No Cure for Love

10

Judging by the expressions of delight and surprise when the captain announced that it was a clear and sunny day in Manchester, with a temperature of fifty degrees, Californians had just as many illusions about the English weather as the Brits had about theirs. Either that or global warming was messing everything up. No one took off their jackets, though; fifty was still too cold for an Angeleno in December.

As Sarah had a British passport, she avoided the long line at immigration. Her one large suitcase, packed with Christmas presents, arrived quickly at the carousel, and though one of the officers gave her a second glance when she walked through the “Nothing to Declare’ exit, it wasn’t because he thought she was smuggling something in.

The airport was noisy with the clamor of waiting relatives. Sarah’s plane had arrived at the same time as a Jamaican flight, which explained the colorful costumes and the steel band. Here to greet a visiting dignitary or a sports team, she guessed.

She stood by the barrier holding on to her pushcart and scanned the crowd for Paula. There she was, waving both arms in the air behind a group of Indian women in colorful saris.

Sarah pushed forward, muttering excuse-mes as she went. The arrivals concourse was so crowded that it was impossible to get through without bumping into people. She almost ran over a small child and earned a dirty look for catching an elderly woman a glancing blow on the shin before she reached Paula. They hugged briefly, then Paula pushed Sarah back to arm’s-length and examined her.

“Let’s have a look at you, then, our Sal.”

The broad Yorkshire accent came as a shock to Sarah, though she didn’t know why it should. She had spoken that way herself once, but now it sounded awkward and primitive to her, the mark of a certain class. She felt embarrassed for thinking such thoughts and cursed the English class system for always leaving its mark, no matter what you achieved. Had she been born to the upper classes and bred for success, Sarah thought bitterly, she wouldn’t always be so consumed by self-doubt and lack of confidence, wouldn’t always feel the bubble was about to burst.

“Well,” said Paula, “I must say it’s a big improvement on the last time.”

“What is?”

“Don’t you remember? The make-up, the frizzy hair, the leather?”

Sarah laughed. “Oh. Yes, of course.” She didn’t remember, though, which was hardly surprising given the condition she had been in during her last visit home. That was before California, before the U.S. tour with Gary and his band, but it wasn’t before the drugs and the drinking; though she hadn’t recognized it immediately, the craziness had already begun. She didn’t remember anything very clearly about that period of her life. Nor did she wish to.

This time she was wearing stonewashed jeans and a red sweatshirt, carrying her quilted down coat of many colors over her arm, and her blond hair was trimmed neat and short. She also wore no makeup, a real treat after having the stuff plastered on every day at the studio.

“Mind you,” Paula went on. “You could do with putting a bit of meat on your bones. Have you been slimming and going to one of them health club places like they do in Hollywood?”

Sarah laughed. “I run every morning on the beach, but that’s about all.” In fact, only yesterday morning I stumbled across a dismembered body, she almost added, but stopped herself in time. No point getting into that with Paula. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s illegal to sell fatty foods in California.”

“Is it?”

“Only kidding. Though sometimes you’d think so.”

“Well, you looked a bit better padded last time I saw you on television. How long ago did you make that programme?”

“Not long. Television puts at least ten pounds on you, didn’t you know that?”

“How would I? I’ve never been on telly. I’m not the star in the family.”

“I just thought people knew, that’s all,” Sarah said. “Anyway, I hope I don’t look that fat on the series.”

“I didn’t say fat did I? Just a bit better padded.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Anyway, I suppose you look healthy enough,” Paula went on. “Though for the life of me, I can’t see where you’re hiding your tan.”

“Which way?”

Paula pointed and Sarah started pushing the cart through the throng. “I don’t tan well,” she said. “I never did. You know that. The sun just burns me.” Besides, she might have added, the studio prefers my “porcelain’ complexion; they say it goes with the plummy Brit accent.

“Well, pardon me for mentioning it.”

Sarah laughed. Same old Paula, prickly as a cactus, quick to take offense when none was intended.

Finally, they arrived at the car park and found the red Nissan.

“Unless you’ve learned to drive since you were last here, love,” Paula said, “I’d try the other side.”

Sarah blushed. “Sorry.” She’d gone automatically to the driver’s side. She got in the correct side and fastened her seat belt. “How was the drive over?” she asked.

Paula lit a cigarette and breathed a sigh of relief. “Not bad. Roadworks near Barton bridge and an accident just past Huddersfield, but other than that... ” She negotiated her way out of the car park, refusing Sarah’s offer of money to pay the man in the booth, and headed for the motorway. “It’s a bloody maze round here,” she muttered.

The car felt cramped and tinny to Sarah after Stuart’s gigantic hunk of Detroit steel. She wriggled around in the seat to get comfortable, but still the roof was too near to her head and the windshield too close to her face. Cars made her more nervous than planes, which was one reason why she had never learned to drive. The smoke made her cough.

“All right?” Paula cast her a sideways glance.

“Yes, fine.”

“I’ll open the window if you want.”

“No, it’s all right.”

“Really. I don’t mind. It’s no trouble.”

“Well, maybe just an inch or so.”

Paula opened the window a crack and pretended to shiver. The draft blew the smoke right into Sarah’s face.

“Shit!” Paula missed a turning and went around the roundabout again. Sarah thought of the little roundabout in Venice, one of the few she had seen in the United States. She felt a momentary pang of homesickness for her beach house. It was the only place where she had felt truly at home in years, perhaps because it was where she had started putting her life back together after Gary.

But thinking of the house also brought to mind a fleeting image of the severed arm and the heart in the sand. Then she remembered the letter she had slipped in her luggage, unopened. She had found it when she dropped by the house with Stuart to pack — at the last minute, as usual — before going to the airport.

She looked out of the window and saw a local diesel train rattling along beside a canal. Two boys stood on the stone banks leaning over the water with fishing nets. She doubted they had much hope of catching anything there in December, mild as it was. A yellow sign showing a man digging with a shovel appeared by the side of the road, then another. Soon the motorway was reduced to two lanes and they were crawling along between a silver Peugeot and a juggernaut from Barcelona. But there were no men digging with shovels.

Only when they had left the Manchester conurbation behind did Paula seem to relax at all. She still sat hunched forward in her seat, though, gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white and squinting at the road and the cars ahead as if they were some sort of malevolent entities bent on her destruction. She doesn’t like driving, Sarah realized. It must run in the family. Her father and mother, she remembered, had never owned or driven a car in their lives.

Soon the Pennines loomed ahead, furry green hillsides made eerie by mist swirling on their lower slopes.

There was still plenty of traffic on the roadway as it passed through the grimy urban sprawl around Rochdale and Oldham, but the cars thinned out as it climbed a long, slow hill and cut a swath through the Pennines.

All around, sheep grazed and becks and streams trickled through deep clefts in the dark green hillsides, flashing in the winter sun. They passed lonely barns, hamlets, small stone bridges, a reservoir. At one point the roadway got so high up that Sarah’s ears went funny like they did on the plane. She yawned.

Paula glanced sideways again. “Tired? You’re quite a hit over here, you know. There’ll be plenty of people in the village wanting your autograph. Just thought I’d warn you. You probably get enough of that over there.” She jerked her head back, indicating the Atlantic.

“Not really,” Sarah said. “Hardly at all, in fact.” In the first flush of her television success, Sarah had worried about people recognizing her and approaching her in public places. She dreaded living the kind of life Elvis Presley had, for example, imprisoned in Graceland, having to hire a whole movie theater just to see a film, or an entire fairground to go on one ride, always surrounded by bodyguards.

But after a while, she had learned a very interesting thing: people tended not to recognize her unless she went out of her way to be noticed. As herself, she could walk along the street, shop in the Beverly Center, or browse along Rodeo Drive, and nobody came up demanding autographs.

On the other hand, if she dressed more like Anita O’Rourke, then people spotted her immediately. Most of the time she went around in jeans, a T-shirt and a Dodgers cap. Even the detective she talked to at the beach hadn’t recognized her at first.

Again, she thought of the letters and the body in the sand. She remembered the touch of the hand, cold and stiff like a broken marble statue, and then the dark blood clotted with sand. There had been a body, she couldn’t deny that, but it had nothing to do with her. When she went back there with the police, the heart had gone. She had been under so much stress she must have started seeing things, she told herself.

“Have you seen the show?” she asked Paula, snapping herself out of the reverie.

“Oh, aye,” said Paula. “We seem to get nothing but American stuff these days. The kids like it. Not that I think they understand it, mind you, but they know it’s their Auntie Sal. It’s not bad.”

“And Dad?”

In the silence that followed, Sarah looked at her sister’s profile and saw the lips pressed tight together, the dry, raw skin of her cheeks. Paula had never been the beauty — always just a little too shapeless, her features just a little too pinched and sharp, hair too coarse and oily — but the years had also been unkind to her.

Though she was only thirty-six, Paula looked in her mid-forties, at least, Sarah thought, with deeply ingrained lines around her eyes and the corners of her thin lips, and a permanent aura of weariness and suspicion. She could do something about herself if she tried — wore more suitable clothes, went to a good hairdresser and chose the right makeup, for example. Her eyes were still beautiful. A lighter blue than Sarah’s, they could light up a room when they weren’t poisoned by distrust and bitterness, a sense of always being hard-done-to, as they usually were.

“He doesn’t watch much telly,” Paula said finally. “Only old films on video.”

“What does he do?”

“Reads the paper. Looks at his stamp albums. Stares into space a lot.”

“Does he get out much?”

Paula shot her a scathing glance. “He’s got bloody emphysema,” she said. “He spends most of his time in a bleeding wheelchair with an oxygen tank strapped to the back. What do you expect?”

Sarah said nothing. She felt herself redden.

“Course,” Paula went on, “it’s the bloody pit that caused it, you know. Over thirty years down that pit, he was, then what do they do? Thatcher’s lot closes it down and chucks him out on the dole, that’s what. On the bloody scrapheap in his prime. A few years later he starts getting shortness of breath. And do you think there’s any compensation? Is there hell-as-like.”

Sarah remembered that her father had smoked about sixty unfiltered cigarettes a day as well as working down the coal mine, but she didn’t see any point in mentioning that to Paula. She also had to get used to the idea that, while Paula might complain about not getting money she felt she was entitled to from the government, any offers of help from family or friends would be taken as charity and dismissed. It was fine for the state to pay out, but not for her sister to do so.

Sarah had been allowed to put down the deposit on the cottages and pay for the renovations when they were knocked into one, but Paula would struggle with the mortgage, with the help of Dad’s pension and her earnings as a barmaid, and she even made it clear that she regarded the down payment as only a “loan.” Stubborn northern pride, Sarah thought. But she knew she might not have got so far without it herself.

They edged away from the difficult subject of their father and Paula asked Sarah about life in Hollywood. Somehow, Sarah got the impression she didn’t have much interest except for the occasional opportunity it gave her to put down the Americans and their ways.

To Paula, Sarah soon began to realize, Hollywood was, quite simply, a fantasy. It wasn’t real; it didn’t exist except on celluloid and in newsprint; its inhabitants were cartoon figures or cardboard cutouts that just happened to look like handsome men and beautiful women. Their real-life exploits were scripted to titillate the masses.

Actually, Sarah thought with a smile, Paula wasn’t far wrong, if only she knew it.

The sun had disappeared behind clouds now and rain was already starting to spatter the windscreen. Paula turned off the M62 south of Leeds and swung north-east toward the York bypass. It was too warm in the car now. Stifling. Sarah found herself fading in and out of sleep.

Rothwell, Swillington, Garforth. She saw them all through half-closed eyes. Run-down housing estates, burned-out cars on patches of wasteland, the odd small park with bare trees and empty flower beds, lots of pubs, squat churches, schools with iron railings around the playgrounds, zebra crossings and Belisha beacons out front, the occasional strip of shops — newsagent’s, mini-market, DIY, grocer’s, turf accountant’s — all in the inimitable mixture of dirty red-brick and dark millstone grit.

The road ran close to the house and shopfronts, separated only by a narrow flagstone pavement. Everything seemed so tiny, so scaled down. It all felt so close, pressing in. Stout old women in threadbare overcoats waited at pedestrian crossings, faces obscured by umbrellas.

Paula cursed the weather and lit another cigarette. Sarah opened her window another inch. The cool draft roused her a little. She could hear the hiss of the wheels along the wet road surface. The rain smelled fresh and sweet. A few drops moistened her cheek.

Paula glanced sideways. “All right?”

“Mmm. Just a bit tired.”

“Forecast says we’re in for a miserable Christmas,” Paula said with relish. “Rain, rain and more rain. Maybe gale force winds, too. And hail. We won’t be having a white Christmas this year. That’s what they say. Course, they’re not always right.”

Sarah closed her eyes and imagined fat snowflakes drifting into the sea and melting. Despite the freak conditions at Manchester, she had no illusions that the weather was going to be anything other than grim; she knew she would feel chilled to the bone day and night, no matter how many layers of clothing she wore or how high she managed to persuade Paula to turn up the central heating. After all, she had lived in England most of her life.

On the other hand, she really didn’t care whether it rained or hailed — at least she knew it was going to be cold. That was all that counted. She couldn’t get at all excited about the Christmas spirit in LA, especially with the unusual number of warm, sunny days they were getting this year. Even the few Christmas trees she had seen appeared to be wilting. She wondered what it must be like in Australia, when Christmas came in the middle of summer.

Sarah rolled the window up again when Paula finished her cigarette. As they headed over the bleak wilderness of the North York Moors, the rain driving almost horizontal and pouring so hard the windscreen wipers could hardly keep time, she slid sideways and rested her cheek against the cool glass. She closed her eyes and smiled to herself.

Paula was cursing a van churning up spray in front, but it didn’t matter. Here, at least, were demons she could deal with, demons she knew. Family. It was hardly going to be a merry Christmas, but she might be able to rebuild a few bridges and, more important, while she was away all her problems back in Los Angeles would disappear. When she got back to the beach house, all would be as if it had never happened.

Or so it seemed as she sat with the cool glass against her cheek and the rhythmic swishing of the windscreen wipers lulling her to sleep for the first time since she had pulled that severed arm out of the bloody sand.

11

“You didn’t ask me down here just to pick my brains about the college bowls, Arvo,” said Joe Westinghouse. “What’s on your mind?”

Joe and Arvo sat in a bar on Broadway — Joe’s choice — a dim, quiet place for serious drinkers and adulterous couples. It was a vinyl and molded-plastic kind of place, nothing special, but nobody bothered you if you wanted to drink and talk. Or just drink. Nobody came here to make deals; nobody talked on cellular phones or tapped away at notebook computers over cocktails; there wasn’t even a pianist.

Soft elevator music permeated the smoky air like a whore’s caress. The bartender had his back turned; he was polishing glasses and watching a small TV with the sound turned off. The Kings were playing the Maple Leafs in some weird time zone somewhere across the country. Arvo had a soft spot for the Leafs. Detroit was only a couple of hundred miles from Toronto, after all, and LA was a long way from both places. Still, when it came to baseball you could keep your Blue Jays, Dodgers and Angels; he was a Tigers fan all the way.

It was mid-afternoon. Apart from the bartender, the waitress, a few pairs of illicit lovers and a seasoned alcoholic at the bar knocking back the Martinis as if they were going out of style, Joe and Arvo were the only ones in the place.

Joe Westinghouse was a detective with Robbery-Homicide Division. He and Arvo had consulted on a case once before. They shared an interest in football and baseball and had been to games together now and then. Joe had been to UCLA on a football scholarship until he tore up his knee.

Joe was tall and broad-shouldered, his skin the color and texture of well-tanned leather. His cropped black hair was sprinkled with gray at the temples, and his deadpan eyes occasionally twinkled with humor. Arvo thought he looked a bit like Dave Winfield, the baseball player. Also like a baseball player, Joe wore a lot of gold — watch-band, wrist chains, gold stud in his ear, and probably even more under his white button-down shirt, where Arvo couldn’t see.

Joe was working on a rye and ginger, and Arvo was drinking coffee. They had been playing catch-up on sports and department gossip for half an hour, bitching about the brass, but now it was time to get down to business.

“Okay. You’re right,” said Arvo. “It’s about that body your guys found on the beach near Pacific Palisades a couple of days ago.”

Joe took another sip of rye and ginger. “Uh-huh.”

“You know anything about the case?”

“Let’s say I’ve got a passing interest.”

“Anything on it yet?”

Joe squinted at Arvo for a moment, swirling the ice in his drink, then seemed to decide to cut him a bit of slack. Must have been those great seats to the Dodgers’ last game of the season, Arvo thought.

The waitress came by in her black fishnet tights and pink tube-top. “Youse guys all want another?” she asked.

“Why not?” said Joe. “He’s paying.”

She smiled and went to fetch their drinks, wobbling on her high heels. Joe and Arvo watched her go. A body like hers took work, lots of it. Joe raised his eyebrows. They waited until she had set the fresh drink in front of Joe, refilled Arvo’s coffee cup and tottered off again, then Joe said, “Okay. Shoot. What do you want to know?”

“Have you ID’d him yet?”

Joe nodded. “That was the easy part. Prints on file. Name’s John Heimar, Caucasian male, just turned nineteen last October.”

“What’s his background?”

“Exactly what you’d expect of a good-looking kid from the boondocks come to find fame and fortune in the city of sin.”

“He worked the streets?”

“Uh-huh. The Boulevard.”

Arvo nodded. He knew Joe meant the stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard that passed through West Hollywood, a big gay cruising area. A saccharine string arrangement of “All My Loving’ drifted across the room like a bad smell. Arvo winced and sipped his coffee. “Where’s he from?”

Joe rubbed his eyes then spoke in a monotone, as if he had heard it, seen it and said it all before. “Grew up in Magic City, Idaho. Would you believe that? Middle-class parents, ordinary decent folks who didn’t know what to do with a wayward kid. Pop runs the local hardware store and Mom teaches kindergarten. Real Leave It To Beaver shit. It seems Magic City, Idaho, didn’t have whatever magic it took to keep young Johnny around, ’cause he kept on running away since he was thirteen. New York once. Chicago twice. New Orleans. San Francisco. He wound up out here a couple of years ago. Lived on the streets ever since. Hollywood Division’s had him in and out like they’ve got revolving doors. Nickel-and-dime stuff, mostly. Shoplifting, a little dealing. Nothing violent.”

“So what happened?”

Joe shrugged, tapped out a Winston and lit it. Arvo licked his lips. He’d given up smoking three years ago, when he moved out to LA to join the TMU, but he hadn’t gotten rid of the craving yet. Cigarettes, he remembered, went especially well with coffee. With alcohol, too. And after dinner. Not to mention sex.

“You tell me,” Joe said, blowing the smoke out. “Just plain bad luck, I guess.”

“Sex crime?”

“Looks like it.”

“How was he killed?”

“According to the coroner’s office, somebody slit his throat from behind with a very sharp knife and stabbed him in the chest and neck. Then cut him up with some kind of saw or serrated blade. Arms. Legs. Head. Torso. Put him together again on the beach like a jigsaw puzzle and half buried him in sand.” He shook his head slowly.

“The throat?” said Arvo. “That’s pretty common in homosexual homicides, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. Shrink says it’s got something to do with the mouth and throat connection with oral sex.” Joe shrugged. “I don’t know about that. All I know is I’ve seen too much of it. You get it in a lot of high-octane emotional murders, too, mostly domestics. Seems when people see red they aim for the throat and chest with a knife. What the experts call the “overkill” element. Means the poor fucker’s dead before the last fifty stab wounds.”

“Any fingerprints? Footprints?”

Joe shook his head. “No physical evidence at all. Not yet.”

“Was Heimar killed on the beach?”

Joe tapped a column of ash into the glass tray. “Nope. Not enough blood. He was just... reassembled... there. With about as much success as Humpty Dumpty.”

“Where he was killed, there’d be a lot of blood, right?”

“Yup. But so far we’ve got diddly. No suspects and no idea where it happened. Could’ve been some other beach, maybe the desert, up in the hills, or anywhere else out in the wilds. Could’ve been in some apartment for all we know. Or a house. A nice house somewhere in the ’burbs like Palos Verde or San Marina. People’d be surprised some of the things going on there behind locked doors out in the ’burbs. Gacey. Dahmer. Who the fuck knows anything any more?” Joe tossed back the rest of his rye and ginger and crunched the ice cubes. He waved for the waitress and she brought another. Arvo stuck with coffee.

