been any security problems during the night. The doorman assured him that there had not. Decker hung up and dialled Lorraine’s mobile number. He swore as an electronic voice advised him that the phone was switched off.

Lorraine drove past the fountains and through the gates of Forest Lawn. She had never been to the exclusive cemetery before and found herself in what looked like a cross between the park of an eccentric nobleman and an outdoor department store of death. All tastes were clearly catered for, she observed, as she passed birdhouses, replicas of classical temples and ‘dignified’ churches. It had an air of frivolity and consumerism rather than reverence or repose.

The Nathan funeral was clearly taking place in the ‘Bostonian’ church, from which a long line of parked cars tailed back. As Lorraine got closer, she observed a number of people standing about outside. Most were pretending not to notice that they were being photographed by a little knot of journalists, but some were unashamedly smiling and posing. She tried not to stare at the wannabe actresses who had been unable to resist the chance to wear the shortest of short skirts, evening sandals, nipple-skimming necklines and elaborate hats.

The men had mostly confined themselves to dark jackets and ties, but Lorraine noted one with a straggling ponytail in a black Nehru jacket over dirty black jeans and Birkenstock sandals — a sort of ageing rock star ensemble completed by little round John Lennon sunglasses. As he turned his head to speak to the older woman beside him, his resemblance in profile to Harry Nathan was striking. They must be the family, Lorraine thought, an impression confirmed when she saw that Kendall Nathan was standing in front of the pair making exaggerated expressions of sympathy and grief.

She, too, was dressed like a Christmas tree, in a fussy black evening dress with chiffon yoke and sleeves, and dowdy pleated skirt. Apart from Lorraine, Harry Nathan’s mother, in a conventional dress and coat in black wool crêpe, was the only person whose appearance had been influenced by the sombreness of the occasion. She also seemed to be the only person genuinely distressed by Harry Nathan’s death.

Lorraine turned to watch as a limousine drew up, followed by an ordinary taxi-cab. The cab disgorged its occupants first, the middle-aged Mexican woman who had let Lorraine into the Nathan house and a Hispanic man, evidently her husband, who made their way straight into the church, ignored by everyone. As soon as the staff were out of the way, the limousine door opened to reveal Cindy Nathan in a long black sleeveless dress — Empire line to accommodate her undetectable pregnancy — and black velvet platform boots. Her blonde hair was elaborately dressed into a plaited coronet on top of her head, her wrists laden with pearl and jet. A silver snake bracelet encircled one of her slim upper arms, perfectly matching the black cobra tattooed around the other. She looked like a young pagan goddess, and all the nearby long lenses were immediately trained on her.

The girl stood motionless in front of the crowd. No one approached or spoke to her — in fact, Nathan’s family and Kendall looked away pointedly. My God, she must have been crying all night, Lorraine thought, as she observed the deep shadows around Cindy’s eyes. But as she got near enough to the girl to smile and greet her, she realized that the effect was deliberate: Cindy’s startling blue eyes and full, flower-like mouth had both been expertly made up in fashionable metallic pink.

Cindy did not speak, but gave Lorraine a strange, controlled smile, like that of a beautiful alien, and carefully arranged a black lace mantilla over her head. With a gesture bizarrely reminiscent of a wedding, she took Lorraine’s arm and the crowd parted in front of them as they made their way into the church, leaving a wake of exquisite lily scent and audible hisses of outrage.

‘Fuck ’em,’ Cindy said, under her breath, as they reached the porch. Her lovely face remained immobile as she spoke. ‘Fuck the whole damn lot of them.’

They made their way up the aisle towards the front pew, and the clergyman approached, rearranging his amazed stare into an expression of sympathy. Lorraine also noticed a tall, grey-haired man give the young widow an icy glance and immediately move way.

‘Who was that?’ Lorraine asked, when they had sat down.

‘Raymond Vallance,’ Cindy said coolly, staring straight ahead at the enormous wreath on her husband’s coffin.

The rest of the mourners began to file in, the Nathan family occupying the front pew on the other side of the church from Cindy.

Once everyone was settled, the minister announced a hymn, which no one bothered to sing. Most of those present were more interested in craning their necks to see who else was there. They were eventually brought back to the purpose of the gathering by the clergyman’s invitation to remember Harry in silence for a few minutes while they listened to one of his favourite songs, a rendition of ‘Light My Fire’, arranged as elaborately as an oratorio and played like a dirge on an electronic organ.

Then the minister paid tribute to Nathan’s personal charm, energy and talent. As he moved on to talk about his civic virtues and unstinting support for many good causes, Lorraine was conscious of a stir at the back of the church. She turned to see a tall woman with strangely white hair, elegant as a borzoi, who had walked in alone. She came slowly up to the front of the church, her high heels clicking on the stone floor, and sat down with great dignity in the front pew, some six feet away from Cindy. She inclined her head, smiled slightly at the girl, and Lorraine caught a glimpse of a pair of remote, unnerving eyes.

She immediately recognized Sonja Sorenson, the first Mrs Nathan, and tried to study the older woman unobtrusively. She was about fifty, Lorraine guessed, and although her immaculately cut, jaw-length hair was white, her lashes and brows were still dark. Her clothes were formal and elegant, a military-style black wool suit worn with black gloves, hose and shoes, and no visible jewellery. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the congregation’s scrutiny.

