Take My Breath Away (20 page)

‘Did she keep a diary?’

‘I don’t think so.’

He’d wondered if there might be something in her flat, something that would answer his questions. But of course it was too much to hope for. Even Dylan’s laptop had finished up in a watery grave.

‘Now, why are you so interested in Jazz? Is there any chance it wasn’t suicide? Perhaps an accident…’

‘It wasn’t an accident,’ he interrupted.

Dylan had known that someone wanted Jazz dead, someone who had now got his way. Nic remembered her frightened voice on the telephone. She knew her life was in danger. She’d ended it herself, before that someone else did.

‘I see.’ As if to suppress any display of emotion, Misty turned her gaze to the river where a fat young man striving to impress a languid girlfriend was revealing his lack of mastery of punting technique. ‘Oh, it’s a pole not a hockey stick, you silly oaf! Now, where were we? You were about to explain what it is about Jazz’s death that has brought you here.’

Nic hesitated, but he knew that soon he would have to confide in someone. ‘Jazz had an affair with a friend of mine. His name was Dylan Rees. Did she mention him at all?’

Misty shook her head. ‘I’d scarcely seen Jazz since last autumn. Partly my fault. I’ve been working on this book about Elizabeth Gaskell. Which argues, if you’re interested, that the plot of
Mary Barton
marks her out
as the first woman crime writer. Don’t frown, Nic, it doesn’t suit you. At least the synopsis earned me a decent advance. Trouble is, coming up to a deadline, I haven’t had much chance to socialise. Anyway, Jazz wasn’t around. The story goes, she’d been pretty much wrapped up in herself. Then again, who am I to talk? I wish I’d made an effort to see her when I had the chance…’

Her voice broke and again she fixed her gaze back on the sweating punter. He glanced in her direction and she gave him an encouraging smile.

‘Something was bothering her, according to Dylan,’ Nic said. ‘Several people had died suddenly and in strange circumstances.’

‘Is that why you’re asking about her?’

‘Yes.’ She wasn’t someone to lie to.

‘Sorry, I can’t help you. Poor Jazz, she’d had to deal with sudden death before in her life. I’m not sure she ever quite got over what happened.’

‘Which was?’

Misty sighed. ‘She didn’t mean to, but she killed her ex.’

Nic clenched his fists.
Now for it
.

‘How?’

‘It was a pure accident. The police accepted that, so did everyone else. I was there, I saw her face when she realised what was going wrong. No one could have faked the look of horror on her face. I’ll never forget it. Never.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘A mutual friend of ours, a chap called Peter, was having a party. He’d sold a book about rugby football to Penguin and he was celebrating. He asked Jazz and me to help out with refreshments at his little house in
Jericho. There was only one fly in the ointment. Peter’s best friend was Darrell Bergen, Jazz’s ex. They’d split up a few weeks earlier. Darrell’s decision, he was too easy-going to commit. At first, she was devastated. I wondered how she would feel about seeing him again. But she said she’d found someone else. She was going through one of her euphoric phases, so probably it was true, although I don’t know. She didn’t bring the new boyfriend to the party. I never met him, and I did wonder if she’d made him up.’

‘How did Darrell die?’

‘It was horrible.’ The colour drained from her face at the memory. ‘Jazz and Darrell said hello. She was putting on a brave face and he wanted no hard feelings. She’d brought in a bowl of crisps and he took one. Goodwill gesture, that’s all there was to it. I went to have a word with Darrell. He was flushed, but I thought nothing of it. We were in the midst of a heat wave as fierce as this one. He was sweating and he started to look anxious. I was chattering away and when he began to cough, I asked if he was okay, but he couldn’t answer. His face and lips swelled up, it was almost as if he had nettle rash. I was frightened and I called Peter to come and take a look. Darrell was scarcely breathing.’ Misty shivered, a faraway look in her eyes as she relived the past. Peter went to phone for an ambulance. Poor Darrell began to throw up. Jazz was in hysterics and the poor lad lost all control. He was having diarrhoea, it was awful. I’ve never seen anything like it, not before or since. Thank God. By the time the ambulance arrived, Darrell was dead. There was nothing anyone could do. Not a bloody thing.’

The punt finally drifted out of their sight. The
young man was covered in sweat, his girlfriend dozing. Nic said, ‘And the cause of death?’