“So what’s your interest?” Joe asked finally.

“Sarah Broughton.”

Joe nodded. “Right. She found the body. She wouldn’t have been receiving any unwanted attention from warped members of the viewing audience lately, would she?”

Arvo smiled. “You got it. Nasty letters.”

Joe cocked a finger at him and clicked his tongue. “I’m not a hotshot detective with RHD for nothing, man.”

“There’s nothing concrete,” Arvo said. “It’s just—”

“Too much of a coincidence?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you think there’s a connection?”

“No,” said Arvo. “People who write weird letters are generally wimps. They’d be no more likely to commit murder than a nun would. But like you said, it’s too much of a coincidence. I have to check it out.”

Joe nodded. “Uh-huh. Never did trust those nuns,” he said. “Anyway, a team of detectives canvassed the Boulevard strip, and all they could come up with is that a couple of other street kids saw John Heimar getting into a car about eight o’clock on the night he was killed. They figured he’d scored, of course. Needless to say, none of them was especially forthcoming.”

“Did they get the make?”

“Yeah. It’s a blue-green-black Ford Chevy convertible sedan pick-up truck from Japan.”

Arvo laughed. “Okay. Sorry I asked. You said earlier you thought it was a sex crime. Any other evidence yet, apart from the MO?”

“Some. The kid had been sodomized sometime before death, but there’s no telling when, or how willing he was. And there’s no evidence at all to show that he was forced. Given the victim’s line of business I’d say it’s likely enough he’d been with at least a couple of other chickenhawks earlier that night, wouldn’t you? On the other hand, you sometimes get cases where the john cuts off the guy’s air supply from behind with some sort of ligature while he butt-fucks him. Supposed to be a real turn-on. Something like that could have happened, gone too far, then the john panicked and tried to cover up, make it look like a sex murder. The coroner’s office found traces of semen from two different sources in the anus. Either he hadn’t heard of AIDS or he liked to take risks. Or maybe the rubber had a hole in it.”

“Was he HIV positive?”

“Nope. They ran that test pretty quickly.”

Arvo took a sip of tepid coffee and pulled a face. “What was the time of death?” he asked.

“Between about eleven that night and two in the morning. Wouldn’t say any closer than that.”

“That’s three hours after the kid was picked up.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nobody saw him after he got into that unidentified car around eight?”

“Only the killer.”

“Any signs of torture?”

“Nope. Clean as a whistle. Under the sand, the kid was buck naked. Apart from the stab wounds and an old needle-mark or two, his body was in pretty good shape.”

“Are you running DNA tests on the semen?”

“Sure. Like I said, they got two different samples already. But you know as well as I do, Arvo, that shit takes time. Especially the way things are backed up right now. Thirty-eight homicides last weekend. Thirty-eight. Can you believe it? You can only push the coroner’s office so hard. Those guys are up to their eyeballs in stiffs. Plus it takes so long for toxicology to get the test results from some of these things.”

Four businessmen came in, laughing and joking, fresh from the office by the looks of their clothes.

Joe looked at his watch. Just gone three. “After-work crowd,” he said. “They get in early on a Friday. Sometimes they get here so early they just sort of merge right in with the late-lunch crowd.”

Arvo laughed.

“I guess it’s not often you get a homosexual killer writing love letters to a beautiful actress, is it?” Joe asked.

Arvo shrugged. “Statistically speaking, no.”

“Fuck statistics.”

“Still no. Like I said, letter-writers don’t usually do much more than write letters. I’m just poking around. All I’m looking for is some connection between Sarah Broughton and Heimar, and it doesn’t look as if there is one.”

“If there is, I don’t see it.”

“Me, neither. What’s your theory?”

“Sex killer of some kind. Got to be. And he’s so proud of his handiwork he wants people to admire it. Peacock mentality.”

“Pretty limited audience.”

Joe shrugged. “Maybe.” Then he paused. “These letters the actress has been getting. Anything there?”

Arvo shook his head. “I’ve only seen one, and it’s pretty low-level stuff. How did she react at the scene?”

“As you’d expect. I didn’t get there till later, but according to the first officer she was pretty shaken up.”

“She a suspect?”

“Come on, Arvo, what do you take us for? She wouldn’t be in England right now if she was, would she? When they’d got her calmed down, the detectives who caught the squeal had a good look around her place. No blood, nothing. Do you figure the stiff for her pen pal? He comes visiting and she kills him, then cuts him up, buries him under the sand and conveniently finds him on her morning run?”

Arvo shrugged. “It was worth asking. Weirder things have happened.”

“True. But the answer’s still no. She’s clean.”

“Did she see anything?”

“Nope. Said she might have heard a sound or seen a light in the night, or she might have imagined it. It was later she found the stiff, when she was going for her regular morning run. She says she leaned forward and tugged the arm and... well, I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?”

Suddenly, Joe’s eyes twinkled and he burst into laughter. It sounded like a braying horse. Some of the other drinkers looked over, smiling uneasily. “Hey,” Joe said. “What if the cameras had caught that, huh? TV star bends over to pull this guy up out of the sand and what happens? His fucking arm comes off, that’s what, and she falls flat on her ass holding it out in front of her.”

Arvo visualized the scene, too, and couldn’t help but laugh with Joe at the farcical absurdity of it. When they had calmed down, Joe knocked back the dregs of his drink and stood up. “Got to go, old buddy,” he said. “Or Mary will have my ass. Booked off early. It’s little Sue’s birthday party today and I promised I’d be there. Six. Can you believe it? Seems only last week she was crawling around on all fours and running through a six-pack of Huggies a day. Anyway, don’t be a stranger.”

Arvo stood and shook hands. “You, too,” he said. “Any chance of a look at the crime-scene photos?”

Joe looked at his watch. “Sure, I’ll make a call and have copies sent over. And... ” Joe paused and turned on his way out. “Keep me informed.” He pointed a finger at Arvo and cocked it. “I mean it.”

“Will do. And thanks.”

When Joe had gone, Arvo found he had no desire to stay in the bar any longer. The smoke had thickened since the after-work crowd had started to arrive, and some moron had arranged “Suspicious Minds’ for accordion and strings. Probably made a fortune out of it, too. Welcome to hell.

He had some leftover pizza and a couple of bottles of Sam Adams lager in the fridge at home, and the previous night he’d set his VCR to tape I Married a Monster From Outer Space. If he hadn’t screwed up on the settings, it should be right there in the machine waiting for him. He’d seen it when he was a kid, but after Nyreen, the title took on a whole new perspective.

Arvo couldn’t see any link between a homosexual murder and the letters Sarah Broughton had been receiving. Despite the publicity given to exceptions, the rule was that celebrity stalkers were rarely violent; on the other hand, male prostitution was certainly a high-risk profession, AIDS not being the only danger. It attracted more than its fair share of violent weirdos and thrill killers. So John Heimar’s number had come up. As Joe said, that was just his bad luck.

But as he walked out onto Broadway, Arvo couldn’t help but wonder. The body had been placed where someone would have the shock of finding it, that was for certain. The killer obviously had a theatrical flair and needed an audience, if only of one. What Arvo had to ask himself was why he had selected that particular stretch of beach, where Sarah Broughton went for her morning run.

12

Sarah lay half-asleep listening to the seagulls screaming and squawking outside her window. At first, she thought she was still in her own bedroom back at the beach house. Soon she would wake up and the bad dream would be over. When she opened her eyes, though, she felt a momentary panic. Everything was different.

This room was smaller, for a start, and a thin white radiator under the drawn curtains infused the air with what little warmth it possessed. The tip of Sarah’s nose felt cold in a way it never had in Los Angeles. In the dim light, she could make out cream wallpaper patterned with poppies or red roses, matching the heavy duvet she pulled up to her chin. Her pillow smelled of lavender. Beyond the noise the gulls made, she could hear the sea pounding the wall.

Then she remembered: she was at the family cottage in Robin Hood’s Bay. It stood at the bottom of the hill, on a row to the left of the main street, and looked out right over the North Sea. That was why her father had wanted it. In clement weather, Sarah knew, Arthur Bolton liked nothing better than to sit in his wheelchair at the bottom of the garden and look out to sea. She fancied that the open horizon somehow helped make up for the years he had spent in the dark, claustrophobic coal mines.

Everything seemed unfamiliar to Sarah because she had never slept in this room before. The last time she had visited, the two adjacent cottages had not yet been knocked into one and renovated. Though she couldn’t remember the visit at all clearly, she had probably slept downstairs on the sofa-bed, stupefied with Quaaludes and cognac.

So far, she hadn’t seen either her father or Cathy and Jason. They hadn’t known what time Paula and Sarah would get back from the airport, so they had left a note saying they’d gone to visit a neighbor and wouldn’t be long.

Sarah had felt so tired that Paula had packed her off to bed immediately with a cup of tea. It was still there on the bedside table, only half drunk. Sarah slid her hand out and touched it. Cold. She huddled under the duvet again and closed her eyes.

Even though she now knew where she was, Sarah still felt disoriented. Too restless to go back to sleep, she turned over and stretched, arching so her fingers scraped the wall above her. That felt better.

She pulled back the sheets and went to open the curtains. Outside, it was getting dark. The rain had stopped and the sky looked like a dirty dishrag slashed with charcoal. The slate-colored sea sloshed heavily against the rough stone wall at the bottom of the garden. It was a sea view, all right, but light years away from the one she was used to, where bright sun bleached the vanishing point of water and sky.

Sarah turned the bedroom light on and took stock of her surroundings. Everything was fresh and clean, of course; that would be Paula’s doing. There was even the old framed print of Atkinson Grimshaw’s Park Row, Leeds 1882 from the old house in Barnsley hanging on the wall opposite her bed. Paula knew Sarah had always loved it for its eerie moon and sky and the cobbles and tramlines all wet and shiny after rain. She must have put it there specially.

In the small bookcase beside the wardrobe were Sarah’s old books. She hadn’t looked at them for years and hadn’t even known they had survived the move from Barnsley: childhood favorites like Black Beauty and The Secret Garden; Enid Blyton, mostly the Famous Five and the Secret Seven; some girls’-school and nurse stories; and one or two Mills and Boon romances.

Then came the Romantic poetry of her early teens — Keats, Shelley, Byron — followed by the plays she had read first at home then studied later at university — collections by Shakespeare, Ibsen and Tennessee Williams, along with well-thumbed copies of The Duchess of Malfi, Three Sisters and A Dream Play.

Hanging from a hook at the back of the door was the red knitted Christmas stocking her mother had made, with her name, Sally, embroidered in white. Paula must have dug it out. Perhaps her family really did want her here for Christmas after all.

Everything was quiet downstairs. Either they were still out or Paula was hushing everyone up so Sarah could sleep. Time to unpack.

Sarah hefted her suitcase onto the bed and unfastened it. Clothes and presents spilled out, and there, stuck in among them all, was the letter. She hesitated, then reached out and picked it up. This one had no stamp; it had been delivered by hand.

Just then, she heard a door bang downstairs, followed by the clamor of children’s voices. Jason called out her name. Paula told him to be quiet. Time to enter into family life again.

Sarah’s heart leapt into her throat. She had never felt so nervous, even before going on stage for a first night. She looked at the letter again and dropped it back among the pile of clothes, half pleased that she had been interrupted before opening it. After all, she was in England now, thousands of miles away from her problems in LA.

She pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt, then opened the door and started down the worn stone stairs.

What she saw made her stop halfway.

Illuminated by the hall light, a man slumped in a wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs. Beside him, attached to the chair, stood a small tank, like the kind frogmen wear, from which a transparent tube ran to his nostrils. His shoulders sloped and his body looked emaciated under the thick woollen blanket. Bluish flesh sagged and wrinkled over hollow, bony cheeks and scared, bright, feverish eyes looked up at her. Even from halfway upstairs, she could hear the soft hiss of the oxygen and the struggle as he labored for breath.

White-knuckled, she gripped the banister and took a faltering step forward. “Hello, Father,” she said.

13

I hear your actress found a body on the beach,” Maria said. “Think there’s anything in it?”

Arvo shook his head. “I doubt it. Just unlucky, I guess. On the other hand... ”

“What?”

“I don’t like coincidences, that’s all.”

“So what’s she like?”

“Who?”

“You know. The actress. Sarah Broughton.”

“You watch that show?”

“Sure do.”

Arvo shook his head slowly. It was late Friday afternoon, and Maria was sitting opposite him. He hadn’t seen her since the Sandi Gaines intervention. The only other team members in the office were Eric Mettering and Kelly Norris, one of the three females on the unit.

“Me, too,” Kelly called out from the far hutch. “That Jack Marillo guy’s got a great bod.”

Maria laughed. “So tell me about her,” she insisted. “What’s she like? In the flesh?”

In the flesh, Arvo still thought that Maria herself was as desirable a woman as he had ever met, though he hadn’t told her that, and just about the opposite physical type to Sarah Broughton.

They were different as day and night. Maria’s sexuality was sensual and earthy, while Sarah Broughton’s was more cerebral. While lovemaking with Maria would be joyous and uncomplicated, Arvo imagined, with Sarah it would mean searching for and freeing repressed emotions, finding ways through barriers and other defenses. Maria’s skin would be warm, would offer friction and texture to the touch, he thought, whereas Sarah’s would be as smooth, and possibly as cold, as marble.

“What kind of question is that?” Arvo asked. “‘What’s she like?’”

“A pretty simple one, I’d’ve thought,” said Maria. “Is she pretty?”

“Of course she’s pretty. She’s a TV actress.”

“They’re not all pretty,” Maria countered. “Especially the Brits. Some of them are downright plain and homely.”

“They’ve all got crooked teeth,” Kelly chimed in.

“Okay, so her teeth are a bit crooked,” Arvo said. “So what? So are mine. Does it mean you can’t be pretty if you’ve got crooked teeth?”

“You think you’re pretty, Arvo?” Maria asked with a mischievous smile.

“That’s not what I said. You’re misinterpreting me. What I said was—”

“I know what you said. So you think she’s pretty?”

“Sure she’s pretty, in a cool sort of way.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know, she’s blond, pale complexion, has that accent.”

“You think she’s frigid, is that it?”

“No, I didn’t say that. Look—”

“So she’s sexy as well as pretty?”

“I guess so.”

“Guess so? Come on, Arvo, you can do better than that.”

“Okay. Yeah. She’s sexy. All right?”

“How sexy?”

“Just sexy.”

“No need to blush.”

“I’m not blushing.”

“Yes you are,” yelled Kelly.

“What about her personality?” Maria asked.

“General impressions?”

“Well you hardly know her intimately. Or do you?”

“She’s an actress. You know actresses. She was partly in character. The cop she plays.”

“Anita O’Rourke,” Kelly chipped in again.

“That’s the one.”

“So,” Maria went on, “you’re saying you didn’t get a real good sense of her?”

“She’s very reserved.”

“Sounds like a typical Brit.”

“I guess so,” he said. “But I think she’s scared, too.”

“Maybe she’s got good reason to be. What’s your sense of the guy who’s writing the letters?”

Arvo thought for a moment, recalling the letter he had been studying earlier. “He sees himself as her long-lost lover, now become her saviour, her rescuer, her knight in shining armor.”

“Rescuer from what?”

“From the evils of Hollywood. From Them.”

“The usual semi-literate diatribe?”

“Not really. This guy seems reasonably well educated. Not that that means a lot, I know. Bizarre forms of spelling and grammar hardly represent a greater threat than correct grammar — except to literacy. There are some unusual capitalizations — nouns like ‘Machines,’ ‘Power’ and ‘Crazy.’”

“Germans capitalize their nouns, don’t they?” said Maria.

“Uh-huh. But this seems more like some sort of mental tic. It makes the concepts sound Big, and it goes with his gushing, flowery prose style.”

“What about the handwriting?” Kelly Norris asked. She had left her own hutch and was now standing beside Maria, interested, hand resting lightly on the divider. A tall, big-boned woman with a mass of curly gray hair and spots of color high on her cheeks, Kelly had been the first woman on the team. She was wearing threadbare black cords and a baggy white cardigan over a red blouse. Kelly always did dress casually.

“It was done on a laser printer,” said Arvo. “That means he either owns a computer set-up or he works in a place where he can get access to one.”

“Where did he send the letters?” Maria asked.

“Home address. She thought she kept it a pretty closely guarded secret.”

Kelly and Maria laughed. “Her and everyone else.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe we can do a bit of checking around with the agencies and private detectives who sell that sort of information. See if anyone’s bought Sarah Broughton’s address recently.”

“Good luck,” said Maria. “In my experience, those guys give you dick.”

“True enough. Still worth a shot.”

“Any occult stuff?” Kelly asked.

“No,” said Arvo. Often, the writers insisted that the victim should be initiated as a Dawn Goddess of the Order of the Golden Monkey Foreskins, or something. Arvo had seen plenty of those, and they always gave him the same feeling: somewhere between the creeps and the desire to laugh out loud.

“Apart from the romantic stuff,” he went on, “there are a few disturbing references to hacking away the corrupt flesh. And a bit about biting through her nipple and luxuriating in the flow of blood and milk.”

“Sick-o,” said Kelly.

Maria put her finger in her mouth and mimicked barfing.

Even Eric looked up from the file he was working on and wrinkled his nose.

“The big three,” Arvo said. “Sex, death and Mother. All in one sentence. All very mysterious.” But he stopped himself from reading too much into the images. After all, he wasn’t a psychiatrist; he only had a degree in Communications, that catch-all for people who didn’t really know what they wanted to do when they were between eighteen and twenty-one. And the TMU didn’t demand special prerequisite training from its members, only that they be good detectives. Keen intuition, strong research abilities and general social skills were the essentials.

He shook his head. “And Sarah Broughton’s a puzzle, too. I think she knows more than she’s telling.”

Maria raised her black eyebrows. “Better watch yourself, Arvo,” she said. “I’ve never known a man who wasn’t a sucker for an enigmatic woman.” She nudged Kelly and they both laughed. Eric kept his head down, shiny bald pate toward them.

“Package for Detective Arvo Hughes!”

Arvo raised his hand and the patrolman walked right up to his hutch and handed over a thick manila envelope. He signed for it, stuck his thumb under the flap and ripped it open.

Crime-scene pictures spilled out over his messy desk. Jesus, he thought, as he looked at the stark black-and-white images and the garish color Polaroids, someone had certainly done a number on John Heimar.

There were pictures of the general area and of the body half buried, in situ, with the bloody stump of an arm lying beside it, where, Arvo assumed, Sarah Broughton must have dropped it. Then there were photos of the various body parts as they were unearthed and pieced together on a canvas sheet on the beach. Photo after photo showed the reconstruction of a body: first the arm, then the arm and head, then an arm, a leg and the head, and so on.

There was very little blood; clearly most of it had been spilled somewhere else and the rest had drained into the sand. The rough edges of flesh where the head and legs had been severed gaped like cuts of meat in a butcher’s shop.

Arvo became aware of Maria’s perfume and felt her warm breath on his neck as she came around and leaned over him. “My God,” he heard her mutter. “This is what your actress found?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The poor woman.”

But Arvo wasn’t looking at the images of violent death any longer. Something in one of the early black-and-whites had caught his eye.

The photograph had been taken from the landward side of the body, and judging by the angle, the photographer had probably knelt to take it. The time must have been soon after sunrise, because the sun was shining over the hills in the east and casting fairly long shadows.

Just beyond the body, where the sand was getting wet from the tide, Arvo thought he could make out a faint indentation, as if something had been drawn there, then mostly washed away. He could only see it because of the sun’s angle, and even then it was no more than an indistinct outline. It could have been merely a trick of the light and water, he thought, but it looked exactly like a heart shape.

14

As soon as Sarah got to the bottom of the stairs and bent to give her father a kiss on his rough cheek, Cathy and Jason dashed through from the front room and surrounded her, jumping up and down. She had hardly registered the sour smell of his breath before the kids had dragged her away to tell them all about the television series and what it was like living with all the stars in Hollywood. What were Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme really like?