When the service ended, Vallance, Nathan’s brother and four other men advanced to lift the coffin and carry it out. The congregation filed after them, to form a group around the grave. Lorraine dropped back to let Cindy and Sonja stand at the front, noticing that, the minute they got outside, the older woman had put on a pair of dark glasses. Kendall, determined not to be outdone, elbowed her way up to stand between Nathan’s other two wives, clutching a single white rose. She beckoned to Mrs Nathan senior to follow her, but the old lady shook her head as though in distaste.

The minister read in a sonorous voice from scripture while the pall-bearers pushed the coffin carefully into the space in the wall and stepped back. As soon as the reading was over, Kendall moved forward to thrust her flower into the tomb, wailing theatrically, then stepped back as though challenging the other women to cap her performance. Sonja did not move, but Lorraine froze as Cindy took a step forward, calmly removed her wedding ring and laid it on the end of the coffin. There was an audible gasp as people wondered how to interpret the gesture: did Cindy mean that her heart was buried in the grave with Harry, or that she wanted her last remaining tie to her husband to be severed in the most public way:

The tomb door was closed and people turned away. Lorraine scanned the crowd for Raymond Vallance and saw that he was in surprisingly heated conversation with Jose and Juana. He was certainly making a point of keeping his distance from Cindy, Lorraine thought, to whom he had not addressed a word. But as his exchange with the two Mexicans came to an end and they drifted away, she saw him glance in the girl’s direction. Sonja, she noted, was still beside the tomb.

Cindy was looking bored by whatever the minister was saying to her and Kendall, and Lorraine decided to rescue her. ‘Cindy, I wonder if I could speak to you for a second,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’m just going.’

Cindy left Kendall with the clergyman. ‘You and me both,’ she said. ‘Jesus — I can’t stand to listen to Kendall saying she hasn’t eaten a thing since he died when all I can think about is how soon I can get a tuna melt. It’s the baby,’ she said, and Lorraine saw her eyes lock momentarily with Raymond Vallance’s. ‘It makes you crave weird things.’ Lorraine wondered whether it was just food she was talking about, but the girl said nothing more.

Lorraine breezed into the office just before lunchtime to find Decker showing out two men in overalls. Half the beige carpet had been taken up in the reception area.

Decker’s expression was uncharacteristically grim. ‘Lorraine,’ he said, ‘there’s been a... problem. Sit down for a moment. Somebody broke in and sprayed fucking acid over the tapes.’ He decided not to tell her about the photograph yet.

‘I see,’ Lorraine said, pushing her hand through her hair. ‘Well, that’s interesting. Cindy said no one else knew about them.’

‘Well, maybe she changed her mind about letting you listen to them,’ Decker said.

‘Maybe,’ Lorraine said, meditatively. ‘I can’t quite imagine her going to these lengths, though.’

‘Perhaps she has some more... extreme friends,’ Decker suggested. ‘Who was she with at the funeral?’

‘Nobody. Though she was breaking her neck not to be seen looking at Mr Ageing Romeo himself, Raymond Vallance. Pouting and glowering on both sides, though — sexual tension you could cut with a knife.’

‘Raymond Vallance?’ Decker pulled a face. ‘I thought he was already planted out there. He must be about two hundred — the oldest living really terrible actor.’

‘Looks every day of it,’ Lorraine said. ‘Though perhaps the shock of losing his close friend Mr Nathan was affecting his looks. He and the mother were the only people to shed a tear.’

‘Actually,’ Decker began, serious now, ‘something else happened in the break-in.’ He picked up the photograph. ‘They did this.’ Lorraine’s face remained expressionless as she registered the damage. ‘It looks like a get-the-fuck-off-this-case message, wouldn’t you say?’

Lorraine shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe something else. Maybe somebody who knows you,’ Decker went on. ‘It’s a really creepy thing to do, Lorraine. I knew you wouldn’t want me to call the police until you got back, but I really think you should. I mean, it’s like a threat.’

‘Well, thanks for the concern, Decker, but there’s no way I want the police knowing about either me or the tapes or that Cindy sent them here. I wish we’d got to listen to them, though. There must have been something on them that somebody didn’t want us to find.’

‘Well, we still have some...’ Decker said. ‘I took twenty home last night. But there’s nothing on any of the ones I’ve listened to so far.’

‘Sit down, boy wonder, I’ll make you some coffee — you deserve it.’ She smiled broadly. Clearly, as far as Lorraine was concerned, the subject of any personal danger was closed.

But the knowledge that Cindy Nathan had lied to her burned at the back of Lorraine’s mind, and as soon as the office was back in shape she called her, only to be informed by Jose that Mrs Nathan was lying down after the stress of the funeral and could not come to the phone. He suggested she call again the following day.

Decker assembled the tapes in date order as far as he could, but some had only a number. ‘How do we want to start — backwards, or at the beginning?’ he asked.

Lorraine pursed her lips. ‘In whatever order we can. We’ll list any names mentioned, anything that may be useful. There’s nothing else to do, apart from searching Harry Nathan’s garden, and we’ll have to do that at night.’

‘Wouldn’t it be easier in daylight?’

‘Of course, but we’d be seen doing it. The police won’t be there at night.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I was a cop, Decker, just take my word for it.’ She pressed Play and sat on the cherry-coloured sofa, Tiger’s perch. She could smell him on it.