‘It turned out that Darrell was allergic to peanuts. Of all the bloody stupid, totally innocent things to die of. The crisps he ate were plain. No problem there, but the bowl had had peanuts in it. Even touching a container that has held peanuts can cause a reaction if you have the allergy. Anaphylactic shock. He was a fit man, played squash three or four times a week, but that didn’t save him. No, the medics said exercise exacerbates the condition. Ironic, or what?’

The boy who died of shock
. Nic said, ‘Did Jazz admit that the bowl had contained peanuts?’

‘That was the one thing that never stacked up. She sort of went into denial. To listen to her, the bowl had never contained peanuts and she’d washed it thoroughly anyway before bringing it to the party. I must say, none of us believed that.’

‘What then?’

Misty’s face hardened. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate. There was a bit of gossip at the time. One or two people suggested she was trying to give Darrell a fright, to pay him back for being unkind to her, without realising she was going to kill him. That was a wicked thing to say. She wasn’t cruel. Okay, she knew about Darrell’s allergy, but it was obvious what had happened. She’d simply forgotten that the bowl had held peanuts. Maybe she hadn’t washed it properly, either. When she realised the truth, she couldn’t cope with the guilt.’

‘Simple as that?’

‘Simple as that.’ She considered him, not smiling. ‘Except there’s more to it than I realised, isn’t there?
Otherwise why would you be asking me all these questions?’

An hour later, Nic was having tea and crumpets in Misty Karl’s eyrie at the top of staircase sixteen, overlooking the Balliol croquet lawn. Every now and then, through the open window, they heard the thud of mallet against ball, cries of anguish and glee. Inside, the furnishings were spartan, the chairs hard, and yet Nic felt as though he had arrived in the land of sybarites. If you stayed here long enough, perhaps you might come to believe that this was paradise, and the world outside a poor second best.

‘
Sex, Law and Videotape
,’ Dr. Kennedy Brown said with a satyr’s wink. ‘I owe the title to Jazz. I meant to dedicate the book to her, even before…this terrible, terrible thing happened.’

When Nic had asked Misty if she knew anyone who might have seen Jazz lately, she’d immediately thought of the man she called JFK. He was on sabbatical from the Birmingham Law and Media Institute and Jazz had commissioned him to write a book about film and the law. He was a thin, balding man who wore a white jacket and silk cravat and had an inexplicable liking for the sound of his own high-pitched voice. When he took Misty’s call, he’d been at a champagne and strawberries party in the Master’s Garden and he freely admitted that he didn’t have much of a head for bubbly. The main challenge was to keep him on the point. He’d already explained to Nic at length that he’d never forget where he was when the American President was assassinated in Dallas, since on that very day his mother had been giving birth to him in Warrington Hospital and his parents had chosen to
commemorate the event by naming him after the dead leader.

‘Did you see much of Jazz?’ Nic asked, buttering another crumpet.

‘Oh, dear me, yes. I was always popping round to pester her, seek a second opinion. She was a marvellous editor, you know. She must have been, of course, to spot my talent!’ Kennedy gave an arch smile. ‘She’d been having the blues quite a lot lately, poor thing. I was so sorry. This bloody bipolar disorder. She’d tried everything. Lithium, anti-depressants, you name it. I’m no shrink, but to my mind the best remedy is a spot of tender loving care. I hoped that when she met Dylan, the headhunter, things would change.’

‘But they didn’t?’

‘Not much. He loved her and left her.’

‘They met at a conference, didn’t they?’

‘Oh yes, that was me playing Cupid! Quite unintentionally, I might add. My friend Alvin works for a hospitality company that organised a conference about careers in the law. This chap Dylan Rees was one of the speakers. There was a party on the Friday evening. Alvin invited me along, but he was going to be run off his feet and so I asked Jazz if she’d like to come as my guest. She’d been pretty down, although she never wanted to talk about it. In the end she said yes.’

‘And she and Dylan hit it off?’

‘I’ll say so. I finished up as a gooseberry and they finished up spending the night together. Talk about a pair of fast workers! I didn’t mind, I was really happy for Jazz. A hard man is good to find, as Mae West used to say. They seemed to get on so well. Such a tragedy that it didn’t last.’

‘And how did Jazz take that?’

‘Perhaps not as badly as I might have expected. They kept in touch as friends, I believe. She said to me once that she’d found him easy to confide in, that before she realised what she was doing, she was sharing her innermost secrets with him. I thought that was going too far. I mean, nice guy and all that, but he was obviously only interested in one thing.’