After she had whetted their appetites with a few harmless exaggerations, magically transforming the humble beach house into something approaching the Hearst castle, she went to look for Paula and found her in the kitchen, warm in the heat of the gas oven.

“It’s nowt special,” Paula said, by way of a warning. “Just a chicken-and-leek casserole, boiled potatoes and a tin of peas. Not what you’re used to over there, I expect.”

“It’s fine, really,” said Sarah, smiling to herself. In a way it was a relief not to have to make her way politely through yet another shredded romaine and sweet onion salad with chèvre and roasted chestnuts, or duck and spinach ravioli with thymed tomatoes. “Can I help?”

Paula gestured with a wooden spoon. “You can peel those spuds, if you like.”

Put firmly in her place, Sarah began to peel the potatoes. “Dad looks worse than I expected,” she said.

Paula gave a harsh laugh. “Well, he’s not getting any better, that’s for certain. But there’s good days and bad. Today’s fair to middling.” She put down her wooden spoon and turned to face Sarah, tiredness and resignation showing in the lines around her eyes and the dark bags beneath them. “It’s the nights that are the worst,” she said. “He has trouble breathing when he lies down sometimes. The doctor says it’s normal, given his condition, but that doesn’t help a lot, does it? The thing is, Sal, he gets so frightened when it happens. He thinks his time’s come. His heart beats so fast and loud I’ll swear they can almost hear it in the next street. And he gets confused, he doesn’t know where he is or who I am. It passes, like, but it gets me worried. I hate to see him like that. And him such a vigorous man in his prime.”

She looked away, eyes burning, then shot Sarah a sly, sideways glance before casting her eyes down. “He calls me by your name sometimes, too, you know. ‘Sal,’ he says. ‘Sal, I’ve got to go now.’” She sniffed and went back to stirring the sauce. “Hurry up with those spuds, will you, or this bloody casserole will be well past its sell-by date.”

“It smells good,” said Sarah, flushed and tingling with what Paula had just told her. Her father had called her name — Sal — in his confusion. Perhaps he didn’t hate her, after all. She ran cold water into the pan of peeled potatoes and put it on the burner.

“Thanks,” said Paula. “You can set the table now, if you like.”

Sarah did so, and before long they all sat down to dinner. Cathy and Jason wanted to go in the front room and watch television while they ate from their laps, but Paula said no, they watched too much of the idiot-box as it was. She looked at Sarah when she said “idiot-box” and Sarah didn’t miss the dig. But that was Paula all over; she had given too much away in an unguarded moment, and now she had to go on the offensive.

The children sulked for about thirty seconds, then they started humming the theme music of Good Cop, Bad Cop. Paula told them to shut up. Sarah laughed. Her father continued to pick at his food in silence, leaving most of it. Paula shot Sarah a long-suffering glance, as if to say, “See, he’s even off his food now. What am I to do? How can I cope with all this?”

It was hot in the dining room and Sarah felt a bead or two of sweat trickle down the groove of her spine. Had Paula turned up the heat for her benefit? It would be just like her to do that, and then complain about the bill. What little conversation they had over the meal was halting and banal, yet fraught with the tension of the unsaid, the unexpressed. She was beginning to feel like a character in a Pinter play.

As she ate, she began to think that there might be some kind of home or special clinic where her father could go and be well cared for. God knew, she could afford it. But she knew without asking that any such suggestion would be met with extreme resistance. Where she came from, you looked after your own.

After a Marks and Spencer’s apple pie with custard, which Sarah declined, and some general chat about what a lousy summer it had been, Paula sent the children off to bed and announced that she had to go to work. Sarah did the washing-up alone, with only the sound of the wind whistling around the kitchen window for company.

When she had finished, she returned to the dining room and saw that her father was still in the same position at the table. He had one of his stamp albums open in front of him and was turning the stiff pages slowly.

Sarah could only stand in the doorway and gaze, held frozen by the emotion of a memory that leapt unbidden into her mind. She must have been five or six, at the cramped old pit house in Barnsley, and for the first time her father beckoned her over after tea to come look at his stamps. Even then he had spent hours at the table just looking at them, chain-smoking Woodbines and sometimes drinking a bottle of beer.

Sarah could remember the smells as if they were yesterday: the acrid cigarette smoke, the malt and hops of the beer, the lingering odor of dripping, bacon or kippers. And she had stood beside him — he with his arm loosely around her shoulders — and looked into what she could only describe as windows into bright new worlds. Small windows with serrated edges, or tiny screens onto which colorful images were projected. None of the stamps were very valuable, she thought, but the bright colors, the proud heads of monarchs, exotic birds, other animals and majestic ships and planes that decorated them enthralled her.

And now here he was, in a different, much larger house with any number of rooms to choose from, in the same position at the dinner table, poring over his collection. From where she stood, Sarah could see the flashes of color.

In her mind, she could hear the memory of his voice as he told her the stories of the stamps, of how “Suomi” meant Finland and “Deutschland” meant Germany, who they had fought in the war, of how far away and how hot were the places like Gold Coast, British Guyana and Mauritius, and how the brightly colored birds with the long feather tails, the macaws and birds of paradise, depicted on the stamps, really did live in those places. One day, she had vowed then, she would see them. Her eyes burned with tears as she watched him laboring to breathe over the images.

Her father looked up and frowned. “What’s up, lass?”

Sarah wiped her forearm over her eyes. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m fine.” She grasped the back of a chair and steadied herself. “Still a bit tired. Must be the flight.”

“Like a drop of brandy?”

“No, no. I’m all right, really, Dad. Don’t bother.” She rubbed her eyes again, this time with the backs of her hands.

He jerked his head. “It’s in that cabinet over there. I wouldn’t mind one myself.”

When she was a child, there had always been “medicinal’ brandy in the house, and the one time Sarah had been given a drink, after the shock of falling off her bike and spraining her wrist, she had hated it. She had tried it since, however, and didn’t mind the taste too much now.

She found the brandy and two glasses. She poured generous measures and put one in front of her father, then sat down with her own. He looked at his glass, smiled and said, “Hand slipped, did it?” then took a sip.

An awkward silence followed. Sarah didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to ask him about his emphysema — no more, she imagined, than he wanted to talk about it. Finally, her father broke the silence: “Doing all right, then, are you, lass?”

“Yes.” Sarah cradled her glass in both hands and looked into the dark amber liquid. “Yes, I’m doing fine.”

“Being ill like this... ” He paused. “It changes you. Puts things in perspective. Know what I mean?”

Sarah nodded. She didn’t know what to say. Had he forgiven her?

“Aye,” he said. “Well... ” Then he shifted in his wheelchair, probably from embarrassment. As Sarah knew too well, he wasn’t a man given to easy expression of his feelings. Well, no men were, really, but some were better than others.

“So what’s Tinseltown like?” he asked.

“I... I don’t really... ” Sarah felt stuck for words. She had almost said she didn’t live there, but of course she did. What on earth could she be thinking of? “It’s all right, I suppose,” she went on. “It’s warm most of the time. I miss the change of seasons. The snowdrops and daffodils in spring, the leaves changing and falling in autumn. I mean, I don’t mind living there, but it’s so... ”

Lonely, she almost said, but she didn’t want to expose herself, certainly not to her father. Let’s bury Daddy in the sand! She shivered. Besides, isolation was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Seclusion, no complications. And the beach house was where she had begun to find herself, begun the reconstruction of Sally Bolton. Instead, she simply said, “Impermanent.”

“You’re not planning on staying there?” her father asked.

Sarah shrugged. That wasn’t what she meant at all, but she didn’t think she could explain it to him.

“Do you still live by yourself?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it dangerous? We see things on the news. Muggings, gangs, riots and fires and suchlike.”

Sarah shrugged. “I suppose so. I’m working at the studio a lot. It’s safe there. They’ve got very good security. And it’s very quiet where I live. By the sea, like this.” Except for the maniac on the hill watching me through binoculars, she wanted to add. “You should come and visit,” she said, not realizing until she had spoken that he probably couldn’t travel very easily.

His lips formed a smile that his eyes didn’t echo. “I doubt I could survive that there smog,” he said.

Sarah laughed. “Oh, come on. You’d probably be better off than the rest of us, what with your oxygen and all. Besides, it’s not so bad these days. There’s a lot of emission controls.”

He grinned, showing crooked black and yellow teeth. “Aye, who knows? Maybe one day. I’d like to see all them stars on the pavement there before I die. Ronald Colman. Greta Garbo. Charlie Chaplin. Jimmy Stewart. I’ve always wanted to see those.”

Sarah was surprised. “I’ll take you,” she said. “I’ll show you them. I didn’t even know you liked movies.”

He shrugged. “Used to go to t’pictures a lot when I was a young lad. Before I met your mother and went down t’pit. Never had time for owt like that when you were a kid, though. I were always on some bloody awkward shift or another. That or sleeping.” He paused and took several deep breaths of oxygen before going on. “And there weren’t no videos and the like back then. It’s a lot easier now. I can’t get out and about much these days so I watch at home. Paula’s a good lass, she goes and fetches them for me. Old ones mostly. Black-and-white. They’re still the best. You can keep your sex and violence.” He looked directly at Sarah as he spoke, and she blushed and turned away, remembering the row they had after he’d seen her do a nude scene in a Channel Four film. The beginning of the end. “Nay,” he went on, “I hadn’t time for t’pictures back then, had I? Your mother, though... now that were another matter.”

They fell silent for a moment, Sarah contemplating the times when her mother took her to the pictures. More stimulus for the budding actress. All kinds of memories came rushing back. She remembered the first film she had ever seen, when she was five or six — Walt Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians — and how scared she had been of Cruella De Ville.

When she next looked at her father, his eyes were closed and his chin rested on his chest. At first, she thought something terrible had happened to him, but she could still hear his struggle for breath and the slow hiss of oxygen.

Slowly, Sarah crept upstairs and picked up the envelope. She had been in two minds about it all evening: half afraid of opening it and morbidly curious about the contents. Now, while her father and the children slept, while Paula was at work, she opened it and slipped out the two pages. Then she read the words with mounting horror:

Outside, Sarah could hear the waves crashing against the sea wall and the wind gusting and moaning about the rooftops. A shutter was banging somewhere. Inside, she was aware of the loud beating of her heart. My God, she thought, he did do it. She had seen the heart with her name in it drawn in the sand. It wasn’t an illusion. But who was he?

Down the street, the wind whipped a tile from someone’s roof and sent it smashing to the ground.

15

Arvo drove up the coast highway on Saturday morning with the top of his tan convertible open and the Allman Brothers singing “Statesboro Blues” on the radio. The ocean breeze ruffled his hair and forced its way deep into his lungs. He needed it to blow the cobwebs out of his mind and bring him back to life.

Last night had been a bad one, starting when he found that I Married a Monster from Outer Space had been delayed by a late-running hockey game, leaving him with only the first ten minutes of the movie.

As a substitute, he had dashed out and rented Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, which was every bit as much of a turkey as the guy in the rental store had warned him.

He had woken just after four in the morning with a dry mouth and a pounding head, courtesy of the Scotch and Sam Adams chasers he had drunk after the leftover pizza. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep again, mostly for thinking about the Sarah Broughton case. He had arranged to meet Stuart Kleigman in Santa Monica for lunch, but first he wanted to take a look at the crime scene.

The backs of the houses that faced the Coast Highway were nondescript. Mostly, they were simple flat-roofed rectangular boxes of varying heights and widths, some beige or white stucco, some wood-frame. Some of them had high windows facing the road, but most presented a blank façade. Because the houses were close together, the narrow gaps between them had been closed with high chain-link fencing.

A hundred yards or so west of the houses was a white three-story office building, with stairwells visible through the large plate-glass windows. Architecturally, it was nothing but a cube of white stone fitted with windows. The parking lot, with spaces reserved for ten cars, was empty, and Arvo pulled into the one marked “Dr S.A. Pedersen.” You wouldn’t catch a doctor or a dentist working on a Saturday if he could help it. Not as long as there were golf courses within driving distance.

He walked down the stone steps to the beach, the route Joe reckoned the killer must have carried John Heimar’s body parts, probably in a plastic garbage bag.

At the bottom of the steps, Arvo stepped into the fine sand and looked around. Gulls skimmed the water’s surface, looking for fish. The only people on the beach were two men walking a dog.

There were no signs left of the horror that had taken place here just a few days ago, nothing even to mark the spot where John Heimar’s body parts had been buried. Since then, the tide had been in and out a few times and washed everything away. The crime-scene techs had had to work fast. Like King Canute, even the LAPD couldn’t hold back the tide.

Set on a long promontory about twenty feet high, the houses had steps carved in the rock leading down to the beach. Each also had a high gate at beach level. Despite the difficult access, though, it wasn’t a private beach, and such security as existed there — gates, wire — was pretty Mickey Mouse, in Arvo’s opinion.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a natural choice for dumping a body, and if the killer really wanted to show off his handiwork to the world at large, why not try Santa Monica, Venice or Redondo, further south? Maybe even have a good laugh when one of the bodybuilders on Muscle Beach pulled the severed arm loose? Plenty of people there, every day of the week.

Could Sarah Broughton have been the only audience he wanted? Arvo remembered the letter: “I have much to Plan and Execute before we can be together as Fate intends. My mind Boils and Seethes with the Burden, the Weight and the Glory of it. All for you. Let me prove I am more than equal to the Task.”

He shivered and returned to the car. In Santa Monica, he found a parking space in a side street and walked over the arched bridge onto the pier. Behind him, the white buildings along Ocean Avenue sparkled in the late December sun. To the north, across the bay, Arvo could just about make out the contours of the coastal hills behind where he had just been. Breakers crashed on the beach with a deep booming sound, churning up spume, and diamonds danced on the greenish-white ocean.

Just beyond the carousel, a Hispanic family stood busking: the father played guitar; the teenaged son sang in Spanish and looked as if he’d rather be just about anywhere else; the daughter danced as awkwardly as any spindly nine-year-old would; and the toddler stood with his mournful-looking mother by the upturned, white top hat, looking cute. Arvo grinned at him and flipped in a couple of quarters.

Stuart Kleigman was leaning against the chain-link fence past the Playland Arcade staring down the boardwalk toward Venice, where an endless stream of roller skaters glided back and forth.

At least Arvo thought it was Stuart. He was wearing light blue slacks and a shiny red blouson jacket, and when Arvo greeted him, he turned, revealing a blue-and-gold crest on the front of his jacket. Probably his bowling team, Arvo thought, unable to make out the lettering. The breeze blew a lock of Stuart’s gray hair over his eyes and he pushed it back. Arvo had never seen him dressed so casually before.

Stuart raised an eyebrow and squinted out to sea. “Probably five years since I’ve been here,” he said. “You wouldn’t think so, would you, Brentwood being so close, but it’s true. Karen and I used to come here sometimes when we first got married, but that was ten years ago now. And we brought the kids here once or twice when they were little. Leora sure loved that carousel. Now the neighborhood’s gone downhill — you wouldn’t catch me here after dark — and the developers have ruined the waterfront. You live around here?”

“Santa Monica, yes. Seafront, no.”

“Uh-huh. So what is it? Have there been any developments?”

“Yes and no.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean? Sounds like a lawyer’s answer to me. Nothing’s happened to Sarah, has it?”

“Not as far as I know. What I mean is, I’m not sure whether there have been any developments or not.”

“Look, let’s go get something to eat, shall we?” Stuart rubbed his stomach. “I’m starving. Then you can tell me all about it.”

They walked along the pier. Arvo caught glimpses of the sea through the gaps between the boards. It made him feel a little dizzy. They went into the English-style pub.

It was more of a wooden shack than a pub, really. A few of the tables were occupied by young couples and groups of young people taking a break from skating on the boardwalk; a couple of sullen teenagers were playing darts in the corner; and one group of obvious east-coast tourists looked around with sheepish smiles as their kids painted the tables and floors with food. They looked as if they were remembering how cute everyone thought it was when the kids made a mess like that in South Duxbury, Massachusetts, but starting to worry that maybe you could get shot for it in LA.

When the stoned-looking waiter wandered by, Arvo ordered a pint of Harp lager and a tuna melt, and Stuart asked for a Diet Coke, fries and a cheeseburger with the works.

“So what is it?” Stuart asked. “This yes-and-no business?”

“It’s about the body Sarah found on the beach.”

Stuart waved his hand in the air. “Oh, that. Yeah. Some faggot kid from West Hollywood, right? Half a column inch in the Los Angeles Times and one pissy little item on the local news about how an actress who played a homicide cop on TV discovered a real dead body on her morning jog, that’s all. Cute story. It was a joke to them. Filler on a slow news day. Soon as she was done with the cops I took her to Brentwood for the day and made sure nobody got near her. They lost interest soon enough. Especially after that dumb kid from the new NBC sitcom ran his fucking Porsche off the Coast Highway Thursday night.”

Their drinks arrived. Arvo took a long swig of Harp to slake his thirst. It was good. Cold, clean and hoppy.

Stuart pointed to his Diet Coke and made a face. “Doctor’s orders,” he said. “Can you believe it? Fifty years old and not a day’s hospitalization in my life, and I’m supposed to go on a fucking diet.”

“Hey, Stuart, you want to live forever like everyone else in this town, then you better follow your doctor’s orders.”

“Fucking doctors. What do they know?”

The food arrived. Stuart started burying his burger under relish, pickles, hot peppers and ketchup, which he then liberally poured over his fries. Arvo looked away and tucked into his tuna melt. So much for Stuart’s doctor’s orders, he thought, looking at the mess of fat, cholesterol and red meat on the plate.

Stuart bit into his burger. Yellow mustard and green relish oozed out the sides and dribbled down the corners of his mouth. He wiped it with a napkin.

“Did Sarah jog along that part of the beach every morning?” Arvo asked.

“Sure. I mean, I think so. She said she did, and I had no reason to think otherwise. She loved her morning run. I can’t say I was ever around there that early, myself.”

“Same time, same place?”

“Yeah. That was her routine. I mean, you live somewhere nice like that, why go somewhere else to work out? Know what I mean?”

Arvo nodded. “Have there been any new letters?”

“Not that I know of.” Stuart frowned. “Look, Arvo, I don’t like what I’m hearing, if I’m hearing your tone right. Is there something I’m missing, something I ought to know?” He pushed the basket of fries toward Arvo, who waved it away.

“No, thanks.” Arvo took another sip of Harp and shook his head. “I wish I knew. I’m sorry, Stu. I’m not trying to hide anything. I’m just looking around for some way to get a handle on this.”

“Yeah, I can see that. The letters and the stiff. You think there’s a connection. I’m not that fucking stupid. What I don’t see is how or why.”

Arvo told him about the heart.

Stuart frowned and shook his head. “A heart usually symbolizes love, right? You’re saying the stiff was planted there for Sarah to find. Like an offering, a gift?”

“I’m saying it could have been.”

Stuart put the remains of his hamburger down. “Jesus H. Christ. And you said there was nothing to worry about.”

“I said there was probably nothing to fear yet, that we didn’t have enough to go on. We’re dealing in statistical probabilities, Stu, not certainties. If new information comes in, the whole pattern changes. If he’s suffering from schizophrenia or some personality disorder that involves delusions or hallucinations, then the normal rules don’t apply any more.”

“But why would anyone want to do a thing like that? Crazy or not. Plant a body for someone to find?”

Arvo finished his Harp. “No reason that would make sense to you or me,” he said. “But people often have their own logic: attention, exhibitionism, vindictiveness, need for approval.”

“A psycho. You’re talking about a fucking psycho, aren’t you? Silence of the fucking lambs, that’s what it is.”

“I told you, I don’t know. But I want to look into it. If it’s some stranger living out a fantasy, we’ve got a problem, but if there really is a connection, and it’s someone from her past, then maybe we can find him before she comes back. It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

Stuart ran his hand through his hair. “Okay. Sure. Look, do you think she’s in any danger in England?”