‘Hi, how you doing?’ The voice was warm, easygoing, with a nice smoker’s edge. It was Harry Nathan.

Lorraine leaned forward to catch the low volume. Decker turned up the sound.

‘I’ve been better. I didn’t get the fucking part.’

‘I’m sorry, I thought it was in the bag.’

‘So did I, pal, so did I, but they said they felt they needed a name. I said, “I have one,” and this kid, no more than twenty years old, says to me, “I meant a name anyone under forty has heard of.” I wanted to say, “Go fuck yourself,” but what can you do? They need a fucking name to sell toothpaste nowadays. That’s what I hate about this industry, no respect.’

‘Mm, yeah. So, you on for tonight?’

‘I guess so. I’m going down to Hollywood Spa this afternoon.’

‘You spend more time in the sauna than you do in your own home.’

Their conversation droned on but, to Lorraine’s irritation, Nathan never once used the caller’s name.

The rest of the tape consisted of equally boring calls, as Nathan arranged his day between his masseur, his personal trainer and his yoga guru, and had a long discussion with someone about colonic irrigation. Four further tapes were just as mind-numbingly dull, but Nathan’s personality was emerging clearly: he seemed to have little interest in work as every call was of a personal nature, ranging from haircuts to manicures and massage — even an eyelash tint.

‘Jesus, is this guy for real?’ Decker asked.

‘You’re listening to him, darlin’,’ Lorraine answered, as bored as Decker.

Decker inserted another tape and leaned back, doodling on his pad as the tape whirred and scratched before the connection was made.

‘Hi, it’s Raymond.’

Lorraine and Decker looked at each other — it was the sauna and steam-bath caller, Mr Raymond Vallance.

‘Listen, I’ve just met this chick — she’s beautiful. I was having lunch and she was at the next table, man. She is stunning. She has a body you’d cream yourself over, and she’s got this blonde hair, like, man, it’s down to her waist, and she’s got to be five eight, maybe even taller. She’s cover-of-Vogue class, so I won’t be coming over.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Trudie. And she was giving me the real come-on. I mean, man, I could feel her looking at me. I’m seeing her tonight.’

They continued discussing the nubile blonde, their conversation more like that of two teenage boys than middle-aged men. That Nathan even bothered to record the entire tedious conversation was extraordinary. Decker saw that Lorraine was fast asleep, so he rewound the tape, put on some fresh coffee and inserted the next one. He would wake her if anything of interest came up. He listened to more of Nathan’s grooming arrangements and more of Vallance’s lectures about diet. Then a female voice, enquiring nervously if Mr Nathan wanted to see the dailies, to which Nathan replied that he wanted them sent over, that he would look at them in the evening. No date or time was stated, but Decker listed the call: it suggested that Nathan did occasionally do some work and that some movie was being shot. The next call made him listen intently.

‘Harry? It’s me, and I’m pissed — you got a fucking nerve. You don’t like the dailies, well, fuck you. If you could spare a second to come on the set you’d know we got a fucking brain-dead male lead. I warned you the script sucked, but this is puerile shit and I’m walking.’

Nathan’s angry voice retorted that he didn’t give a shit if he walked or not, and there was an angry altercation between the two men that resulted in Nathan screaming that the man could sue him, but as he was broke he’d never get a cent.

Lorraine woke with a start.

‘Listen to this. Seems Nathan wasn’t the rich man we think he was.’

Decker replayed the tape.

‘You’re a piece of shit, Harry.’

‘Yeah, so tell me somethin’ new.’

‘I’m telling you straight, an’ no amount of fucking blackmail and threats will make me stay on this garbage.’

Nathan laughed. ‘You threatening me?’

‘No, but you do whatever your dirt-bag mentality wants. I am through making second-rate porno shit.’

From then on, the tape was all business, one call after another from the studio as the film was halted. The director had walked and the cast and crew were threatening to quit unless they got paid. Then came a series of calls made by Nathan as he replaced the director, raised further finances to cover the production costs, and another when he suggested that certain incriminating photographs of Julian Cole be released to the gutter press, to teach the son-of-a-bitch a lesson — that nobody messed with Harry Nathan. The astonishing thing throughout the flurry of calls was how relaxed and easy Nathan sounded as he cajoled and bullied everyone he spoke to. Last on the tape came a pitiful call from Julian Cole, the director who had walked off the set, begging Nathan not to release the photos.

‘Listen, my friend, you owed me a favour. You quit on me and caused a lot of aggravation. I warned you...’ Nathan said airily.

There was a deep intake of breath on the line and then the weeping man hissed, ‘You bastard! I’ll make you sorry.’

‘Try it. Many have before, Jules, but they’ve always failed. Screwing under-age kids’ll make headlines. You’re finished. You’ll never get a gig in this town again.’

The tape ended and Lorraine looked at Decker. ‘You ever heard of this Julian Cole?’

Decker nodded. ‘He made some movie about a whale and a mermaid — Oscar nomination years ago — but I think he’s got one hell of a habit. Disappeared, or his later movies did.’

Lorraine got up and stretched her arms above her head. ‘Maybe he could be a suspect — maybe half the callers we just listened to could be. Seems a lot of people wanted Harry Nathan dead.’

Decker agreed. ‘What a sleaze-bag. I’ll run a check on all the callers we got.’

