No Cure For Love (19 page)

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, colour 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 favourite, 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 for ever. 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-mould 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.