Arvo shrugged. “I doubt it. Stalkers have been known to travel great distances after their prey. One guy even went so far as to go to Australia looking for Olivia Newton-John. But things like that cost a lot of money, take a lot of planning. And if all she’s got so far is three letters, he’s still in the early stages. You might give her a call and suggest she take care, but I don’t really think there’s anything to worry about. After all, we don’t even know for certain that there is a link between Sarah and the body. It’s just a theory I’m working on.”

Stuart nodded. “So where do we go from here?”

“To start with, I need to know as much as you can tell me about Sarah Broughton.”

Stuart slapped down enough cash to cover the bill. “Okay,” he said. “But let’s walk. This fucking cheeseburger’s giving me indigestion.”

They walked into the hazy sunshine. Stuart screwed up his eyes against the light, and Arvo put his sunglasses on. Outside on the pier, a puppeteer had set up his show, spinning a grinning marionette through a grueling break-dance to loud rap music. Quite a crowd had gathered around. Stuart clapped his hands over his ears and hurried ahead.

They crossed the walkway to Ocean and turned left toward Palisades Park, a stretch of grass and trees right between Ocean and the cliffs above the Coast Highway. Christmas decorations hung across the street. The music began to fade into the distance. Joggers lumbered by, dripping sweat, grunting with shin splints and gasping for breath. Couples walked hand in hand. Homeless people slept against the boughs of the palms and sheltered under the smaller shrubs by the path. Many of them were wrapped in heavy overcoats, despite the heat, and some clutched plastic bags full of meager possessions.

“Truth is,” Stuart said, “now I come to think of it, I hardly know a thing about Sarah except what I’ve told you.”

“You don’t know anything about her past?”

“A scrap or two, at best. Nothing interesting.”

“She said her last boyfriend was dead. Know who he was?”

“Gary Knox. The rock singer. Have you heard of him?”

Arvo whistled. He had heard of Gary Knox but hadn’t known about his association with Sarah. It seemed an odd combination. Knox was hardly Sarah’s type, from all Arvo had seen and heard.

Gary Knox had found rock-legend immortality when he walked out of a Hollywood hot-spot after his US tour last summer and dropped dead right on the sidewalk. Drug overdose. Arvo remembered reading the endless obits and eulogies in the press, many of the writers obviously trying hard to find a kind word to say about the obnoxious, egomaniacal junkie Knox had apparently been toward the end. Well, now he was part of that eternal junkie jam session in the sky, him and Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elvis, Kurt Cobain and the rest. At least he was beyond doing anybody harm now.

“How long were they together?” Arvo asked.

“I don’t know. She came over here from London on the tour with him last year. I think that started in the spring, playing outdoor stadiums all across the country. Apparently they’d split up before he died. That’s all I know.”

“Why did they split up?”

Stuart shrugged. “She didn’t say. Just walked out on him.”

“I don’t remember hearing anything about them being an item. Wasn’t there a lot of publicity surrounding their relationship?”

“Not particularly. I mean, she wasn’t well known then. You’d have had to cast a pretty fucking wide net around here to find anyone who’d heard of Sally Bolton. You think everyone sits down and tunes in to PBS?”

“I guess not.”

“You bet your ass not. As far as most people are concerned it’s strictly Beavis and Butt-head, The Simpsons and Married with Children. You can forget your fucking Middlemarches and your endless P.D. James adaptations. Your average television viewer ain’t got the attention span for shit like that. And she looked different then.” Stuart laughed. “Boy did she ever look different. I’ve seen pictures. You know, the frizzy hair, green and orange, and the weird makeup, black lipstick, skin-tight leather pants, bare midriff. Fucking earrings as long as your arm. She even had a tattoo of a butterfly on her left shoulder. Still got it, I guess.” He laughed again. “She sure wasn’t the Sally Bolton who came to my office that day with Ellie.”

“Sarah mentioned Ellie, too,” Arvo said. “Said she was the one who brought the two of you together. That right?”

“Right. Ellie Huysman. She and Sarah went to drama school together in London, then Ellie decided she didn’t have either the talent or the stamina for acting, so she came over here and went into the business side. Eventually got into casting and ended up working for me. Small world, huh?” Stuart laughed. “I think after a couple of years she wished she’d stuck with acting. Would’ve been a lot fucking easier.”

“And you met Sarah through Ellie?”

“That’s right. I was meeting with her one day about this new cop show the network was coming up with and she mentioned she thought Sarah would be perfect. They were looking for something different but the same, as usual on TV, if you get my meaning, and there’s always a pretty good market for the right kind of Brit women. You know, Amanda Donohoe, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and the rest. So I ordered some videos of Sarah’s work from PBS, and I saw what Ellie meant.”

“Is Ellie Huysman still around?” Arvo asked.

“Moved to Canada late last year, just after she introduced me to Sally. Said she couldn’t stand living in LA one more minute. Not that I blame her, some days. I mean, we got a few problems here, right? But I ask you, fucking Canada? Anyway, she lives in Toronto now. She’s still in the business. Apparently they make movies up there in the snow, too.”

“You got her number?”

“Sure.” Stuart pulled a small address book from his pocket and gave Arvo a number with a 416 area code. “She’ll be able to tell you a lot more than I can about Sarah,” he said. “Like I said, they’re old friends. Go way back.”

“What does Karen think about your relationship with Sarah?”

Stuart narrowed his eyes. “I know what you’re getting at, Arvo,” he said, “but forget it, there’s nothing like that between us at all. Never was. Sarah’s special. It’s like she’s family.”

“Karen goes along with this?”

“Karen adores her.”

That satisfied Arvo for the moment. He had met Karen a year ago at a party Stuart had thrown. She was a strong-willed, intelligent woman about twenty years younger than Stuart, and she had given up a promising acting career for her husband and family. She and Sarah would be about the same age, Arvo calculated, around thirty-four. If Karen accepted Sarah, that was a good enough character reference for him.

They leaned on the railing and looked out over the ruffled ocean. A smell of fresh-brewed coffee drifted over from a waterfront café and mingled with ozone on the light breeze. Perfect, Arvo thought. Just enough glare to make you put on your shades. Warm, but not so you’d start sweating. There was one more possibility he had to pursue with Stuart.

“Right now Sarah’s hot property, isn’t she?” he asked.

“Up and coming. This series is really putting her on the map. And real quick. We’ve got movies lined up. Real movies. Maybe Merchant-Ivory. You know, all those English country houses and big lawns in the mist and rain. The real thing, not just Hollywood made-for-TV crapola, though there’ll be some of those, too. Bread-and-butter shit.”

“Can you think of any reason why someone might want to sabotage her career before it’s even got off the ground?”

“What?”

“You heard me. I’m saying maybe somebody’s playing games with her, trying to freak her.”

“Oh, come on, Arvo. That’s crazy.”

“No crazier than any other possibility. No matter what you read in papers or see on the screen, there aren’t psychopaths lurking around every street corner. But maybe there is someone who hates Sarah Broughton so much he wants to pull the plug on her career.”

“Like that cheerleader thing, where the girl’s mother tried to have the competitor’s mother killed just to put the kid off her stride?”

“Could be. She must have beaten people out to get the part.”

“Sure, but... No, no, I can’t see it.”

“If Sarah’s a little fragile to start with, you can see how someone might think that sending her crazy letters like that could send her over the edge.”

“Not to mention finding a dismembered body practically right in front of her house?”

“That too.”

Stuart rubbed his chin. “You’re saying that the letters, the love stuff, might just be a way for someone to get at her? That whoever is doing it is crazy in some other way from the way he makes it seem?”

Arvo laughed. “You could put it like that. Sometimes crazy people are clever enough to pretend to be crazy in a different way. People read about stalkers in the newspapers all the time. They’re probably easy enough to imitate. We’ve had at least five false-victim cases. Maybe this is just the other side of the coin, a false-obsessive case. Do you know anything about Sarah’s private life that might help me pin someone down?”

“Far as I can tell, her private life is very private these days, and that means as in by herself private. I know it might seem crazy to you, her being a beautiful Hollywood celebrity and all, but she’s kept to herself that way ever since I’ve known her. No drugs, no wild orgies, no tabloid headlines. This woman is squeaky clean. Christ, she hardly even fucking drinks.”

Stuart paused. Arvo looked out to sea and saw a large oil-tanker drifting across the horizon. From an open window across the street, he could hear Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

“She buries herself in her work,” Stuart went on. “I’m telling you, this lady is different. Has to be or this town would’ve chewed her up and spit her out by now. She’s not impressed by us. She’s just not your typical asshole star. When she’s not working, she just wants solitude, peace and quiet.”

Arvo looked around. “Hell of a place to come for that.”

Stuart scratched the side of his neck. “Fuck, don’t I know it. But for Chrissake, Arvo, the last guy she was in love with OD’d outside a nightclub. That’s gotta have some effect on a person’s psyche. Maybe work helps keep her mind off things she’d rather not think about. I don’t know. I’m no shrink. But these letters and now this murder... Maybe you’re right. If he keeps this up, it might just send her over the edge. Tough or not, there’s only so much a person can take.”

“I’m looking for a name, anything, just somewhere to start,” said Arvo. “You know as well as I do that these guys usually haven’t met their victims. They watch them on TV or at the movies and think they’re getting personal messages over the airwaves. Then they start stalking them, find out where they live, get hold of their addresses and phone numbers. It’s not difficult. You can buy them along with the map to the stars’ houses on Sunset Boulevard. But if our man really does know Sarah Broughton, whether he’s a true stalker or just someone out for revenge or sabotage, that could give us an edge.”

Stuart gave a little shiver. “Yeah, I know.”

“So back to my question. Do you know of anyone she associates with who gives you any cause for concern? Friend? Colleague?”

Stuart chewed his lower lip as he thought. “Shit, Arvo,” he said finally. “Like I told you, this town is so full of loony tunes I wouldn’t know where to start. And I’m just talking about people I’ve seen around, you know. People on the show.”

“Other actors?”

“Yeah. And some of the crew. They’ve got a cameraman I swear’s the fucking image of Charlie Manson, but everyone tells me he’s a harmless whale-hugging vegan, not to mention one of the best damn cameramen in the business.” Stuart shrugged. “I guess I can’t really answer your question.”

“Can you get me a list of all the people she works with and comes in contact with at the studio?”

“Sure I can.”

“At least that’s a start. Have you heard of this Justin Mercer, that old boyfriend she mentioned?”

“I know the name. Why?”

“You’ve got plenty of contacts in the business, so maybe you can find out where he is these days.”

“I guess I could do that.”

“What about Jack Marillo, the co-star?”

“They’re pretty good friends.”

“Just friends?”

“That’s right.” Stuart lowered his voice. “Just between you and me, Jack’s queer as a duck. Nice guy, though.” He looked at his watch. “Sorry Arvo, but I gotta go now. Karen’s expecting me. Got people coming. Fucking holidays, huh?”

Arvo nodded. He had almost forgotten it was December 22. He made a few notes in a tiny, spider-trail hand that no one could read but himself, then moved away from the railing.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I don’t know where we’re going with this, but I’ll stay in touch.”

“No problem.” Stuart shook hands and walked down to the nearest cross-light.

As Arvo walked toward his car, a bum detached himself from the greenery and stuck his hand out. Arvo gave him a buck.

“Merry Christmas,” said the bum.

16

On Saturday morning, Sarah walked halfway to Whitby and back along the beach. She had spent much of last night unable to sleep, thinking about the letter. It so obviously admitted to the murder that she couldn’t simply overlook it. She knew she would have to do something soon. Like a bad tooth or a lump in your breast, you could ignore it for a while, but it wouldn’t go away. She had been good at procrastinating in her life. Too damn good.

The problem was that she didn’t know whether she should phone the detectives in Los Angeles and tell them everything now or let it wait till she got back.

Finally, distance helped her decide on the latter. What good would it do anyway? She didn’t know who the letter-writer was. Besides, surely now that he had murdered someone, the police would have forensic evidence to go on? By the time she got back, they probably wouldn’t need her. She would hang on to the letter, of course, and give it to them later — it might be useful as evidence — but beyond that, she didn’t see how she could help.

Also, if she phoned, they might send the local bobby round to put her on the next plane back to LA, and she would miss Christmas with her family. Just when she felt she was making some progress.

A bitter wind blew off the North Sea. Bundled up in a shirt and sweater under her down jacket, a woolly hat, mittens and earmuffs, Sarah didn’t feel too cold. The sky was as gray as used dishwater, but now and then the clouds would break for a moment and a shaft of sunlight would shoot through and dance on the pewter sea, reminding her of the calm after a storm.

Behind her, the whitewashed, red-tiled cottages seemed piled on top of one another like children’s playing-bricks, huddled together in crooked, cobbled alleys higgledy-piggledy fashion. The village straggled down a steep hill to the sea in much the same way as the ones on the Greek islands that Sarah had visited with Gary. A small church perched on top of the cliffs, and even though it wasn’t Sunday, Sarah could hear children’s voices singing “Away in a Manger.”

She had forgotten how unusual the geology was around the bay. There wasn’t much sand, only the curved layers of dark, barnacle-encrusted rock, which looked like a slice through an enormous onion, or a giant scalloped seashell embedded in the shore. The grooves showed where the waves had eroded the older rocks more quickly than the bands of limestone and ironstone between them. It was a great place for fossil hunters, and it also created numerous rock-pools where Sarah stopped to watch tiny crabs scuttle beneath the pellucid water.

Out to sea, Sarah could see a ship with white sails flapping in the wind. She shivered, imagining what it would be like out on the North Sea today in a sailboat. She pulled her jacket more snugly round her neck and carried on walking. The wind whistled around her earmuffs.

When she arrived back at the harbor, she walked up the ramp to the street. It was just after noon. Instead of returning to the cottage, she decided to call at the pub where Paula worked and give her sister a surprise.

There weren’t many people in the public bar, but when Sarah walked in, what conversation there was stopped at once. Even the clack of dominoes ceased. The only sound came from a radio playing an old pop song somewhere in the back. Sarah recognized it: Susan Maugham singing “Bobby’s Girl.”

At first, the reaction she got reminded her of the opening scene of An American Werewolf in London, where the young tourists get lost in the Yorkshire Dales and go into an isolated pub to ask their way. She could see the grizzled, sea-leathered, wind-reddened faces trying to place her. She smiled and said hello to everyone, then walked toward the bar.

Paula came through from the lounge and said, “Sal! So you’ve finally decided to grace us with your presence, after all?”

“I thought I’d drop by for a quick one, yes,” said Sarah, taking off her mittens and rubbing her hands. “It’s cold out there.”

“Not half as cold as it will be in a day or two, lass,” said one of the drinkers behind her. Then they all laughed.

“This is my sister, Sally,” Paula said to all and sundry. “You know, the famous actress. Calls herself Sarah Broughton now.” She tilted her head, put a finger to the tip of her nose and turned it up.

They all nodded shyly and said how d’you do, then went back to their dominoes and muffled conversations. Sarah doubted if any of them watched her show on television. Besides, she was getting sick of this star business Paula kept going on about. She wasn’t a star; she was a supporting actress on a network drama.

Still, she supposed that in a village like Robin Hood’s Bay, she would have to accept that she was a star.

She unzipped her jacket and sat on a stool at the bar. It was a long time since she had been in a real English pub, and she took in the rows of unfamiliar bottles, the mirrors and brass rails. There were plenty of imitations in Los Angeles, but nothing quite like the real thing, with its bags of pork rinds and roasted salted peanuts, its upside-down bottles in the racks with optics attached, stone-flagged floor and roaring fire in the hearth.

“What’ll you have?” Paula asked. “Whatever it is, the first one’s on the house.”

“Thank you. I’ll have a whisky, please.”

“Good idea,” said Paula “Summat to warm the cockles of your heart.”

Paula handed her the glass and Sarah sipped. It burned all the way down her throat and spread a warm glow in her stomach.

She hadn’t been paying attention to the radio, but at that moment, Gary Knox came on singing “Blue Eyes, Black Heart,” his biggest commercial success and his least favorite song.

Sarah turned pale and almost dropped her glass.

When Paula realized what had happened, she went into the back. A few seconds later the song stopped and another station came on: an innocuous Whitney Houston number, this time.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Sarah said quietly to Paula when she came back. “But thank you.”

“Think nowt of it. Maybe one day you’ll tell me about him?”

Sarah managed a weak smile. “Maybe one day, yes.” She had heard only a snatch of the song, of Gary’s distinctive voice — like honeyed gravel, a poetic reviewer had once written — but it was enough to bring his image back to her mind’s eye.

Tall, thin, stooped, dark-haired and hollow-cheeked, with a lock of hair constantly falling over his right eye and a distant, crooked smile, he had always looked the way she imagined one of the Romantic poets might look after he had been up all night grappling with a particularly recalcitrant sonnet and a bottle of laudanum. Young Coleridge, perhaps, with feverish opium eyes and mussed-up hair, and that distracted look, as if he were hearing and seeing things no one else could. And, like many a Romantic poet, Gary had died young.

She had tried to imagine Gary’s death many times, how he had faced it. Many of his songs were about death; it was a subject he had thought intensely about since adolescence. She had recognized a kind of death-wish in much of his drug use and recklessness, a sort of cocking one’s hat against the grim reaper and saying, come on, catch me if you can.

As far as Sarah had heard, Gary had simply dropped dead on La Brea after leaving a nightclub with a group of friends. The autopsy had revealed a lethal mixture of cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, LSD, alcohol and barbiturates. His heart had, quite literally, just stopped beating. Had he had time in the moment of his death to savor the experience that had fascinated him so much in his life? Sarah didn’t know, and never would.

Their life together was still something of a blur. Of course, she remembered the early days: the party where they met in Camden Town, and how they walked the quiet London streets all night talking; the sunny idyll on the Greek island of Santorini, all vivid blues and whites, when Gary was writing the songs for what was to be his last album; the frustrations of studio work; the tour.

It was crazy from the start. Pushed by the record company to promote the new album when he was still exhausted from its creation and production, Gary set out for a mammoth US and Canadian tour with the band. Sarah went along for the ride.

And what a ride it was.

She could only remember patches of the chaos: backstage arguments, smelly tour buses, short, gut-churning air hops. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago. The names sped by and meant nothing; she saw nothing but hotel rooms and concert halls. Half the time she didn’t even know whether she was in the USA or Canada.

Gary was too sick from drugs to perform in Omaha, and he collapsed onstage in Dallas. The fans loved it. After only a couple of days’ rest, the band hit the West Coast and life became a nonstop party tinged with mayhem and madness. Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, picking up groupies and hangers-on all the way like a snowball picked up snow going down a hill. The further south they got, the more Sarah’s memory started to fail her.

Somewhere along the line, Gary had changed. He was pushing himself at an insane pace, drunk and stoned or coked-out all the time, almost as if he were running headlong to embrace death. There were no rules; nothing was sacred; everything was permitted. Total derangement of the senses. Well, Sarah had read Rimbaud, too, and look what happened to him.

At first she wanted to know why, what was wrong, but he wouldn’t talk to her about anything. They didn’t even make love. When he was capable, he suggested threesomes with poxy groupies or all-out gang-bangs with the whole band. When she refused, he ridiculed her. Maybe she didn’t always refuse; she couldn’t remember. But something had driven her over the edge; something had given her the courage or fear to walk out and salvage what little self-respect she could.

But until then, hurt and humiliated day after day, she had snorted coke to get up, though it no longer made her feel good, and she took booze and ’ludes to get her to sleep. Ecstasy in between. She liked the downers best. ’Ludes or nembies, it didn’t really matter.

After a couple of bad LSD trips, one of them a terrifying nightmare in Tijuana, where she was almost raped by a half-crazed local pimp, whom Gary’s entourage had adopted for the night, she stopped taking hallucinogens altogether. Life had become hallucinatory enough without them. Everything was crumbling, falling apart, until that one day when she just walked out. She felt that she had run so far and so fast with Gary she had left herself behind.

The weeks after she left marked the lowest point in her life: her “illness,” the Great Depression. She couldn’t remember details or events, the number of times she had just wanted to die, except that Ellie had taken her to the clinic and saved her life. But she could still feel the shadow of the emotion, the sense of utter worthlessness; she could still hear the echo of the voices that berated her, told her she was an evil slut, a trollop, a tart. And, from time to time, she still felt the impulse toward suicide. The darkness was still there inside her, and sometimes it beckoned.