‘Mm, yes, but first run a check on Nathan’s finances — let’s see how broke he was. Something tells me he’s the kind of man that has stashes of cash but won’t touch a cent of his own money if he can blackmail, or whatever else, to make some other poor schmuck pay up.’

Decker rewound the tape and reached for the next. By tape five they had Raymond again, still talking about his latest nubile love. The calls were as tedious as the rest, until the last one on the tape when Nathan suggested that, as Raymond’s career was going nowhere, he should do a small favour for him.

‘You must be joking, I haven’t reached that level.’

Nathan laughed. ‘I’m talking private tapes, man.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘I don’t follow, Harry,’ Raymond said, fear audible in his voice.

‘Yes, you do. You know about my wires, my little personal kicks.’

‘Jesus Christ, are you serious?’

‘‘Fraid so. I need money, and...’

‘But you wouldn’t, I mean... They’re just between you and me.’

‘They were. But, like I said, I need cash. I got a studio to run, a movie about to go down, which will cost me, so—’

‘I can’t — you know, I can’t.’

There was a long pause.

‘Harry? You still there?’

‘Yeah, man.’

‘Don’t do this to me.’

‘Then you do somethin’ for me.’

‘I can’t. Jesus Christ, I can’t. I’ve got my career to think of.’

Nathan sighed, and his voice changed. ‘What career, Raymond? You are dead meat in this town — both you and your career, if you get my meaning.’

‘I thought you were my friend,’ came the plaintive response.

‘Raymondo, nobody is my friend when I’m tight for cash, and right now I’m tight. So, friendship apart, I need you to star in Likely Ladies. And I’ll release my private films if you don’t agree to wave your flaccid dick around in it. Now, you got that?’

‘If I refuse?’

‘Then I just release the private videos.’

The call cut off, and Lorraine looked at Decker. ‘My God, all those calls we listened to — he was just waitin’ to pounce.’

Decker nodded. ‘We got another suspect, right?’

Lorraine reached for the next tape. ‘Yes, sir, we do. And now it’s understandable.’

‘What is?’

‘The acid bath. Any one of the callers we just listed wouldn’t want these tapes released, and Raymond Vallance is moving up the list.’

Decker looked at his notes. A lot of people wanted, or might have wanted, Harry Nathan dead and for good reason: blackmail.

The next tape was disappointing, but just before it ended, Decker and Lorraine pricked up their ears.

‘Cindy, it’s me.’ It was Vallance’s voice.

‘Oh, hi. Harry’s not at home.’

‘Oh, really?’ There was an artificial brightness in Vallance’s voice. ‘When would be a good time to call?’

‘Oh — I’d say if you were to call... Harry, between three and four, that would be a good time.’ As usual, Cindy’s acting wasn’t up to much, and she suddenly dropped back into more natural tones. ‘Though I’m real sick. I think I got flu.’

‘It’s important.’

‘But I’m feeling real sick.’

‘I have to call Hurry, Cindy.’

‘Well, OK. Between three and four. I’ll tell him you called,’ Cindy said, in the arch voice of the chambermaid in Paradise Motel.

Vallance hung up, and Lorraine made a note, looking at Decker. ‘Bit of a code going on there, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Mm, let’s play it again.’

They did so, and came to the conclusion that Raymond Vallance and Cindy Nathan were using a code to arrange meetings of their own. The last tape they played recorded Nathan talking about the reshoot of his film, with Raymond Vallance now as the ‘star attraction’. Finances were in place, and the film could continue shooting. At the end of the tape Nathan laughed. ‘I’m out of the shit,’ he said to an unknown caller, ‘and I have pre-sales that’ll keep me out of it. We’re back on schedule.’

‘I sincerely hope so, Harry,’ said a low, clipped male voice.

Lorraine rewound the tape. ‘That’s his lawyer, Feinstein. I recognize his voice,’ she said.

‘Shall I put him on this ever-growing list?’ Decker asked, pen poised.

‘No, lawyers don’t get involved in the dirt. They just get their clients out of it.’

Decker held up the last tape. ‘Ready for one more?’ He inserted it and pressed Play.

‘Harry, this is Kendall.’

‘Hi, honey, how you doing?’

‘I’m doing fine, but we need some publicity for the gallery. How’s Cindy, by the way?’

‘Got flu,’ Nathan replied.

‘I’m really sorry.’ Kendall seemed to be laughing.

‘I bet you are.’

‘No, I really am.’ There was a slight lisp in the woman’s voice.

‘I’d better come over and see you.’

‘I’ll be expecting you.’ There was an almost mocking note in the sexy voice. The phone went dead.

‘Put her on the list,’ Lorraine said, then looked at her notes. On paper, it still looked like a Raymond/Cindy inside job, but there was something about both ex-wives that had made her suspicious at the funeral. ‘I want to see Kendall Nathan and maybe I should speak to Sonja Sorenson, too. They’re the ones we know least about,’ she said.

‘I don’t follow. Shouldn’t you be seeing all these other names?’

‘Right. I do want to see them, especially Raymond Vallance. Blackmailers’ victims don’t usually murder, but—’

‘But?’ Decker butted in.

‘I think Harry Nathan was killed by one of his ex-wives. Question is, which one?’