“Penny for them.”

“What? Oh, sorry, Paula, I was miles away. I think I’ll have another whisky, please. A double.”

“You want to be careful, you know.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not turning to the bottle. As a matter of fact, I hardly drink at all back in Los Angeles. I just can’t get used to this English cold.”

“You grew up with it, same as me.”

Sarah laughed. “Yes, but it’s amazing how quickly you get soft.”

Paula snorted and poured her a drink.

Sarah paid, then Paula wandered off to serve someone else. The place had started to fill up, Sarah noticed, and one or two people looked at her as if they knew who she was. It wasn’t as if, with her red nose, woolly hat and raw cheeks, she resembled Anita O’Rourke, but probably because she was a stranger in the village and Paula had told them all her famous sister was coming. The actress.

When she met Gary, she remembered, she had been at a loose end because she felt her acting career in England was going nowhere. She was either underdressed in Channel Four art-house erotica or overdressed in BBC costume dramas. There seemed no place for her in a British series. If the Americans put too much of a premium on bland good looks, then the English went too far the other way — crooked teeth and bad skin.

Just before she met Gary, her father had seen one of the Channel Four films. He stopped talking to her for a month and after that, things had never been the same.

She knew her father had always preferred Paula, anyway. Paula did all the right things. Paula got married (even if it didn’t work out). Paula had children. Paula didn’t make dirty films. Paula was the sensible one, the practical one, the down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth lass who didn’t have ideas above her station.

Paula hadn’t traded the accent God gave her for fame and fortune in a heathen land. Paula hadn’t tossed aside all the moral values she had been brought up to believe in. Paula hadn’t changed the name her parents had christened her with.

Too late to do anything about that now. Sarah finished her whisky. It was time to go back to the cottage.

“Catch you later,” she said to Paula, who was busy serving a man in a fisherman’s jersey, then she zipped up her jacket, put on her mittens and left. As she walked out, she was struck by the thought that the tour was by far the most logical place to start looking for her tormentor, if only she could remember more about it. After all, just about everyone had been crazy back then.

17

Arvo spent most of Sunday at home sprawled on the floral-pattern sofa in the living-room watching Tunes of Glory for the thousandth time and putting his notes on the Sarah Broughton case in order.

He lived in a tiny, detached Spanish Colonial Revival bungalow hidden away on a residential street in the southern part of Santa Monica, near the college. Apart from one or two new low-rise apartment buildings in the modern, cubist style, most of the houses on the street were older, like his. They were similar in design, all white or beige stucco with low-pitched red tile roofs, but each was just a little different from its neighbor. Some had shutters, for example, while others had metal grille-work around the windows. Arvo’s had both.

A short path wound through a postage-stamp garden crammed with small palms, ferns, jacaranda and bougainvillea, so overgrown that you had to push the fronds aside with your hands as you walked to the portico. Sometimes it felt like walking a jungle path, but the shrubbery provided excellent shade and kept the place cool in summer.

Inside, the living room was immediately to the left, the kitchen and dining area to the right. A short hallway, with closet space for coats and shoes, led to the hexagonal hub, off which doors led to the three small bedrooms and the bathroom. The floors were of unglazed tiles, the color of terracotta, and there were little art deco touches over the tops of the doorways and windows: a zigzag here and a chevron there.

The living room was where Arvo spent most of his time. Nyreen had had very particular ideas about art, and after she left with all her contemporary prints, he put up two large, framed movie posters on the walls, one for Casablanca and one for The Big Sleep.

There were two large built-in bookcases in the room, flanking the shuttered windows: one was filled with an eclectic mix of books, from movie history to theater, urban planning and hard-boiled detective fiction; and the other housed his video collection, from Citizen Kane to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

He had found the down payment for the house from the money he inherited on the death of his parents, and bought it as soon as he knew he had the job on the TMU. The mortgage stretched his resources almost to the limit, but he hoped to hang on to the place if he could, even if he never got to eat out again.

A good house in a pleasant neighborhood was hard to get in LA, real-estate prices being what they were, and apartment living didn’t appeal to him. He had done it in the past and found he quickly tired of smelling someone else’s cooking, or listening to someone else’s music, domestic arguments and sexual gymnastics.

When he had finished note-taking, the movie was over, the pot of coffee was empty, and he had sheets of paper spread out all over the floor and armchairs. But he was still no better off than when he started. The list of names Stuart Kleigman had faxed him gave him thirteen people with the initial M in either their first, middle or last names.

In addition, Stuart had found out very quickly through the movie-industry grapevine that Justin Mercer, Sarah Broughton’s ex-lover, had been working on a movie in a London studio for the past two months. Which let him off the hook.

Arvo stuck some leftover chili in the microwave for dinner, tossed a quick salad and opened a bottle of Sam Adams lager.

While the chili reheated, he dialed Ellie Huysman’s Toronto number again. There was a three-hour time difference, so it would be about nine-thirty in the evening there. He had tried three or four times during the day but got neither an answer nor a machine he could leave a message on. This time, as he was about to hang up after the tenth ring, he heard a breathless voice in his ear.

“Yes?”

“Is this Ms. Ellie Huysman?”

“Yes, yes it is. Who’s calling? Oh, damn — Magwitch! — hang on a minute, will you? Magwitch!” She put the phone down on a hard surface.

Arvo heard what he thought were a dog’s paws scrabbling over a wood floor.

“I told you not to do that. Darling, could you... ”

Arvo heard a man’s voice, but didn’t catch what he said, then Ellie Huysman picked up the phone again. “Sorry about that. The dog. We just got back from the carol service and he seems rather more than pleased to see us. Can you hang on a minute?”

Before Arvo could answer, she had put the phone down again. He heard more voices, laughter, a door opening and closing, then she picked up the phone again. “Hello? Are you still there? I’m sorry about that. What can I do for you? Who are you anyway?”

Arvo introduced himself.

“What’s it about?” she asked. “Hang on again, will you, I want to take this in the living room, on the sofa. I’ve been sitting on a hard pew all night and my bum feels like pressed cardboard.”

Arvo kept his patience as she set the receiver down once again on the hard surface. A few seconds later, she picked up the other extension and called for someone to replace the hall phone. That done, she said, “That’s better. Now I can sit down, kick my shoes off and have that stiff G and T, which I’ve been dying for all evening. Now then, Detective Hughes of the LAPD, what’s it all about? I’m curious.”

“Sarah Broughton.”

“Sal? Nothing’s happened to her, has it?”

Arvo had already debated what to tell her and decided there was no point holding back. She wasn’t a suspect; she was a friend of Sarah’s; and she lived in another country. “She’s been getting some disturbing letters,” he said, “and the writer seems to indicate that he knows her, that she should know him. Normally, we wouldn’t take a lot of notice of claims like that, but... ”

“But what, Detective?”

“Well, she discovered a body on the beach near her house the other day, just before she left for England. She didn’t know the victim, and there’s probably no connection, but even so—”

“It’s a coincidence you don’t like? I don’t like it, either. Poor Sal.”

“Are the two of you still close?”

“Ye-es, I’d say we are. Maybe not as close as we’ve been at some points in our lives — distance is a problem — but still firm friends. Look, if I can help you in any way, I will, but shouldn’t I verify your identity? I mean, you could be any Tom, Dick or Harry, couldn’t you? You could even be the person who’s been writing these letters. Why don’t you give me your police switchboard number and I’ll ring you back?”

A light breeze fluttered through the window and brushed Arvo’s cheek. He could hear the leaves and fronds rustling in the dark garden. Beyond that was the constant hum of cars on the freeway. He took a swig of Sam Adams. “I’m calling from home,” he said. “I could give you my badge number, and you could call the duty officer downtown and verify it.”

“But I still won’t know it’s really you, will I? I’ve never met you. You could have killed this Hughes fellow and stolen his badge.”

Arvo laughed. “Good point. Maybe you could call Stuart Kleigman, or even Sarah Broughton and ask one of them to describe my voice?”

“Oh, sod it,” she said. “This is getting far too bloody complicated. I’ll take my chances you’re who you say you are. What is it you want to know?”

The microwave beeped to tell Arvo his chili was ready. He ignored it. “Stuart Kleigman says he knows nothing about Sarah’s private life, or about her life before she met him,” he said.

“That doesn’t surprise me. Sal always was a bit cagey when it came to confiding in people. Comes from getting burned once too often.”

“Well, the letters are local, at least the one I saw was postmarked Pasadena, so we’re thinking it might be someone she’s met since she’s been in California, or at least in the United States. When would that be?”

“She came over to the States in... let me see... May last year, to New York first, where the tour started. As far as I know, she hasn’t left the country since. Until now, of course. She arrived in Los Angeles last autumn, early September, just after the Labor Day weekend.”

“Do you know of anyone who might be doing this?”

“Not offhand I don’t. Just a mo.” Arvo heard a lighter click and the satisfied sigh of someone blowing out smoke after a long time without. “Ah, that’s better,” she said. “If one can’t indulge one’s vices after a carol service, when can one? But the answer’s no. Sal kept very much to herself when she came round to my place.”

“Where were you living then?”

“Redondo Beach. Plenty of loonies there.”

Arvo laughed. “Was there anyone trying to date her while she was with you? Anyone pestering her at all?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

“Trust me. Yes.”

“Stuart told me that before she came to you she’d been going out with Gary Knox.”

“That’s right. The creep. If you ask me, that’s what did it.”

“Did what?”

She paused. Arvo heard her inhale and blow out smoke again. Ice tinkled in her glass. “I suppose I did sort of decide to trust you, didn’t I?”

“I think you did, yes.”

“And Sal could be in danger when she gets back?”

“It’s a possibility. If we don’t get somewhere quick.”

“All right. The tour’s what caused the breakdown, that’s what.”

“Sarah had a mental breakdown?”

“Mental, physical, you name it. I think the technical term is ‘Major Depressive Episode.’”

“After she came to stay with you?”

“I can’t be that exact about the timing, but I got the impression she was probably right in the middle of it when she arrived on my doorstep. She was in a hell of a state, anyway. Had nothing but the clothes on her back. I even had to pay the cab driver, and she’d come all the way from Anaheim. Not that I minded.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, I held her, calmed her down, gave her some hot chocolate, put her to bed. She didn’t say a word. But she was sobbing and trembling all the time. Her teeth were chattering. Her eyes were out of focus.”

“Drugs?”

“Yes, I’d say so.”

“Did anyone from the tour ever come looking for her?”

“If they did, they didn’t find her.”

“Was there anybody around with the initial, M?”

“Not that I recall. Is that his initial?”

“We think so.”

“No. I’m sorry I can’t be more help. But Sarah really didn’t see anyone for a long time.”

“How long did she stay with you?”

“On and off for a few months.”

“Where was she during the “off” times?”

He heard Ellie suck in a lungful of smoke. Bogie and Ingrid Bergman were staring at him from the wall. “The first few days,” Ellie said, “she was uncommunicative, cried a lot, went off her food, didn’t seem interested in anything. When she did talk, it was just to say how worthless she was and how I should forget about her. Then, when she’d been there just over a week, one night I heard a noise and found her in the bathroom washing a handful of Nembutals down with a bottle of Courvoisier. I stuck my fingers down her throat and made her puke it all up. Luckily she’d just started and the capsules hadn’t even dissolved. The next morning I drove her out to a clinic I knew, a place that had helped another good friend of mine. Very discreet.”

“What clinic?”

“It’s called the Shelley Clinic. No kidding. Like the poet. Out on 33 a few miles north of Ojai. Dr Fermor.”

“And they helped?”

“You’ve seen her now, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you’d seen her that night, you’d know they’ve worked a bloody miracle.”

Arvo let that sink in, then said goodbye to Ellie Huysman, making sure she would be available if he needed more information. As he walked into the kitchen to get his chili, he found himself thinking about what Ellie had said.

It certainly seemed as if someone or something had messed up Sarah’s mind, and it made him wonder if what was messing her up now was in some way connected: the tour, drugs, a dead rock star. Or was it someone even closer to home? Or a random stalker, some nut who had seen her on television and fallen in love with her? All possibilities. Too many damn possibilities, that was the problem.

Arvo carried his chili through to the living room, opened another bottle of Sam Adams and scanned the bookcase for a movie to watch. In a Lonely Place — Bogey and Gloria Grahame — that would suit his mood just fine.

18

He gazed lovingly at the small, blurred photo of Sally at LAX, leaving for England, above the brief article in the Los Angeles Times. Then he reread the text:

What indeed? He wondered where Robin Hood’s Bay was. He would have to look it up in an atlas and try to imagine her there. It was a bay, at least, which meant it must be on the sea, so for the moment he could picture her the way he had watched her in Pacific Palisades.

He sighed and put the newspaper down. Well, just because she was far from him physically, it didn’t mean she wasn’t still with him. He gazed around his room and her image stared back at him from every square inch of wall space: close-ups, head and shoulders, full body, nudes, evening dress, casual clothes, stills from movies and TV, you name it.

Wrapped in a warm cocoon of Sally, he could function properly, see things clearly. The only thing he didn’t know was what would happen after the consummation. He could only visualize two main possibilities, depending on the circumstances.

If all went well, they would end up living in a nice house by the sea in a nice neighborhood. Not in Los Angeles, but somewhere quieter and smaller, somewhere less vivid. Maybe even Robin Hood’s Bay, if it was as quaint as it sounded. He would like to meet her family.

If that happened, he thought they should start a family as quickly as possibly and have maybe six children. Or fewer if she thought that was too many; he didn’t want to turn her into a baby factory against her will. He would work from home so he would never have to leave her, and she could devote all her time to the house and children. They would be together all day, every day.

Of course, they would have people over for dinner — he didn’t know who; he didn’t know anyone he wanted to invite, and it certainly wouldn’t be anyone from her present lifestyle — and they would talk and drink wine in the candlelight. He would hold hands with her secretly under the table.

In bed they would lie together naked and... But when he thought of the act itself he started to feel excited, confused and angry; waves of red surged in front of his eyeballs. It was the same way he felt when he watched the video: so disturbed and violent that he sometimes bruised his penis and made it sore when he masturbated. Well, that part of their relationship would take care of itself when the time came.

If things didn’t go their way, though — and he could at least admit that might happen, as they had many rich and powerful enemies — then it might be necessary to forgo the earthly paradise and head straight for the heaven beyond the flesh.

Sometimes that seemed like the best idea, anyway. He was sure there was no comparison between the world of the flesh and that of pure spirit. But when you pit the known against the unknown, usually the known has an edge. That was something for him to work on: learn to love the unknown more. Faith, that was what he needed. Faith was the key. And courage.

For now, though, he had his images of her, and he would create more while she was away. With his computer, he could do anything he wanted to photographs or video images. He could play God with the arrangement of body parts and even put different heads and bodies together.

He had experimented with several permutations: putting Sally’s head on the body of a porn image, for example, so that she smiled at him with her legs wide open, one hand holding herself and a finger inside her vagina. The bottom part wasn’t Sally, of course. Though she had appeared nude in some films — he had videos of them all — she had never done anything remotely as pornographic as that. She wouldn’t. He knew that. At heart, she was a decent, wholesome girl. But this was a part of his power; his ability to play God with images. And God had a sense of humor, too. Once he had put Sally’s head between the legs of the porn photo and it looked funny smiling at him from where the model’s pussy should be.

But his crowning glory was the footage he had rearranged from an erotic video and several photographs of himself and Sally. As he ran it now and watched, he felt that familiar surge of excitement and anger. It was a simple scene: a man and woman in a bedroom. The man lay on his back, erect and ready, and the woman lowered herself onto him, taking his penis in her hand and guiding it into her. Then she began to rock back and forth, gently at first, and then more wildly.

The woman had Sally’s face; the man had his.

It was still rather primitive, of course. Their faces were both grafted from photographs, so their expressions didn’t change. Throughout the whole five minutes or so, she retained her sweet smile and he looked far too serious.

You could also see a faint line where the heads had been joined to the bodies, as if someone had slit their throats.

Their heads looked a little fuzzy, and the skin tones were slightly different. Though he had added a soundtrack of moans, cries and grunts from another porn video, they weren’t well enough synchronized. The whole thing sounded dubbed. Which is exactly what it was.

But the more he concentrated, the more he was able to forget the imperfections and lose himself in her smile, her body, her cries, her love. Sometimes he felt a little guilty about what he was doing with the images and all, just a little naughty. But it was all he had of her flesh while they were being kept apart. He knew she would understand and forgive him. Besides, she was his, after all, wasn’t she?

And the best thing of all was that, afterwards, she talked to him, told him her most intimate secrets. And, more important still, if he listened very closely, she told him what he had to do to win her love. She was telling him to do something right now. It wasn’t clear exactly what yet, but it would be soon.

19

Early on Christmas Eve, Arvo went out to a watering-hole on Wilshire with Maria, Kelly Norris, Mike Glover and Larry Matsuoka from the unit.

As they wedged themselves into the only semicircular booth left, Arvo couldn’t help but smile at the bizarre twist the Sandi Gaines case had taken that day. After everything that had happened, Sandi had come by the office that morning saying she didn’t want to press charges; she was willing to give Chuck a second chance; maybe she’d been wrong about him.

But Chucky was facing charges, all right. Plenty of them. Arvo had suggested counselling for Sandi. A relationship like theirs could only end in violence, and it was a good idea to try to save the department more work down the line. A good idea, but almost impossible. In the centuries-old war between reason and passion, who ever listened to reason?

Green and red streamers hung across the ceiling and walls, a small Christmas tree covered with lights and tinsel stood near the door and Elvis was singing “Blue Christmas’ on the jukebox. It took nearly ten minutes to get a round of drinks.

Arvo found himself crushed next to Maria, a very enjoyable sensation. Her thigh pressed against his, and sometimes when she moved he could feel the warmth and softness of her breast against his arm.

“What do you make of it?” he asked her about Sandi Gaines. The bar was so crowded and noisy he had to lean close to her ear to be heard. Close enough to smell her musky perfume.

Maria took a sip from a tall frosted glass full of colored liquid and chunks of fruit topped with an umbrella and shook her head. The bartender called it a Santa Special because it was mostly green, white and red. “I think she’s crazy,” she said with a slight shrug. “But half the world’s crazy and the other half’s working on it. I don’t know.”

“She said he made her feel wanted.”

“I suppose if a guy walked in a restaurant and threatened to blow my head off he’d make me feel wanted, too,” said Maria.

Arvo laughed. “She said she hadn’t realized he was such a man, hadn’t thought he had it in him.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Arvo.”

“Haven’t you ever felt that way? Liked a guy because he felt so passionately about you he’d do something like that?”

“Nope.”

“How about someone who was willing to get violent because of you, like fight for you?”

Maria thought for a moment, then said, “It’s not the same. Chuck didn’t fight for Sandi, he didn’t defend her honour or anything, he threatened her. He’s a creep, and if she gets off on being scared, that’s her problem.” She took another sip of her drink.

“Ms. Sensitivity,” he said.

Maria grinned. “There was this guy in ninth grade once,” she went on, putting the glass down. “See, there was this asshole kept razzing me, calling me ‘wetback,’ ‘spic,’ ‘hot chili pepper’ and other real original shit like that. Only one guy stood up for me. Patrick O’Reilly, that was his name.” She smiled at the memory. “Knocked two of the asshole’s front teeth right down his throat and got himself suspended for it.”

“You admired him for doing that?”

“Sure did. We even dated for a while. You know, I once asked him why he did it, him being an Anglo and me a Mexican and all that. Only time I ever saw him get upset. He said he wasn’t Anglo, he was Irish, and his grandparents, or his great-grandparents, whatever, came over here after the potato famine. He told me hundreds of thousands of his people died in that famine and he was damned if he was going to stand by and watch someone made to suffer just because she came from another country for a better life, especially from a poor country.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. We lost touch.”