Decker smiled. ‘Well, darling, I’ve heard all the tapes, and I’d say my main suspect would be Raymond Vallance.’

Lorraine grinned back at him. ‘That’s because you’re a man. I think Harry Nathan blackmailed or screwed everyone he ever came across. We could have endless lists of possible suspects, but he was killed — murdered — by someone close to him. Call it female intuition. It was either Cindy, Kendall or...’

‘Sonja,’ Decker interjected.

‘Yes. The murder was carefully premeditated by someone who knew his routine. Nathan lived by blackmail, he got what he wanted by fear and intimidation, so he would have been wary of strangers. Therefore, whoever killed Harry Nathan had to be someone he trusted.’

The office phone rang, and Decker picked it up. ‘Page Investigations,’ he said curtly. Then he covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Cindy Nathan, and she sounds hysterical. You want me to put her through to your office?’ he asked.

Lorraine hurried to her desk. ‘Tape it,’ she said, but he’d already switched the phone on to record.

‘Mrs Page, it’s me, Cindy Nathan. Can you come over, and hurry — you got to come over here.’ She was crying.

‘Cindy? Are you all right?’

Lorraine signalled to Decker, who looked over. ‘You want your car brought round?’

Lorraine nodded and returned her attention to the phone. ‘Cindy, I can’t hear you. Tell me what’s happened.’

‘I was only out for ten minutes. Somebody’s been here. I don’t know what to do, I’m all by myself and I’m scared.’

Cindy eventually calmed down enough to explain that the house had been broken into. The housekeeper and her husband were out and Cindy had not called the police, but when Lorraine suggested that she do so, she became even more hysterical, shouting that she had to see Lorraine first.

‘I’ll be right over.’

It took Lorraine no more than twenty minutes to get to the house. The gates were wide open, as was the front door, and Lorraine ran from the car into the house.

‘Cindy?’ she called, and her voice echoed round the vast hallway. There was no reply. First she went downstairs into the basement, then made her way up the wide open-tread staircase to the first floor. ‘Cindy?’

All the bedroom doors were closed, the polished wooden floor giving way to white thick-pile carpet, which bore the marks of painstaking vacuuming. On a white marble plinth against one wall a massive pre-Columbian ceramic piece was balanced precariously, as if it had been knocked or pushed to one side.

‘Cindy?’ Lorraine called again, but still there was no response. Lorraine hesitated, and chose a door at random. Without a sound, she turned the glass handle of one of a pair of ten-foot-high polished pine double doors, and stepped tentatively into the room.

The bedroom was a sea of white: white carpet, white walls. The only colour in the room was in the centre of the bed — where there was a dark red pool of blood.

Lorraine almost had heart failure as Jose appeared from behind her. ‘What are you doing in here?’

Lorraine whipped round. ‘I got a call from Cindy—’

‘She’s not here.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Who are you?’

Lorraine opened her purse and handed the man her card. He glanced at it, then looked back to the landing at his wife. ‘She’s a private investigator.’

The woman gave Lorraine a hard stare. ‘I thought you said you came to give her a massage?’

‘Cindy asked me to say that,’ Lorraine said, silently cursing the girl for making her go through the silly charade. ‘She wanted to consult with me in private and was... feeling insecure.’

There was a pause, while the housekeepers registered that they were clearly the source of Cindy’s mistrust. Then Lorraine asked, ‘Where is she?’

Juana came closer. ‘Hospital. We had to call an ambulance.’

‘What happened? Was she attacked?’ Lorraine said impatiently. They looked at each other. ‘For God’s sake, answer me. She was hysterical when she called me and now...’ Lorraine looked at the bed as Juana went to remove the stained cover. ‘Leave that and tell me what happened.’

‘Mrs Nathan started to have a miscarriage. We found her in here, and dialled 911.’

‘Didn’t you go with her?’

‘She didn’t want us to,’ Juana said, pulling the coverlet from the bed and bundling it up with a look of disgust.

‘I think you should leave,’ said Jose.

Lorraine studied him: he was very nervous, his dark, thick-lashed eyes constantly straying to his wife’s. It was obvious to Lorraine that the pair knew more than they were prepared to admit about the sequence of bizarre events in the house.

‘What about the police?’ Lorraine said flatly. ‘Mrs Nathan told me the house had been broken into.’

‘What?’

Lorraine sighed. ‘When she called me, she said someone had been in the house, that she’d only been out ten minutes.’

Jose shook his head. ‘No, we have been here all afternoon. We only left to do some shopping earlier. Nobody has been here.’

‘Are you sure?’

There was yet another furtive exchange of glances. ‘Have you looked around the house?’ Lorraine asked. ‘Because if you haven’t, I suggest you do.’

Juana crossed to the doors with her bloody bundle, calling back, ‘You show her round, Jose.’

Lorraine turned back to Jose. ‘Is this the master bedroom?’

‘No, this is a guest suite.’

She asked to see Cindy’s bedroom, and Jose indicated that it was the next room along the corridor. According to him, it was Mrs Nathan’s own suite. When Lorraine asked if Cindy had slept alone or with her husband he shrugged. ‘I think it depended on how Mr Nathan felt.’

There were no photographs or knick-knacks in the ice-blue bedroom, but Cindy’s wardrobe made Lorraine gasp. She had never seen so many designer labels, not even in the smartest department store, row upon row of evening gowns, daywear, a whole closet of beach and casual wear, and racks of shoes. The walk-in wardrobe was more like a room, the size of her own bedroom, and from the sales tickets still attached it was obvious that many of the items had never been worn.

‘Mrs Nathan likes to shop,’ Jose said, with humour.

‘Obviously,’ Lorraine murmured, and looked around. ‘She’s surprisingly neat and tidy.’

Jose raised an eyebrow. ‘Tell that to my wife and she’d split.’ He gestured to her to follow him from the dressing room. ‘My wife spends hours every day just tidying up after her.’

Lorraine looked back at the pale blue room. It felt cold, empty and unused. It was hard to imagine Cindy sleeping in there, let alone dressing and... ‘What about her bathroom?’

Jose paused, already at the door. ‘Through the mirrored wall beyond the bed.’ He moved soundlessly across the thick blue carpet, passed his hand across a certain area of the mirror and the door slid back electronically to reveal yet more ice-blue, this time stained floor-to-ceiling marble. Again, the room was obsessively neat. The only thing that seemed out of place was a single toothbrush left beside one of the washbasins. Jose opened one of the cupboards underneath, took out a spray of glass polish and a cloth, cleaned carefully around the washbasin, replaced the cleaning fluid and cloth and put the toothbrush neatly into a pale blue glass holder.

He caught Lorraine watching him. ‘Mr Nathan hated anything out of place. He checked every room every day.’

‘You mean she couldn’t even leave a toothbrush out?’

‘Water stains the marble. He even used to check under the taps. He was quite obsessive about cleanliness.’

Jose ushered Lorraine back across Cindy’s bedroom. ‘He showered sometimes six, seven times a day, and changed his clothes as often. But he worked out a lot, and he would need clean clothes to work out in, clean clothes to change into, and then he would start the whole process again.’

Lorraine followed him across the landing. ‘Must have been tough to work for him.’

‘Not really, you got into his routine. This is his room — the master bedroom.’

Lorraine waited as the pine doors opened, then said softly, ‘Well, I think you’ll have quite a job in here, Jose. I’m sure Mr Nathan never left his room in this state.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Jose whispered.

The lurid orange linen had been torn from the twelve-foot-square bed and strewn over the floor. The rugs had been drawn up in places and pulled into the centre of the room, throwing a tall metal chair onto its side. A glass coffee table had been broken, as had a lighting fitting. A canvas had been dragged from the wall and the drapes on the lower windows had been torn down. A marble plinth lay on its side, and what had been a Chinese famille rose peach vase lay shattered in tiny fragments.

‘Well, Cindy was right. Somebody has been here, and this must have taken quite a while,’ Lorraine said, watching Jose carefully. He seemed genuinely shocked by the destruction in the huge room.

There was a dressing room similar to that of the guest suite, Lorraine noticed. Its electronic door was ajar. ‘Can I go in here?’ she asked, and the man nodded without speaking. At first sight, Harry Nathan’s dressing room was untouched, the clothes neatly stored.

‘I think I should check the entire house, Mrs Page,’ Jose said, ‘if you would care to come downstairs with me.’ Lorraine wondered if there was some reason why he wanted her out of the room. ‘Could I just see his bathroom?’ she asked.

Jose pointed towards it as he surveyed the bedroom. ‘I just don’t see when this was done. My wife and I left the house for such a short while.’

Lorraine glanced into the bathroom, another room with the charm of a meat safe, then did a double-take. ‘Oh, my God...’

The blood was in pools, not even dried, and there was a heap of blood-sodden towels in the centre of the otherwise spotless bathroom. Jose stepped past her, bent down to the towels, then recoiled. He leaped to the washbasin and retched. That reaction clearly wasn’t faked, Lorraine noted. He had not been with Cindy when she had lost her child.

‘Let’s take a look round the rest of the house,’ she said, already heading out, not turning back when she heard Jose vomiting. The wreckage in the bedroom made her wonder if Cindy herself had caused the damage — perhaps that was what had made her miscarry, unless she had walked in on someone else and been attacked. Lorraine was still deep in thought as she crossed the landing towards the stairs. Suddenly she paused. Had she seen all the rooms on this floor:

‘What’s that room?’ She indicated a closed door.

‘No one is allowed in there. Mr Nathan never let anyone in even to clean it.’

‘Mr Nathan is dead now, so let me see in there, Jose, would you? ‘

‘It’s always locked.’

But Lorraine had turned the handle as he spoke and the door opened.

This was Nathan’s office: here, at least, the walls were still intact, though covered with two-foot-square wood tiles stained red and black in an ugly checkerboard effect. There was the usual office equipment, a photocopier, fax machine, computers and telephones, and a bank of four television sets, like monitors, was recessed into the wall. Two shelves that had previously contained videotapes were now empty, the tapes removed from their cases and thrown on the floor. Lorraine saw that they were labelled with the names of Nathan’s films and of TV shows he had appeared in — someone had clearly gone through them to check that the contents of the boxes matched the labels outside.

There was something in this house for which someone had been searching desperately, that much was obvious to Lorraine. The fact that the phone tapes had been destroyed suggested that it might have been a recording, but it hadn’t been on any of the tapes she had listened to or, presumably, the ones that had been destroyed, or the burglar wouldn’t have bothered looking any further. Nor could it have been on any of the videotapes in front of her, or they, too, would have been destroyed or removed. There was, however, a cache of tapes from the security cameras, which Cindy had mentioned but which had never been found, and these must be the object of the search.