Just then, Mike Glover caught Maria’s attention and Arvo found himself leaning over the table trying to carry on a conversation about the prospects for the Rosebowl with Larry and Kelly. The din in the bar made it difficult. One particularly noisy group kept popping champagne corks and squealing with delight every time they sprayed half a bottle all over themselves. Elvis’s “Why Can’t Every Day Be Like Christmas?” gave way to John Lennon singing “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”

For a moment, Arvo drifted away from the conversation, thinking about John Lennon, shot by the kind of person the TMU was trying to get some insight into. December 8, 1980. Arvo had been barely out his teens himself back then, but he had cried for John Lennon, listened to all those oldies they played on the radio all day: “In My Life,” “Working Class Hero,” “Mother.” Just a fucked-up working-class kid from Liverpool, or so Arvo’s Welsh father said, but a hell of a talent.

That December day in Detroit was wet, gray and chilling to the bone. Arvo remembered passing an empty playground where one of the swings was rocking gently back and forth in the wind, as if occupied by a ghost. He had his Walkman on and the radio station was playing “Jealous Guy.” It made Arvo feel inexplicably sad, that empty swing rocking back and forth on the gray day after John Lennon got shot. If Arvo had known then that one day he would be working on a special unit...

“Arvo?”

“Oh, sorry. What?”

It was Maria again, slipping on her herringbone jacket. “I’ve got to go now,” she said. “Long drive ahead.”

“Okay. Drive carefully and have a great time.” He knew she was going to spend Christmas with her family in San Diego.

She smiled, then leaned over suddenly and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. He could taste grapefruit juice, orange, salt, tequila and something else, maybe Maria herself. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kelly Norris raise her eyebrows. Maria gave his arm a squeeze and said, “Merry Christmas. Take care of yourself, Arvo,” then she turned to the group at large and waved. “Have a good one!” And before they knew it, she was gone.

“So what do you think?” Larry asked.

“What do I think about what?”

“Michigan. The Rosebowl. You got a bet on?”

“Oh... right... ”

Arvo chatted for as long as it took to drink a second beer then headed out himself, once again thanking Mike Glover for inviting him to Christmas dinner but pleading a prior engagement. A white lie.

As he drove home bumper to bumper in the constellation of lights along the Santa Monica Freeway, he could still taste Maria’s kiss, smell her perfume, and the memory of it stirred his loins. He turned off the freeway at Cloverfield and pulled up in the street outside his house around seven o’clock.

In his mailbox he found a card and small package postmarked Palo Alto. Inside, he first checked the answering machine for messages — none — then he kicked off his shoes and took off his gun and nylon holster. After pouring himself a stiff Scotch, he flipped on the television news, then he sat down, put his feet up and opened the card.

It showed a Breughel village scene. Tiny figures lost in the whiteness. Not a mention of Christmas. Typical Nyreen. Very politically correct when it came to religious sensitivity. So much so that she didn’t have any religion at all. The greeting read, “Sorry I’ve screwed things up. You know I’ll love you forever.” Arvo ripped up the card and put it in the garbage.

Just as he was on his way to the fridge to see if there was anything for dinner, his beeper went off. That could only mean work. He checked the number, saw it was Parker Center and went to the phone.

Joe Westinghouse picked it up at the other end on the third ring. “Arvo,” he said. “Merry Christmas. We put a rush on the John Heimar toxicology. Only way to get it done before the holiday. I just got the results back and I thought you might like to know that the kid had enough barbiturates in his system to kill half the state of California.”

“Come again?”

“I’m not just talking recreational drugs here, Arvo. Far too much for that. The kid was poisoned before he was chopped up.”

20

On Christmas Day, a cold wind buffeted Robin Hood’s Bay, smashing the sea in a frenzy of foam hard against the old stone wall and churning the dawn sky into a shifting pattern of ashes. Everyone woke early, and in no time, it seemed, Cathy and Jason were dashing down to open their presents and the day had begun.

Jason loved his Mighty Ducks jacket, and Cathy was ecstatic over the sweatshirt with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Pie and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters on the front.

The Rodeo Drive blouse left Paula almost speechless (only almost: what she actually said was, “You shouldn’t have. When will I ever get a chance to wear something like this?”).

Sarah’s father thanked her for the watch, but she felt she had misjudged there. She noticed him fiddling unconsciously with the gold band all day, as if it were too tight. She had been cautious enough to avoid buying him something too ostentatiously expensive, like a Rolex, but it still seemed she was wrong. Perhaps it reminded him, too, of how quickly his time was ticking away? Sarah thought it might be a good idea at least to replace the band with a simple leather strap.

Most of the presents Sarah received consisted of some form of warm clothing — a scarf, gloves, a pullover — as if her family had expected her to come over from sunny California in a T-shirt and shorts. Paula had bought her a nice pair of earrings, though: hand-crafted silver inlaid with what looked like lapis lazuli.

While the children played with their toys and filled themselves with chocolates, Sarah helped Paula stuff the turkey and prepare the dressings.

They ate at three o’clock, and after dinner the children, who could contain themselves no longer, dashed off to show their American presents to their friends in the village. Arthur Bolton fell asleep in his wheelchair, wheezing and snoring, and Sarah and Paula shared the washing-up.

Most of the evening they sat around and watched television, sipping port and sherry until it was time for the children to go to bed. Arthur Bolton followed soon after.

“Let’s have another drink,” Sarah suggested when she and Paula were alone. “It’s been a long time since we last got tiddly together.”

A fire blazed in the hearth. It was only lava rocks heated by gas, but it looked and felt like a real fire, and it made Sarah remember the coal fire they used to have all winter when she was a child. With her father working at the pit, they got a coal allowance.

“I don’t know,” Paula said. “I shouldn’t. There’ll still be so much to do tomorrow.”

“Come on. It’s Christmas.”

“We can’t all live your easygoing lifestyle, you know. The kids will be needing me just as much tomorrow as they did today. Then there’s Dad to look after. And work.”

“Come on, let your hair down.”

Paula chewed her lip for a moment, then said. “All right, you’ve twisted my arm. Maybe just one. A little one, mind you.”

“Why don’t you try your new blouse on?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Go on. I want to see if it fits.”

“I can’t. I’ll feel silly.”

“No you won’t. You’ll look gorgeous. Go on, Paula, do it for me.”

“Well, I suppose it’ll go with my suit.” Muttering to herself, Paula disappeared upstairs and came down wearing the blouse. It was Thai silk, handmade, and a very delicate coral color. Paula wore it under a dull, off-the-peg cream suit. But that was Paula all over: Rodeo Drive blouse and C & A suit.

“There you are,” said Sarah. “You look great.”

Paula fingered the high collar. “It is nice... ”

“But?”

“Well, I can hardly wear it to work, can I?”

“I should hope not. It wasn’t meant for work. Don’t worry, there’ll be occasions. I just wanted to buy you something a bit frivolous, that’s all.”

Paula gave a long-suffering sigh. “It’s all very well for some. We can’t all afford to be frivolous, though. Some of us have responsibilities.”

“Oh, Paula, give it a rest.” Sarah felt squiffy enough to defy her big sister. She dug out the medicinal brandy and poured them each a healthy measure. “To family reunions,” she said, raising her glass.

Paula snorted.

Sarah slammed her glass down, breaking the stem and spilling brandy all over the coffee table. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “You don’t give a bloody inch, do you? Can’t you see I’m trying? I’m trying very hard. Do you hate me so much?”

“What do you mean?” said Paula, already wiping at the spill with a napkin. “Of course I don’t hate you. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Oh, leave it alone,” said Sarah, grasping Paula’s arm. Paula shook herself free and carried on mopping up. A spot of brandy stained the hem of her suit. Sarah got another glass from the cabinet and filled it close to the brim. “All the time I’ve been here you’ve done nothing but whine and moan,” she said. “I’m getting sick of it. If your life’s so bloody awful, do something about it.” The moment she had spoken, Sarah regretted the words, and her harsh tone, but it was already too late.

“What do you mean ‘do something about it’?” Paula shot back, color flashing to her cheeks. “As easy as that, is it? What do you suggest I do? Pack in my job? Dump the kids? And what about Dad? Do I just let him die? Maybe you don’t realize it, but someone’s got to look after this family, and it bloody well isn’t you.”

“You ungrateful bitch. I’ve offered you all the help I can and you just throw it all back in my face.”

“Help? That’s a good one. Money, that’s what you’ve offered. That’s all. Money. You can’t buy everything with money, you know.”

“If you weren’t so damn stubborn and proud you’d realize you can do a lot with money.”

“Like send Dad to a home?”

“Well let’s face it, that’d be one less burden for you, wouldn’t it?”

Paula shook her head. “A burden? You just don’t bloody understand, do you, Sal? Has all this high living turned your head so much you don’t even understand your family any more? Has America done this to you? You didn’t used to be so heartless.”

Sarah ran her hand over her hair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it. You just made me so angry.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Paula went on, “if you weren’t so obviously Dad’s favorite, no matter—”

“What did you say?”

“You heard.”

Sarah was suddenly conscious of the wind screaming outside, like some outcast creature in despair trying to get in. “But that’s ridiculous,” she said. “He hates me. Maybe not hates, but... Oh, he tolerates me, for appearance’s sake. After all, I am family. He’s polite. But he’s never forgiven me for not being what he wanted me to be, for that bloody sex scene, for Gary, the drugs, for moving to LA—”

“You stupid cow, can’t you see it? He adores you. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve embarrassed him or let him down, he still thinks the sun shines out of your arse.”

“But—”

“No, let me finish.” Paula sat forward and rested her hands on her knees. “It’s about time you heard a few home truths, little Miss High and Mighty. I’m not saying he puts no value on me, of course he does. I think he respects me. He certainly appreciates how I take care of him. He’s grateful. But he loves you. Can’t you see the difference?”

Sarah shook her head. “No.”

“Then you’re a fool. When you made those dirty films and then took off with that drug addict Gary Knox, you broke Dad’s heart. He thought he’d lost you forever. He’s a proud man and he’s used to being obeyed, so of course he cut you off. What would you expect of him? But I know what he really felt. Remember, I’ve lived with him all this time, heard him calling me by your name when he’s half asleep and afraid of dying, seen him looking at the phone, willing it to ring, waiting for the postman. I’ve seen the pride, the way his face lights up when he sees you walk on the screen.”

“But you said he didn’t watch the series. He said—”

“Of course he watches it. Every bloody Tuesday without fail. And if anything ever comes up to stop him, I have to tape it for him. Oh, Sal, I might have done all the right things in my life, even if they didn’t all work out. And there’s the kids, too, of course. Dad adores the kids. But you’re the one he loves most. You’re the one who took on the world and won. You’re the one who broke away. You’re the one with all the guts, the one who doesn’t give a damn what people think. You’re the star, the shining light. You’re the one he’s so bloody proud of he could burst.” She shook her head. Her face was flushed and her eyes were glittering with tears. “Don’t you ever try to convince me he doesn’t prefer you, because I know he does. He always has done. And that’s something I’ve just had to learn to live with.”

Suddenly, some of the old memories made sense to Sarah. Let’s bury Daddy in the sand, bedtime stories and, she remembered, he had taken her to the pictures when she was a little girl. She remembered him falling asleep during Fantasia at the Lyceum, and the woman next to them nudging him and telling him to stop snoring. He must have just finished a twelve-hour shift down the pit. Maybe Paula was right. But Sarah still couldn’t believe it. Struck dumb, she reached for the brandy bottle and poured another drink.

Paula held out her glass. “I think I need another one, too. He’ll go spare when he sees that broken glass.”

“Oh, bugger the glass. I could buy him a hundred sets of Waterford crystal if he wanted.”

“Haven’t I got through to you? That’s not what he wants. Look at where he comes from, the kind of man he is. He’s happy with meat and two veg, a bottle of beer, a night or two a week out at the club and a roof over his head. He doesn’t want your money, or what it can buy. He wants your love. Have you forgotten how to give it? Is that what fame does to people?”

“Perhaps I have.” Sarah took a large pull on the brandy. It was a cheap make, she noticed, and it burned all the way down. Her hand was shaking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all such a shock. I didn’t know... ”

“Of course you bloody didn’t. You’ve been far too busy with your career to spare a thought for family. Truth be told, you’ve always been a bit too selfish, our Sal.”

“It’s not that. Oh, it’s true I’ve been working hard, maybe too much. But I’ve been ill, too. I fell to pieces, Paula. I came unstuck out there, thousands of miles from home. And there was no one to help me, no one I could turn to. I nearly died. I mean I nearly killed myself. I wanted to die.”

Paula stared at her. “What? Over that worthless Gary Knox?”

“Partly. Maybe. But it wasn’t just that, it was everything. And he wasn’t worthless, Paula. He wasn’t always worthless. He changed, that’s all. People do, you know.”

“I heard about what happened to him. Dad said it served him right.”

“Oh, I’d left him by then. But I lost it, Paula. Listen to what I’m saying. I just... lost it. Ever since then I’ve hidden myself in my work, buried my head in the sand. I’ve been too ashamed to come home and face you all.” She felt the tears burning in her eyes, felt the pent-up emotion ripping itself loose from her heart. “Why don’t you come back with me?” she said. “You. Dad. Jason and Cathy. A new life.”

Paula laughed. “Don’t be daft. We couldn’t possibly. First off, there’s school for the kids, and Dad... well... ”

Sarah looked directly at her. “I mean it,” she said. “You can do it if you make an effort. Come over and stay with me, Paula. I’m lonely. I’m so lonely.” And she let the tears come. Her head fell to rest on Paula’s shoulder, which hardened with resistance at first, then yielded. First, Paula put an arm around her, then Sarah felt her sister’s hand stroking her hair, just like she had all those years ago. “Somebody’s trying to destroy me, Paula,” she sobbed. “Somebody’s trying to drive me insane.”

21

All day the insects crawled over his exposed flesh: face, wrists, ankles. Some of them were biting him, too, drawing blood, but he didn’t mind. It was only their nature.

The rain came and went. He squatted in the trees at the back of the house. When you stay still for so long, he noticed, your mind moves into a very strange space indeed. Perceptions are heightened. Especially touch, smell and hearing.

He could smell not only every individual leaf of the eucalyptus and pine trees but any number of other, small wild flowers and shrubs in the vicinity. He could smell the dirt and earth-mold beneath him, still damp after rain, and he was even aware of the changing smells of his own skin as the chemical balances inside him altered minute by minute.

It was as if the whole spectrum of electromagnetic radiation beyond the puny strip occupied by visible light had suddenly opened its secrets to him. He could smell the light slowly changing to darkness, too: like saffron and cinnamon to coal dust and ashes. He liked it.

And he could feel every tiny insect footprint on his flesh, could hear every antenna brushing against the hairs on his wrist where the thin cotton gloves ended. He could feel the stingers, or whatever they used, slowly pricking into his skin, sucking his blood for incubation, or injecting inflammatory chemicals, and he could smell his blood as it flowed out.

But there was no pain. The things he experienced were all part of a vast continuum of sensation in which everything could be sensed, but in which nothing felt either good or bad.

He imagined this was what the Zen Buddhists meant when they talked about mindlessness and detachment.

He didn’t even daydream to pass the time. Nothing but pure sensation registered in his mind. He was so exactly focused on the here and now that there was no place for memory, doubt, fear or fantasy. Deep down, he knew why he was here, knew what he had to do and who he was doing it for. He didn’t have to think about it any more; it had become a part of his nature.

So all he had to do was wait, crouched in the woods with the insects getting in his hair and crawling down the back of his shirt collar, up his pant legs. Making tiny whistling, sucking and screaming sounds as they drew his blood.

He heard a car in the distance and instinctively his hand tightened on the hammer he held. It was the only movement he had made in six hours, apart from blinking.

22

It rained on Christmas Day in Santa Monica. All day. A slow, steady drizzle, at times indistinguishable from the fog.

Arvo woke late, showered, brewed a pot of fresh coffee and tuned the radio to FM 93.1. He knew every oldie almost by heart. As he half listened, he thought about what Joe Westinghouse had told him the previous evening. In some ways, it came close to confirming what he had suspected: that the Heimar murder might have been carried out for Sarah Broughton’s benefit.

Before the toxicology results, it had still been possible to believe that Heimar had simply picked up the wrong john and become the victim of a possible homophobic killer. Prostitutes, both male and female, made easy victims because they were often estranged from their families and lived far from where they grew up. They had no community beyond their own kind. If they disappeared, nobody noticed, and if another prostitute did notice, the odds were that he wasn’t going to call the cops.

But now Arvo knew that the Heimar kid had been given so much pentobarbitol that he had been in a coma before his throat was cut, before his neck and chest were stabbed and slashed repeatedly, before his body was cut into pieces, then it looked less like an impassioned sex killing and more like a cold, deliberately planned murder.

Joe had also checked with the coroner’s office about how the drug might have been administered. There were no fresh needle-marks, so intravenous injection was out, and it was unlikely that Heimar had been given it in a drink. Pentobarbitol tastes lousy and he would surely have noticed it, unless he had been almost paralytically drunk, which he wasn’t.

Most likely, Joe had thought at first, the kid had been offered the pills by his killer and had simply taken them himself, for fun, or to dull the pain of what he was doing, the way a lot of street kids do.

But the forensic pathologist who carried out the autopsy found traces of barbituric acid in Heimar’s anus and a high concentration of the drug in his rectal tissue. Which meant that Heimar or his killer had shoved the pills up his ass, probably as a prelude or a coda to anal sex. After all, straw behind the ears or not, John Heimar was a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool LA male prostitute.

Arvo tried to push the depressing thoughts aside. There was nothing more he could do until tomorrow, after the holiday, when life got back to normal. Besides, he still couldn’t be certain it wasn’t a potential serial killer making his first tentative foray into murder and dismemberment. But if he took everything into account — the watcher with binoculars; the letters, with their promise of “proof’; the placing of the body and timing to coincide with Sarah Broughton’s regular morning run; the coldly premeditated abduction and murder of an easy victim — then it seemed more likely there was a connection.

All morning, he had been eyeing the small package on the table by the window: his Christmas present from Nyreen. He couldn’t decide whether to open it or throw it out.

Finally, he opened it. Under all the padding and tissue lay a small, delicate glass bowl with a rose etched on the side. Nyreen was into glass-blowing these days, and it was probably something she had made. What its purpose was, Arvo had no idea. But trust Nyreen to send him something she’d blown. He put the bowl on the mantelpiece and tried to ignore it.

He hadn’t put up a tree this year — there seemed no point — and the few cards he had received stood on the tile mantelpiece — some from old friends in Detroit, one from his brother, Michael, in New York, one from his grandparents in Wales. His maternal grandparents had died when he was very young, before he had a chance to get to know them. When he was a boy, his mother once told him they had been murdered by Stalin after the war, but he hadn’t known what that really meant until much later.

By noon, Arvo felt restless. He drove down to Ocean, found a parking spot without any trouble and walked along the clifftop by the palisades, with his collar turned up and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The rain and mist felt like cool silk brushing against his face. The Christmas lights strung across Wilshire, where it ended at Ocean, looked eerie, hanging there disembodied, blurred and smudged by the wet gray light.

All the horizons were lost in misty rain. From the top of the cliffs, he could hear the waves as they crashed on the shore below, and could just about make out the sloshing gray mass of the ocean. Gulls swooped in and out of the fog, squawking and squabbling, seemingly oblivious to both the weather and the birth of Christ. Even the traffic on the Coast Highway, way down at the bottom of the sheer cliffs, was quiet today.

A bundle of rags stirred at the base of a palm tree and a grubby hand shot out, accompanied by a mumbled request for money. Arvo gave him a buck. Sometimes he seemed to hand over half his salary to bums. Why, he didn’t know.

As he crossed the road to get back to his car, a police cruiser slowed to a halt beside him. He realized that, apart from the bums, he was the only person on the street. Everyone else was at home with the family eating turkey and watching It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol, and the only places open were video stores and minimarts.

“What’s your destination, sir?” asked the young officer on the passenger side.

Arvo flipped his shield. “Just walking.”

“Sorry, sir,” the officer said. “Routine. Merry Christmas.”

His partner nodded and drove off.

“Merry Christmas,” Arvo said after the car. He supposed he did look suspicious out there alone with the bums on the street. Bums were vulnerable, like prostitutes. Sometimes people killed them for pleasure, the way people killed boys like John Heimar. The two cops — poor bastards pulling the Christmas Day shift — were only doing their jobs.