‘What did Mr Nathan do with the tapes he recorded on the security cameras?’ Lorraine asked.

‘He took care of all that himself,’ Jose said. ‘I thought he kept them in here, or just used them over and over.’

‘When was all the security put in the house?’

‘A couple of years ago. The same firm did some of the decorating.’

‘Oh, really?’ Lorraine asked casually. ‘Any work on the walls or floors?’

‘Wall panels. Like in here,’ he said.

What a surprise, she thought, scanning the checkerboard walls. ‘Jose,’ she said, with her sweetest smile, ‘could you get me something with a flat blade — like a big knife or a chisel?’ She had a good idea that she would not need any implement to open the hidden compartment she was sure was in the wall, but she wanted him out of the room. He nodded and disappeared.

As soon as he was gone, she began to scan the rows of large wooden tiles on the walls, then spotted a row of metal bandstand chairs in dolly-mixture colours folded flat against one of the walls. She examined the floor in front of them, which, thanks to Harry Nathan’s secrecy, did not benefit from daily vacuuming. She could make out the marks where a chair’s sharp metal legs had indented the thick pile — deeper than one would have expected if someone had been merely sitting on it, but not if they had stood on it, particularly a tall and heavy man...

She pulled out a chair, set it up with its feet on the same marks, then climbed up on it. She pressed carefully along the vertical edges of the two large wooden tiles within easy reach, and swore under her breath when they remained still. Then she tried the horizontal axis. One of the tiles gave, just a quarter of an inch. It seemed to be spring-loaded on the other side to prevent it opening too easily and to keep it flush with the rest of the wall. She had to press hard but finally a wooden door opened. Behind it were pile after pile of tapes. Lorraine pulled one out. There was no title, only a date and the name ‘Cindy’.

‘What are you doing?’ Jose spoke suddenly behind her, and she almost fell off the chair. The man was standing in the doorway with what looked like a carving knife, Juana beside him.

Lorraine looked coolly at them. She had no idea what their intentions towards her were, but she had to try to face them out. ‘I was looking for evidence relevant to my client’s case, and it seems like I found it. My assistant and I are working closely with the police, and I will naturally be informing them as soon as possible. I imagine they will want to talk to you about how the house came to be torn apart today, and how this evidence came to be concealed.’ She willed her voice to remain calm.

‘We have nothing to do with this,’ Juana said immediately, angry and defensive, and Jose shot her a warning glance. ‘We were going to go to the police ourselves — tell her, Jose.’

‘Be quiet,’ he ordered. ‘There is nothing to tell.’

The woman’s eyes flashed. ‘How much longer are you going to hide that man’s dirt, Jose?’

‘Be quiet, woman!’ he repeated, but his wife stood her ground.

‘He is dead. We have nothing. Tell her the truth.’

The man sighed. ‘Perhaps it is better. Perhaps we should go downstairs.’

Lorraine relaxed. ‘I’d certainly be more comfortable. But I’d like to take the tapes. They become Mrs Nathan’s property, I believe, under the terms of Mr Nathan’s will, and as I just said, she has asked me to gather any evidence relevant to her case.’

Jose looked at Juana again. ‘Let her take them. I want them gone.’ There was a note of resignation in her voice.

Lorraine scooped into her arms as many of the tapes as she could hold and climbed down from the chair. ‘I’ll lock these in the trunk of my car before we talk.’

Juana nodded, a look of relief crossing her face. ‘I will make some tea.’

Lorraine made two journeys out to the Mercedes, doing her best to appear unconcerned, but prepared for any attempt the two servants might make to stop her. Neither approached her, though, and she could hear them talking in Spanish in the kitchen, Juana’s voice much more prominent than Jose’s. She locked the trunk before returning to the house.

Lorraine walked back into the hall and through to where she could hear Jose and Juana’s voices. The kitchen, which had the air of an operating theatre, was in monochrome black and white, and the table was set with crockery of almost transparent white porcelain in a variety of deliberately irregular shapes. ‘Mr Nathan certainly seemed to like the minimalist look,’ Lorraine said.

‘Mr Nathan was a criminal,’ Juana said, tight-lipped. ‘He was a thief Jose said nothing: his wife had clearly convinced him that their interests no longer lay in loyalty to their former employer.

She poured Lorraine a cup of slightly perfumed tea, and pushed a plate of home-made crinkle cookies towards her.

‘What makes you say that?’ Lorraine said, as she bit into a cookie, but before the woman could answer, the telephone rang.

Jose picked it up. ‘No, Mrs Nathan, I have no authority...’ he said mechanically.

Lorraine looked up at the mention of her client’s name. ‘Can I speak to her?’ she asked, but the man shook his head.

‘It is not Cindy,’ Juana said. ‘It is Kendall. She has been calling every day since Mr Nathan died. Cindy won’t let her in the house.’

Jose continued to say yes and no to a clearly pushy caller, and told her that Cindy had suffered a miscarriage and been taken to Cedars-Sinai.

When he hung up, Lorraine asked, ‘What did she want?’

‘What she always wants. She says there’s some property here of hers. Mr Feinstein has given instructions that she is not to be allowed to remove anything — I think it’s some of the paintings.’

Or maybe some tapes, Lorraine thought, wondering when Harry Nathan’s interest in home movies had started.

‘What were you about to say, Juana, about Mr Nathan’s having stolen something?’ she asked.

Juana looked at Jose, indicating that he should speak. He pulled at his tie. ‘Mr Nathan owed us a lot of money, Mrs Page. Our life savings, plus back salary. We were only here because we wanted to get paid. Six, seven years ago, he said he would invest it for us.’

Juana folded her arms. ‘For the first few years we didn’t question it. He said he had invested it for us and even paid us dividends, so it seemed our money had doubled, then trebled and then...’ She went on to describe how when Nathan had married Kendall, they had wanted to leave. ‘She was an evil woman, but when we went to him and asked for our money, told him we couldn’t stay, he... he told us that he’d had some bad news about his stocks and shares. He said he hadn’t been able to tell us because he was so upset about it — that he had lost everything as well.’

‘But that obviously wasn’t true,’ Lorraine said, jerking her head towards the rest of the house.

‘He said the house was remortgaged and he made us all these promises about selling his art collection. We stayed on here because we had no place else to go and no money to go anywhere with. At least by being here we could see if he did make any money and then we’d get paid. He promised us we would. He owed everybody he ever met,’ Jose said flatly. ‘Now we just hope that we’ll get something if his estate is sold.’

‘Does Cindy know about this?’

Juana shook her head. ‘That silly child knows nothing, and he’d made her so crazy anyway. We think he was going to leave her, find a woman with money, probably.’

‘Do you think she killed him?’

There was another exchange of looks, and then Juana sighed. ‘Yes, we do. She threatened it more than once.’

‘You were here in the house, though, weren’t you, the morning Mr Nathan was shot?’

‘Yes, but I was working in the laundry, and Jose was out back near the garages. We didn’t hear anything at all, not until Mrs Nathan started screaming.’

Jose went on to describe how he and Juana had tried to get Nathan’s body out of the pool, but it was so heavy they couldn’t lift it.

‘What was Cindy doing then?’

Jose thought for a moment. ‘She was sitting by the pool, and I shouted at her to help us. She just kept saying over and over that she didn’t do it — no, what she said was she didn’t think that she had done it. That’s a strange thing to say, isn’t it?’

‘But you think that she did?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Juana.

‘She had reasons,’ Jose agreed. ‘I think she knew he was going to kick her out. They did nothing but argue, and she was drinking heavily, and—’

‘Tell her,’ Juana said. ‘Tell her everything.’

Jose looked shifty, and wouldn’t meet Lorraine’s eyes. Then he said, ‘She was having an affair with Raymond Vallance, Mr Nathan’s closest friend.’

Juana looked at Jose as if she expected him to say more: when he remained silent she spoke up herself. ‘And he has offered us money — to keep our mouths shut and give him the tapes.’ Juana met Lorraine’s eyes squarely. ‘I would have taken his money with pleasure, but we did not know where the tapes were.’

‘Did you tell him that yesterday at the funeral?’ Lorraine asked.

‘I have told him many times.’ She noted that Juana did not confirm what her conversation with Vallance had been about.

‘Did you know what was on the tapes?’

‘I can guess. Mr Nathan used to take drugs and party in the basement on the weekends. He would tell us to take time off. When we went in to clean, you could smell the... sex in the air.’

‘Do you think Raymond Vallance could have been here this afternoon?’ Lorraine asked.

‘He has a key,’ Jose put in. ‘She gave it to him.’

‘I see. Well, thank you both very much. If you think of anything else that might be important, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me — here’s my card.’ She placed it on the kitchen table. ‘I’ll go see Cindy tonight.’

‘What about the jeep?’ Juana said hesitantly to her husband.

He shrugged.

‘What was that?’ Lorraine asked.

Jose chewed his lip. ‘Well, it’s probably nothing, but I saw it very early, parked down the road. It was odd — most residents around here never park on the street, there’s no need.’

Juana added, ‘But it wasn’t there when you looked later. Tell Mrs Page, tell her whose car you thought it was.’

‘It was the same colour, maybe even the same type, as the jeep Mrs Kendall Nathan drives,’ Jose said.

Lorraine could hardly contain herself. She asked when Jose had seen it and when he thought it had been driven away. He was unsure of the exact time, only that it had been there early that morning and had gone after the murder.

‘You won’t tell her what we’ve said, will you?’ Jose said nervously.

‘No, of course not. Whatever we have discussed remains private,’ Lorraine lied, setting off down the steps. ‘Goodnight.’

The couple stood in the doorway for a moment until the security lights came on, then closed the front door. Lorraine waited until she thought they must be back in the kitchen, then hurried across the lawn, stepped into the shrubbery and, under cover of the thick bushes, began to examine the ground. She got down on her hands and knees and inched her way on all fours, scratched by the bushes, feeling in front of her. She searched for ten minutes until the security lights went out and she could no longer see anything. She decided to come back the following day and continue. She was still kneeling, as she turned to make her way out of the shrubbery, when she felt something digging into her knee. When she looked down, the object glinted faintly. She picked it up: a large, snub-nosed bullet. She’d found it. At least Cindy Nathan had been telling the truth about one thing: that two gunshots had been fired the morning of the murder.