Arvo remembered pulling Christmas shifts as a uniform cop in Detroit. Christmas Eve was pretty bad, a lot of domestic violence and shit like that. But some of the real stuff that took longer to build up exploded on Christmas Day, usually in the afternoon.

Nobody who hasn’t done it can ever understand the feeling you get driving to work around dawn, seeing the Christmas lights all lit up on the porches and watching the bedroom lights flick on inside the houses and apartments as you drive by, maybe remembering the anticipation you used to feel when you were a kid, the excitement that this was the day you’d been waiting for, the day you were going to get that mountain bike you’d been longing for all year, or that new Sega Genesis game everyone else at school seemed to have but you. But this year, you aren’t going to be part of it at all.

And that was the best part of the day.

So you’d arrive feeling a little nostalgic, maybe, and the early part of the shift you’d be bored to tears, just wishing you were at home with your family like everyone else. By afternoon, though, things started to change. The calls started coming in, and by the time your shift was over you never wanted to work a holiday again.

The first one might be a dangler, been hanging there in the middle of the living room since he woke up and found himself all alone on Christmas Day and accepted at last that there really was no future for him. By the time you get there, his neck is two feet long and his shoes are full of shit.

Because holidays like Christmas are when really bad things happen. On Christmas Day, the husband who has been feeling depressed over being laid off for a couple of months has too much to drink, decides he doesn’t like the tie his wife bought him and shoots his children, his wife and then himself. And who cleans up? The cops and the ambulance guys.

On Christmas Day, the wife who has been holding back her feelings about her husband’s affair ever since she found out about it in November has too many glasses of wine with the turkey, which she spent all morning preparing, and when he says he just has to go out for a while after dinner, she feels the edge of the carving knife and looks at his throat.

On holidays like Christmas, people get together, drink too much and kill one another. Or they get depressed all alone and they kill themselves. Either way, it makes a busy time for the emergency services. You want a good argument against the family, Arvo thought, then you should spend a Christmas Eve in the police station or in the emergency ward of your local hospital.

Arvo had no sooner got home than the phone rang. His chest tightened when he heard Nyreen’s voice. “Merry Christmas, honey,” she said. “How did you like the present?”

“It’s fine,” said Arvo. “You made it yourself?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t send you—”

“Hey, it’s okay. No problem. The pleasure’s in the giving, right? Arvo, I’m not stupid. I realize I’ve hurt you and you’re probably still pissed at me and all, but you know I still care a lot about you. I hope we can be friends?”

“I don’t know if that’s possible, Nyreen.”

“Well, okay, maybe not right now. I understand that. Maybe it’ll take time. But what I’m saying, honey, is don’t cut me out of your life completely. Things just didn’t work out for you and me, but I still love you, you know. Okay?”

“I don’t know. I need some time.”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure. I’m fine.”

“Are you enjoying Christmas?”

“Yeah. Look, I’ve got to go. You know Mike Glover? He and his wife invited me over for dinner.” He had been invited, but he wasn’t going. The last thing he wanted on Christmas Day was someone else’s family being solicitous about his well-being.

“Great. Have a good time. And give Mike and Rosie my love. Oh, and before I forget, Arvo, I’ve got some real good news.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m pregnant. Isn’t it a rush? Vern is absolutely thrilled. So am I, of course. Aren’t you just a teeny-weeny bit happy for me?”

“Sure I’m happy for you, Nyreen. I wish you all the best. Gotta run now.”

Arvo hung up with a lump in his throat. Pregnant. Now there was a surprise. When he and Nyreen had discussed children, she had made it quite clear that she didn’t want any, not for a few years at least. Arvo had gone along with her, though he had wanted to start a family sooner. She said she needed time to pursue her career in public relations, which she had now given up to go live with Vern in Palo Alto and blow glass. Life. Go figure.

Now, all of a sudden, she was pregnant and just thrilled to pieces about it. Well, that little bit of news had just shunted Nyreen at least another million miles away from Arvo. Now she was having Vern’s child, she was less his problem than she had ever been. At least that was his view. Somehow, he had a feeling that she would see things differently. She always did. Maybe she’d want him to be godfather. And that would probably be after she’d claimed half the house.

Arvo realized he was hungry. So okay, he told himself, getting up and stretching, the hell with Nyreen. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get Christmas on the road.

In the four years after his parents’ death, Arvo had got into the habit of spending Christmas alone. In fact, now he thought about it, he and Nyreen had only been together for one Christmas.

As he had spent two of his three Christmases in Los Angeles alone, so far, returning to the familiar ritual for his fourth gave him a degree of comfort. He wasn’t a Christian, and the drop or two of Jewish blood he had inherited from his mother’s side hadn’t galvanized him into any sort of Judaic interests or beliefs, but the season nevertheless had a certain something; it demanded some sort of recognition, if only a brief genuflection in the general direction of the twin gods, Mammon and Glutton. It was also a time that tended to encourage introspection.

First he went to the fridge and took out the smoked salmon and selection of imported cheeses, cold cuts and pâtés he had bought a couple of days ago at the farmers’ market on Fairfax — some Caerphilly, to remind him of his Welsh roots, old Cheddar and cambozola because he liked them.

Then there was that Welsh delicacy, a can of laver bread, made from seaweed and absolutely delicious with a couple of rashers of Canadian bacon. Finally, he would nibble on a couple of the Welsh cakes his Granny Hughes had sent him, as she did every Christmas, without fail. If he were still hungry at supper time, there was a microwavable turkey dinner in the freezer.

When he had set up his tray, he popped the cork on a bottle of Schramsberg Californian “champagne” and poured himself a glass. Then he went over to his CD collection and put on Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”

By the time he had got through the third glass of champagne and most of the smoked salmon, his mind began drifting. He thought first, as he always did at Christmas, of his parents and the family Christmases in Detroit, all the houses in the street decked with colored lights, the presents under the tree, turkey with sage-and-onion stuffing and cranberry sauce, shovelling the piles of snow from the driveway. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a romantic image.

He thought of his grandfather in Amlwch, how at eighty-five he still got around with the help of a knobbly walking-stick and never missed a lunchtime session at the pub, and how his wife, at eighty-two, would bawl him out if he was late back.

He thought about Maria down in San Diego with her family. The thought of her brought back the memory of her perfume, of her warm breast against his arm, and it made him feel horny.

Then he thought of Nyreen and how last year, only a couple of weeks after they had got married, they had gone to the Christmas boat parade down in Marina del Rey.

Bundled up in a green wool sweater against the cool evening, Nyreen had clung onto his arm and jumped up and down like a child, pointing at the procession of boats bobbing by with their illuminated reindeers, angels and fake blue-lit icicles hanging from their bows. Arvo had thought it was tacky, but he was happy to see her so excited and alive. He remembered how passionately they had made love that night. Now she was pregnant in Palo Alto, living with Vern.

By the time Arvo was on his fourth glass of bubbly and his second Welsh cake, Richard Burton was bringing the story to a close. When it was over, Arvo wasn’t sure whether the tears that came to his eyes stemmed from nostalgia for his father’s homeland or from drunken self-pity. He rubbed them away with the backs of his hands and finished the bottle.

In the evening, he watched a double bill of two of his favorite sci-fi videos: Them! and The Creeping Flesh. He stumbled to bed sometime around midnight without having got around to the frozen turkey.

It wasn’t until eight o’clock the next morning that his beeper went off, shocking him out of a chaotic dream about a giant ant with Nyreen’s face trying to explain to him how ants procreated. He woke into a real jackhammer of a headache. When he dialed the unfamiliar number and spoke his name into the receiver, his voice was hoarse with dehydration.

“Arvo, it’s Joe. Joe Westinghouse. Sorry if this seems to be getting to be a habit, but it looks like there’s been another one.”

Still fuzzy from sleep and alcohol, Arvo mumbled, “Another what?”

“Another murder.”

Well what was so odd about that? Arvo thought numbly. Day after Christmas in LA. Any day in LA. Bound to be plenty of other murders. And Joe did work Robbery-Homicide.

“Maybe you’d like to come and have a look?” Joe suggested. “I think this one will interest you.”

“Just a minute,” Arvo croaked, reaching for the pencil and paper he always kept on his bedside table. “Give me the address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

23

At eight-thirty in the morning the day after Christmas, there was plenty of traffic on the San Diego Freeway as the shoppers headed for the post-Christmas sales at the huge malls out in the Valley. Arvo turned off at Sunset and drove with the top of his convertible open. He needed a little air to blow a few of the cobwebs out of his brain.

No matter how many times he had passed through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, he had never ceased to marvel at the incredibly opulent bad taste that juxtaposed Elizabethan stately homes with Spanish haciendas, fairy-tale castles and French chateaux, all tucked away at the end of long driveways behind walls and elaborate metal gates, all surrounded by immaculately kept lawns. Well, you never did stop marvelling, did you, if you were from Detroit? It made Grosse Point look like the projects.

Still, there was something morbidly fascinating about it all, the way there often is with such overt bad taste. To gild the lily, some of the large houses were strung with gaudy displays of Christmas lights, and there were even a couple of oversized Christmas trees among the topiary, hung with tinsel and baubles. Probably imported from Norway or somewhere.

It was a perfect morning. The whole city had a fresh look and a clean, crisp smell, as it often did after rain. Sometimes, if only for a few hours, it seemed as if a day’s rain could wash all the poison from the air and rinse away years of grease and grime from the streets.

The early sun shone piercingly bright on the white stone of the protecting estate walls, and a few high white clouds floated serenely across the pale blue sky. In the far distance, way beyond the Hollywood Hills, stood the San Gabriel range, greenish-brown slopes scattered with chaparral and sagebrush. High up, near the jagged peaks, rough white striations stood out in relief, where snow had settled in the gullies and fissures.

After three glasses of water and four extra-strength Tylenol, Arvo was feeling a little more human, but he still experienced waves of dizziness and nausea and his heart seemed to be laboring to circulate the sluggish blood through his body. The bright light hurt, even through dark glasses. He didn’t bother turning the radio on; he knew the way a hangover distorted his sense of hearing so much that even the organized harmony of a Mozart quartet would sound like a series of random sounds scraped by chainsaws on iron railings.

He drove up Laurel Canyon to the turn-off road Joe had mentioned, then turned left up the hillside and looked for the hand-painted sign.

Three police cruisers had pulled off the road to block the drive, lights flashing in the bright sun. Arvo parked his car by the roadside and flipped his shield. One of the officers raised the yellow crime-scene tape to let him through and made a note of the time and Arvo’s name on a clipboard.

The short driveway led to the backyard of a small timber A-frame, the front of which, held up by stilts sunk in concrete in the hillside, looked out over the canyon. Trees shaded the whole area and cast eerie, slow-moving shadows over the earth as the breeze stirred their heavy limbs. The air smelled of freshly cut grass, eucalyptus and pine trees. Even though it was early on a December morning, the temperature was in the mid-sixties. Raindrops still clung to the leaves like dew.

Someone had fixed a crime-scene card to the door, which meant that Joe had probably established a “double crime scene.” It made sense in a case like this, which was probably going to attract a few dignitaries and high-ranking police officers, not to mention high-fliers from the DA’s office.

What you did was you set up two crime-scene areas, one starting at the driveway and the second at the door to the house itself. The second, inside the house, of course, was the primary crime scene, the most important area to seal off, and Joe would now be responsible for who did and who didn’t get in there.

When the brass arrived, they would get the opportunity to breach at least one police line; they would be allowed through the driveway as far as the back of the house. That served two purposes: first, it would gratify their sense of importance; second, it would keep them out of the way of the real crime scene and avoid further contamination. So the brass saved face and the crime scene remained as intact as possible. Everyone gained.

Over by the trees, a young man wearing gray shorts and a red T-shirt sat on a tree stump beside a gas barbecue with his legs planted wide apart and his head in his hands, crying. A lock of straight blond hair had slid down and hung almost to his knees. A female patrol officer stood beside him.

Joe Westinghouse stood talking to another detective outside the back door. Joe was smoking, tapping his ash carefully into the yellow Sucrets tin he always carried with him to crime scenes. Jim Sung, from the coroner’s office, stood beside them with his scuffed black bag, waiting to go in. Jim nodded as Arvo approached. He looked as calm and bored as he always did, slowly chewing away at a piece of gum.

The three of them wore blue LAPD jumpsuits and disposable gloves to avoid contaminating the crime scene, or, in some cases, to avoid being contaminated by it. AIDS was a constant threat if there was a stranger’s blood splashed around the scene.

Arvo took his jumpsuit out of the trunk, slipped it on over his Tigers sweatshirt and jeans and walked over. He could feel the tension between Joe and the other man as he approached them.

“This is Detective Heffer, Hollywood Division,” said Joe. “He caught the squeal.”

Arvo nodded at Heffer, who had a pale, almost albino, complexion and an unusual combination of thin face and lips and a pug nose, revealing almost circular nostrils. His cold gray eyes were flecked with yellow, and his sparse hair was the color of bleached straw. Like Jim Sung, he was also chewing gum, and occasionally he paused to blow a bubble. He gave no acknowledgment of Arvo’s greeting, nor did his eyes betray any emotion.

Arvo knew Heffer, or at least knew of him. Word was he had applied for the TMU and been turned down. As a result, he had a hard-on for the department and didn’t hesitate to let it show.

Joe pointed toward the blond man in the shorts. “His name’s Jaimie Kincaid. Victim’s boyfriend. He phoned in at seven thirty-nine this morning and Officer Laski over there with him was first officer on the scene. You can get the details later. I suggest we go inside and have a look first.”

“Okay,” said Arvo.

“You ever been at a homicide scene before, Hughes?” asked Heffer. He had a squeaky voice that grated on Arvo’s nerves.

“Once or twice.”

“Uh-huh, it’s just that I figured you real élite star-fuckers down at—”

“Heffer. Shut the fuck up,” Joe cut in.

“Yes, sir,” Heffer said, and turned sullen.

The four of them went inside.

The back door led directly into a modern kitchen with fitted blond wood cupboards and shelves. Rustic copperware hung from hooks on the wall, and a large laminated chart showed the varieties of herbs and spices. The kitchen smelled of tomatoes, garlic and basil, and Arvo got the impression that the person who had lived there was quite the gourmet cook. A wooden rack held a set of kitchen knives; the biggest one was missing.

Even though he was wearing gloves, Arvo kept his hands in his pockets to avoid the temptation of touching something. He was also careful to step around the blood and mud smears on the ceramic tile floor.

Like Sarah Broughton’s place at the beach, the stilt-house was small but laid out in a design that made the best of its space and emphasized the view. At the front, sliding glass doors led to a large timber deck and looked out over the canyon.

The downstairs area consisted of one split-level room, the back, and higher, section fitted with a black matte dining table and matching chairs, the front with an off-white three-piece suite. The interior walls and floors were made of bleached pine. Contemporary paintings hung on the walls: the kinds of squiggles and seemingly random blocks of color that Arvo had never been able to work up much enthusiasm for.

A black-iron spiral staircase led upstairs, where there was one large bedroom, two smaller ones, a bathroom and closet space.

In the master bedroom, the naked body lay face up, spread-eagled on the king-size bed, hands and feet bound to the brass rails, a halo of blood around his head on the pillow. His clothes were neatly folded over the chair beside the bed, the missing kitchen knife resting on top of his white shirt, smearing it dark red. Facedown on the bedside table lay a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove, about half read, along with a sachet of white powder.

In life, Jack Marillo had been a six-foot, slim, vital, healthy, handsome, Italian male. In death, he looked pale and bloodless, nothing but an empty shell. His lifeless eyes were ringed with dark circles, like a raccoon’s, as if he had applied thick kohl or gone too many nights without sleep. They stared at a knothole in the ceiling. Though the body hadn’t started to decompose, the stench of blood and death in such a warm, enclosed space was almost overwhelming.

All around him, on the walls, on the rugs, on the bedsheets, Jack’s blood had been spilled. It had splattered over the abstract paintings, Arvo noticed, making hardly any difference at all to the quality of the art. Real Jackson Pollock stuff. On the sheepskin rugs that littered the floor, it resembled ink blots, and on the bedclothes around the body, it looked as if someone had emptied a couple of buckets of sludge.

Joe and Heffer hung back in the doorway. They had clearly been in the room earlier, where Joe would have pulled out his pocket Instamatic and taken a few photos before the “experts” arrived and messed up the scene. Nothing would have been touched yet, nothing moved. Jim Sung, who had seen everything you could imagine and more, looked around, sniffed, made a few notes, then went over to the body.

From where Arvo stood, the cause of death looked obvious enough, though he knew from experience not to jump to conclusions. Around Jack Marillo’s throat and chest were numerous stab wounds, at least one of them nicking the carotid artery just beside his jaw. That was the source of the fountain of blood that had sprayed over some of the paintings.

In addition to the stab wounds and the halo of blood on the pillow, there was one very odd and disturbing thing about the body. In the soft flesh of the upper abdomen, just below the lowest stab wound, someone had carved the crude shape of a heart with an arrow piercing it. It measured about three or four inches across at its widest point, Arvo guessed. Whoever cut it had also tried to carve something inside, maybe a name or some words, but it had turned out to be illegible, at least to the naked eye.

Jim Sung touched the skin, then he felt the jaws and neck.

“Okay to turn him over?” he asked.

“Just a minute,” said Joe. He took a penknife from his pocket and cut the cords that tied Marillo to the bed rails. He did this in a very special and methodical way to preserve them as evidence. First, he cut the cord between the rail and the hand, or foot, then he cut off the rest of the cord that was tied and knotted around the rail, making sure he didn’t cut through the knot itself. As he went, he tied the pieces together with string, which Jim Sung supplied from the depths of his bag, so that they could retain their original form for the experts. Sometimes, you could tell a lot from knots. He left the cords around Marillo’s wrists for the coroner.

When the body had been freed, the first thing Jim Sung did was turn him on one side to check post-mortem lividity.

“Uh-huh,” he nodded. “Looks like the dirty deed was done up here, all right.”

Arvo could see that for himself. What blood hadn’t sprayed out into the room had collected down Marillo’s back, showing as a slight purple discoloration of the skin. It wasn’t as marked as that he had seen on other bodies. Because Marillo had lost so much blood when he was killed, there hadn’t been all that much left to sink to his back after death.

Jim Sung pressed the discoloration with his finger. It didn’t change. “See?” he said. “No blanching.”

Arvo saw. Blanching of post-mortem lividity occurred in only the early stages, before the blood had clotted.

Jim Sung inserted a rectal thermometer and turned to face the others as he held it in place. “I can’t tell you exactly how long he’s been dead,” he said, “but I’d say from all the signs it’s somewhere between eight and ten hours.”

Joe looked at his watch and nodded. “That makes it around midnight, one in the morning. Late last night, anyway.”

Jim Sung checked the temperature and made some calculations. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Body temperature bears that out.” He turned back to the body and began examining it, making notes, muttering to himself as he worked. “This should interest you guys,” he said, pointing to the back of the head.

Arvo had noticed blood on the pillow, and now he could see the reason for it. At the back of Jack Marillo’s skull was a roughly circular depression, cracked bone matted with hair, blood and brain tissue.

“Looks like some sort of hammer wound,” Joe said.

“What about the black eyes?” Arvo asked.

“You often get that effect with a blow to the back of the head,” Jim Sung explained. “Look, there isn’t a lot more I can do here,” he said, moving away. “Might as well get the specialists in, then call the meat wagon. You guys want to stay in here and talk or go outside and smell the flowers, a nice day like this?”

Arvo looked around the room. At the foot of the bed was a large TV and VCR set up on top of a couple of shelves of tapes. He glanced at the titles and found a mix of Hollywood classics and gay soft porn.

“Well?” said Sung.

“Have you checked out the bathroom?” Arvo asked.

Joe nodded. “Looks like someone took a shower there recently, but it’s impossible to say when. Judging from the time it takes my own shower to dry out, I’d say maybe last night. There’s what looks like traces of blood on the bottom of the tub, too.”

“Makes sense,” said Arvo. “There must have been one hell of a lot of it spraying around.”

Joe nodded and led the way out. After the death room, it was a relief, Arvo felt, to smell the pine and the fresh-cut grass again, and especially the eucalyptus after rain. Sparrows and starlings twittered in the trees. He took a long, deep breath. The sun still shone in a blue sky, laced with wisps of white cloud like milk spills, but the city already seemed a little dirtier now than it had an hour ago.

As soon as they stood in the backyard again, Joe reached for his cigarettes. Arvo felt his own craving rise as Joe lit up. He gritted his teeth and waited for the urge to pass.

The blond man on the tree stump had stopped crying and was staring down at his linked hands on his lap.

“Want to tell us what happened, Mr. Kincaid?” said Joe.

The man looked up. His eyes were red from crying; the lock of hair still covered one side of his face. He had Nordic features, high cheekbones and ice-blue eyes, their effect enhanced by a touch of smudged blue eyeshadow, and he looked both miserable and frightened. Hardly surprising, Arvo thought, given the circumstances.

“Must I?” he said. “I’ve already given my statement to Detective Heffer.”

“Come on, Jaimie,” coaxed Joe. “You’ll feel better if you tell me, too.” They went over to the picnic table, where Arvo, Joe and Kincaid sat down. Heffer remained standing, hovering over them, hands in his pockets, with the beginnings of a sneer twisting at his lips.

When they had sat, Kincaid squinted at Joe. “What do you mean, I’ll feel better? For what?”

“What was it, Jaimie, a lovers’ quarrel?”

“Now wait a minute—”

“No, you wait a minute, Jaimie.” Joe spoke quietly, but his voice carried authority. “Tell me if I’m wrong. You and Jack get a little high and get into a bondage situation, right? Things get way out of hand, maybe Jack says something, or maybe the coke’s rotted your frontal lobes, so you go get the kitchen knife and you kill him. When you see what you’ve done, you take a shower and call the cops. Is that how it went down?”

Jaimie paled. “No.”

“Then tell me, Jaimie. I want to help you.”

“Look, will you just fucking listen to me.”

“No need to swear, Jaimie. Stay calm. Of course I’ll listen.”

“How can I stay calm when you’re practically accusing me of murder? Jesus Christ.” He put his head in his hands again and moaned.

Joe just sat and watched, tapping ash into his little Sucrets tin. “Take your time, Jaimie,” he said. “No hurry.”

Jaimie took a deep breath and ran his hand over his hair, pushing the errant lock back in place. “Right. Okay. You’re listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“Jack’s my friend, right, and we were going away together for a few days this morning.”

“Where?”

“Jack has a cabin up in the Sierras. Mammoth.”

“That your car?” Joe pointed to a red Honda Civic parked next to a silver Porsche.

Kincaid nodded. “Uh-huh. And the Porsche is Jack’s. I came to pick Jack up and I... I... ”

“You did what, Jaimie?”

“He didn’t answer the door.”

“The door was closed?”

“Yes.”

“Was it locked?”

“No. I mean, it opened when I turned the handle. Then I saw the mud and blood on the floor.”

“You knew it was blood?”

“That’s what it looked like to me.”

“What do you do, Jaimie? What’s your occupation?”

“I’m an interior decorator.”

Arvo heard Heffer suppress a chuckle, turning it into a cough and putting his hand over his mouth. Kincaid caught it too and glared up at him. Heffer shook his head and wandered up the driveway.

“Seen a lot of blood in your line of work, have you?” Joe went on, ignoring the brief interruption.

“Well, no, but... ”

“It could have been ketchup, couldn’t it? Or paint?”

“It was blood. I... I just. I could feel there was something wrong.”

“Feel? You a psychic?”

“No. Jack and I are close. I just had a feeling, that’s all. A bad feeling.”

“What did you do next?”

“I called his name. He didn’t answer.”

“Was he expecting you?”

“Yes. I told you. We were going to Mammoth. I told him I’d pick him up at seven-thirty. It’s a five- or six-hour drive and we wanted to get there for lunchtime.”

“You two didn’t live together, then?”

“No.” He blushed a little. “We wanted to keep our relationship as discreet as possible. Because of Jack’s career.”

“Where do you live?”

“I’ve got an apartment in West Hollywood.”

“You didn’t spend Christmas together?”

“No. We were both with our families.”

“And your family lives where?”

“Irvine.”

“And Jack’s?”

“The Valley. Northridge.”

Arvo knew they could find the full address easily enough. Someone would have to break the news to Jack Marillo’s folks.

“Do you know if Jack was planning to come home last night?”

“He said he’d probably come home, yes. Get a good night’s sleep before the trip.”

“And you arranged to pick him up here at seven-thirty?”

“Yes.”

“Why couldn’t he drive to Mammoth himself?”

“We didn’t think there was any point taking both cars. Besides, we wanted to spend time together, travel together.”

“Why not take his Porsche? It’s a hell of a lot smoother ride than a Honda Civic.”

Kincaid shrugged. “We were going to. But I was going to drive. Jack didn’t like driving long distances. He broke his foot badly in a basketball game when he was at college and it still aches when he drives.”

“Okay. So you got no answer when you called his name. What did you do next?”

“Well, it wasn’t like him, but I thought he might have overslept. You know, he’d been working very hard on the series. Anyway, I—”

“Just a minute,” Joe cut in. “Let me get this clear. When you went in the house, you thought you saw blood mixed with mud on the kitchen floor and you had a real bad feeling. Then you thought maybe Jack had overslept. Which is it, Jaimie?”

“Look, you’re confusing me. I mean, maybe it was later I thought it was blood. When I came back down. I don’t know. But I didn’t know Jack was dead. I mean, why would I even think something like that?”

Joe shrugged. “You tell me, Jaimie.”

“Well, I didn’t. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Okay. So what did you do?”

“I went upstairs and I saw the body. My God.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “I couldn’t believe it.” Tears gathered again in his eyes.

“And then?”

“Then I ran back down to the kitchen and called the police.”

“The kitchen?”

“I was running out of the house. I wanted to get out. The kitchen’s at the back. When I got to there I knew I had to call the cops, so I did. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“You called from the kitchen phone?”

“Yes. The red one on the wall.”

“Did you touch anything else?”

“No.”

“You sure you didn’t touch the body, to check if he was dead?”

“You’ve seen the body,” Jaimie said. “It was obvious even to me that Jack was dead. I... ”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to cover him up. He looked so exposed lying there like that.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. I’ve seen enough cop shows to know not to mess with a crime scene.”

Joe winked at Arvo. “Well, at least we’ve got something to thank television for. But you did use the kitchen phone?”

“I had to. I don’t have a car phone and I knew I had to call the cops. Think how it would have looked if I’d gone off looking for a payphone and someone else had found the body. Besides, I had to stay there. I just had to. Sort of keep watch over him. It was very quiet. Only the birds.”

“You stayed outside?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to go back in.”

“Did you remove anything from the scene?”

“No.”

“Did you use the bathroom at all?”

“No.”

“Sure you weren’t sick? It’d be only natural, Jaimie.”

“No. I wasn’t sick.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Of what?”

“The killer might have been still in the house, or maybe somewhere nearby. Didn’t that frighten you?”

Kincaid looked puzzled, then he turned pale again. “It never entered my mind. I mean, I was upset. I called the cops. I never even imagined there might still be any danger there. Christ, if I had... ”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I might just have got the hell out of there.”

“You see, that bothers me. I think most people would be a little nervous, Jaimie. Unless, of course, they knew they didn’t have anything to be frightened of.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“What am I doing?”

“Accusing me. I’m telling you, I would never have hurt Jack. Never. Not in a million years. I... I... ”

“You what?”

“I loved him.”

“You know what’s behind most murders, Jaimie, when you get right down to it?”

“What?”

“Love.” Joe called over one of the uniformed officers. “Take Mr. Kincaid downtown,” he said, then he turned back to Jaimie and smiled. “We’ll talk some more in a little while.”

Jaimie was still pale. “Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet.”

“Jaimie,” Arvo asked. “Did you know Sarah Broughton?”

“Sarah? Of course.”

“Were you friends?”

“I wouldn’t say exactly friends, but we knew each other. The three of us would have dinner sometimes. Why? You can’t think—”

“How long have you known her?”

“Only since she started working with Jack. Look, Jack and I weren’t exactly out of the closet, like I said. We tried to keep our relationship as private as we could. Sarah was one of the few who knew. I like her. She didn’t judge.”

“Have you ever written her any letters?”

He frowned. “No. Why should I have?”

“You know anyone who might have done this?” Joe asked.

Jaimie shook his head.

“Did Jack play the field? Did he like to pick up strangers, that sort of thing?”

“Absolutely not,” said Jaimie. “Jack was faithful. I’d stake my life on it. He wasn’t into that sort of sexual promiscuity. Me neither. We’re not all like that, you know.”

Joe nodded. The uniformed officer took Jaimie by the elbow and led him up the driveway. Joe crooked his finger at Officer Laski, the first officer on the scene. She was a little overweight, Arvo noticed, and she was perspiring in the heat of the morning.

“What time did you arrive here?” Joe asked.

“Seven fifty-seven, sir.”

“What did you do?”

“I went into the house and checked that the victim was deceased. Then I secured the scene and called it in to Division. They sent Detective Heffer first, then you came just after him.”

“Was Mr. Kincaid here the whole time?”

“Yes, sir. He was here when we arrived, waiting for us at the end of the driveway, then he stayed outside with my partner, Officer Clark, while I checked the scene.”

“Did you notice if there were any signs of forced entry?”

“There weren’t. No broken glass, nothing.”

“Were any of the lights on?”

“Just the light on the stairwell.”

“Did you turn on the bedroom light?”

“No, sir. I used my flashlight.”

“Did you open any of the blinds or shutters?”

“No. They were already open.”

“Did you call in over the police radio?”

“No, sir. I used a landline, the kitchen extension. Mr. Kincaid told me he had already used it, so I didn’t think I would be destroying any evidence. I know the media listen in to the police band, and that something like this would get their attention.”

“Good thinking.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Okay,” said Joe. “That’s it for now. Carry on.”

“Yes, sir.”

Officer Laski walked away, gun bouncing against her well-padded hip, rubbing her forearm across her brow. Heffer came back down the driveway and joined Joe and Arvo by the table.

“Mind if I ask a question first?” he said.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead.”

Heffer flicked a glance toward Arvo. “What’s the TMU doing here? Why isn’t he out babysitting starlets?”

“You demonstrate a remarkable ignorance—” Arvo began, through clenched teeth, but Joe held up his hand and quieted him.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said. “You got a point to make, Detective Heffer?”

Heffer shrugged. “Just want to know what’s missing here, that’s all.” He jerked his thumb back toward the house. “Has lover boy in there been getting threats or something?”

“Not as far as we know,” Joe said. “And as long as I know why Detective Hughes is here, that’s fine for the moment, okay?”

“You’re the boss.”

“You got that right. Now, have you got any ideas?”

Heffer shrugged. “It’s as clear-cut a faggot murder as I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And we do get a few of them in Hollywood, you know.”

“Oh?” said Joe. “Care to tell us what happened?”

“Guy’s coming home from Mom and Pop’s, maybe been at the old vino, and he feels, you know, the urge, a little frisky. So he cruises the Boulevard until he finds what he wants. It’s all out there, man, Christmas or no Christmas. Figures he’ll give himself a real Christmas present. Maybe a hot date with one of Santa’s elves. He brings the kid back here, they snort a few lines of prime coke and wham, lights out.”

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Come on, man, these people don’t need motives. You know that. It’s a fucking sport to them.”

“I mean why would a male prostitute kill a john? Only motive I can think of is money. And in case you didn’t notice it, Marillo’s wallet was still in the back pocket of his pants with a couple of hundred dollars cash in it, not to mention the credit cards. And from the blood and the scuff-marks, it looks as if Marillo was hit on the head from behind in the kitchen, soon as he got in the house, maybe even while he was opening the door, then carried up to the bedroom and killed there later. Like I said, why?”

Heffer shrugged. “Kid musta flipped out. Or maybe lover boy over there found them together. He’s waiting and he sees Marillo come back with some kid from the Boulevard. Loses it. Who knows? Point is,” he went on, “those throat and chest wounds are classic faggot style. And the heart with the arrow, the cords around the bed rails. Ritual shit.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at Arvo. “Has Marillo been getting threats?”

Arvo said nothing.

Heffer popped another bubble and shrugged. “Okay, so you don’t want to tell me. Fine. I get the feeling it’s not gonna be my case anyway. In fact, I get the feeling you real important boys from downtown want this one. Am I right? And I also get the impression that there’s a lot you’re not telling me. Am I right again? Well, excuse me for just being a fucking drone from Hollywood station. I’ll just go back home to bed, shall I, if that’s all right with you?”

“Why don’t you do just that,” Joe said, staring him in the eye.

Heffer held eye contact for a moment, then broke it, muttered, “Assholes,” turned on his heel and took off.

“Oh, thwarted ambition,” mused Arvo after him.

“More like that cat’s fast running out of lives,” said Joe. “The way I hear it, the department doesn’t know where to put him next. What’s your theory?”

“Kincaid didn’t do it,” Arvo said. “Unless he’s behind it all, which I doubt.”

“Behind all what?”

“The letters, the Heimar murder.”

“More speculation?”

“Partly, but the connections are getting stronger. Listen, Joe... ” And Arvo told him about the faint outline of the heart he thought he had seen in the Heimar crime-scene photograph.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Joe asked.

“Because I thought I might be seeing things. Forcing connections where they didn’t really exist. Then I did a lot of thinking after you told me about the pentobarbitol. Look for yourself. It could be some sort of optical illusion caused by the light and wet sand. There’s no report of anyone noticing it at the scene.”

“Tide was coming in fast. Now what do you think, now you’ve seen Marillo’s body?”

“I think that whoever’s been writing letters to Sarah Broughton abducted and killed John Heimar, buried him on the beach for her to find and drew a heart in the sand beside the body to let her know he’d done it for her.”

“So why didn’t she say anything about the heart in her statement?”

Arvo shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t see it. Maybe it had all but washed away by the time she got there. You really have to look for it, with the light just right. Or maybe she’s keeping it back. I don’t know.”

“Go on.”

“I also think the same person waited for Jack Marillo in the trees behind the house here, hit him on the back of the head with some sort of hammer as he was fiddling with the key in the door, carried or dragged him upstairs, butchered him and carved the heart on his stomach.”

“Why didn’t he cut the body in pieces this time?”

“I don’t know. Could be something spooked him. Or maybe he didn’t need to this time. Maybe he’d already proved that point with Heimar.”

Joe lit another cigarette and thought for a moment, then said, “I’d accept Heffer’s theory a lot easier if everything had happened up in the bedroom, using a weapon at hand. In my experience that kind of spontaneous violence usually happens after something triggers it, and that something usually happens in bed. If Marillo did pick up a kid on the Boulevard, he sure picked himself a real winner. How many hookers you see carrying hammers, Arvo, male or female? Maybe blades, but not hammers.”

“Right.”

“But Kincaid did admit that Marillo said he was coming back to the house last night. How could the killer have known he wouldn’t be away for days, especially at this time of year? It doesn’t look like this happened just by chance.”

Arvo shrugged. “He must have waited. If we’re dealing with the kind of killer I think we are, it wouldn’t mean anything to him, having to wait hours, maybe even days. He’s obsessed, Joe, fixated, completely focused on what he feels he has to do to gain Sarah Broughton’s love. And remember, she’s thousands of miles away.”

Joe sighed and ran his hand over his cropped salt-and-pepper hair. “So you think we’ve got a psycho on our hands?”

“Looks that way.”

“Okay, Arvo, forget Heffer, he’s history. You’re working with me on this. I’ll clear it with your lieutenant, all right?”

“Fine by me.”

Joe looked at his watch. Sun glinted on the gold band. “Pretty soon we’ll have the brass and media here. It’ll be a fucking circus, believe me. Television homicide cop victim of homicide? They’ll lap it up. Especially if there’s a gay angle. Macho homicide cop victim of homosexual killing. Tailor-made.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I’m going to look into Marillo’s background and I’m at least going to consider that he picked up some kid who went ape-shit and killed him. I’m also going to run Kincaid’s balls through the wringer. I don’t think he did it, either, for what that’s worth, but I have to do it. It’s still the most likely scenario. And I want to see that letter.”

“No problem.”

“And as soon as Sarah Broughton steps off that plane at LAX, I want her in my office.”

“Let me talk to her first. You said it yourself, she’s not a suspect — if anything, she’s a victim — and a homicide cop might scare her off. Let’s face it, Marillo’s murder isn’t going to help her nerves any. They were close friends. Leave it to me, Joe. I’m used to talking to people like Sarah Broughton. It’s my job.”

Joe grinned. “You think a big, black, mean ugly motherfucker like me might scare the pretty white lady right out of her wits, huh?”

“Joe, I never said you were mean.”

Joe laughed. “Okay. You talk to her first. But don’t go too easy on her. Remember, if what you say is right, she hasn’t come clean with us yet. Anything else?”

“There’s a couple of leads I’m following up. I was going to talk to Jack Marillo, so you might find a message from me still on his machine when you get around to checking it out.”

Joe frowned. “Did you tell anyone?”

“What?”

“That you were going to talk to Marillo.”

“Oh, come on Joe, you can’t be thinking he was killed to stop him talking to me?”

“Got to consider every possibility at this point.”

“Okay. No, I didn’t tell anyone. Stuart Kleigman suggested I talk to Jack. As far as I know, he’s the only one who knew outside the department. And he’d be a fool to suggest I talk to someone then go kill him before I get the chance.”

“A fool or a very clever man covering his ass.”

Arvo shook his head. “Stu? Honestly, Joe, I can’t see him doing this.”

“You got to cultivate a more suspicious nature, Arvo.”

“Even so.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Let’s work it this way. You follow your leads and I’ll coordinate the homicide investigations, see if I can find anything in common between Marillo and the stiff on the beach — forensics, witnesses, that kind of thing. After all, Marillo was gay, and Heimar was a male hooker. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting extra staff to help on this one. And you and me will have regular meetings. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Arvo walked back down the driveway to his car and set off down the canyon, a million bits of information spinning around in his mind. At least he had forgotten his hangover.

On the narrow, winding trail, he had to pull over right to the trees to let the convoy past. The road wasn’t made to handle the kind of two-way traffic it was getting this morning.

The crime-scene specialists led the procession in their van, followed by a couple of local TV station vans. In one of them, Arvo noticed a well-known anchor putting the finishing touches to her red-blond mane. He also recognized a couple of newspaper reporters following in their own cars. So word had got out already, despite Officer Laski’s discretion. Heffer? Arvo wouldn’t have been surprised.

As he watched the vans and cars pass, he heard helicopters overhead. They liked to cover every angle, the television people; if they couldn’t get to the crime scene from the ground, then they’d damn well show bird’s-eye footage. All they needed now was the ride of the fucking Valkyries.

After the reporters came Stuart Kleigman, looking ashen behind the wheel of his maroon Caddy, and behind him came Assistant Chief Summers.

When their cars were parallel, the AC glanced at Arvo and frowned. It was either recognition or puzzlement, Arvo thought, as the road cleared and he drove on. He wondered if it mattered which and decided it didn’t. Either way, the more people who saw a member of the TMU on the fringes of a celebrity homicide case, the more likely was the kind of media circus that Joe Westinghouse had mentioned.

If Arvo hadn’t realized before, he knew now that the single letter in the file back at headquarters was a time bomb waiting to go off in his face if he didn’t start making progress fast.

He knew that his original assessment of the danger level posed by the letter had been correct. He also knew that he had done the right thing in arranging to meet Joe Westinghouse to discuss the beach murder case. At least now Joe could cover him in the interim, could verify that they were pursuing the possibility of a link between the letter and the homicides.

But he also knew that all the statistics in the world can’t protect you from the random element, the unpredictable, the one that just doesn’t fit. Call him the psycho, as Joe had, or the serial killer, whatever you want, but know that he will take all you think you know, believe and understand, and turn it inside out right in front of your eyes before ripping it to shreds.