‘Did she confide in you?’

‘We were good pals,’ Kennedy Brown said. ‘Not every author can say that about his relationship with his editor. I used to worry about her. She seemed – oh, I don’t know. Bothered. No, worse than that. Scared. But she didn’t want to tell me what was wrong. That hurt a bit, I can tell you. She’d only known Dylan Rees five minutes, but we weren’t bedmates, that was the difference.’

After taking his leave, Nic found a quiet corner in the quad near the library. Leaning against the wall, he dialled the main switchboard at Creed. Soon he would be returning to Avalon Buildings. He had found the answers to most of his questions. Except for the most important one of all.

‘Creed, good afternoon, this is Anji speaking, how may I help you?’

‘I’d like to speak to Roxanne Wake.’

‘When are you coming to bed?’

Roxanne turned her head and saw Chloe standing in the hall, looking into the living room. White flesh luminous in the dark, but no provocation in her nakedness. Her shoulders were sloping, her eyes looked sore, and she was stifling a yawn.

‘Just let me get to the end of this chapter.’

‘Do you know it’s half past two?’

Roxanne glanced at the clock. ‘I got carried away.’

She slipped a used train ticket into Nic Gabriel’s book to keep her place. Once she’d started turning the pages, it proved impossible to stop. Crippen belonged to a different world, but Nic Gabriel had entered that world. He had woven music hall ditties, learned notes on the characteristics of scar tissue and extracts from the doctor’s private correspondence into a narrative web. The picture he’d conjured of Crippen’s endless torments, his hapless efforts to cover up his wife’s accidental death, his panic when the police came round, was it truth or illusion, fact or fiction? According to the critics, it scarcely mattered. If the whole thing was all made up, then at least Gabriel possessed the gift of seeing into the human heart. And if the little doctor had not gone through the hell that the book described, he should have done.

Chloe knelt beside Roxanne’s chair. ‘Carried away, huh? You could have got carried away with me.’

‘Sorry.’ Roxanne ran her fingers along the long knobbly spine, relished the sigh of contentment she evoked. ‘I’ve been selfish. I’ll finish now.’

Chloe took the book and peered at Nic Gabriel’s face on the back cover. ‘He looks – restless. Like someone who will never be satisfied. Someone who can never bring himself to let go.’

‘Yes.’

Chloe glanced at the biographical note. ‘So he used to be an advocate himself. Might have guessed. What’s your verdict, then?’

‘Spooky, the way he reads Crippen’s mind. Especially when it came to destroying the corpse with quicklime.’ Roxanne forced a smile. ‘I’m all goosebumps.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Chloe edged away and squatted on the rug in front of the chair. Her skinny body had begun to shake.

Roxanne stiffened. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’m afraid for you,’ Chloe said. Her voice was muffled. ‘I don’t want him ever to read your thoughts.’

Ten minutes after they had arrived at Avalon Buildings, Chloe burst into Roxanne’s room. ‘He hasn’t turned up.’

Of course Roxanne knew whom she meant. Only one man occupied their minds. They had spoken in monosyllables over breakfast and conversation had been impossible on the train. Not that they wanted to talk any more about the Situation. The last twenty-four hours had drained both of them. Besides, what more was there to say?

‘How do you know?’ Roxanne was cautious, not wanting to let her hopes rise too soon.

‘Joel told me. Well, to be honest, I asked. Don’t worry, I was careful to sound casual.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Roxanne’s heart sank. Chloe was no actress and Joel no fool. The last thing she wanted was
for other people in the firm to start wondering why Nic Gabriel meant so much to a personal assistant and a lowly paralegal.

‘It’s all right. Promise.’ Chloe saw the doubt in her eyes. ‘He didn’t guess a thing. All he said was that Gabriel rang up first thing. He was meant to be here again this morning, but apparently he’s been called away.’

‘So he’s not coming back?’

Despite herself, Roxanne felt her spirits lifting. Perhaps he was not interested in her after all. He might have been struck by a prettyish face, and that was it. She had worried so much, and for no purpose.

‘Oh yes, he is.’ Chloe spoke through gritted teeth. ‘He said he needed to do some urgent research, but he expected to be back soon.’

‘I see.’

And suddenly, Roxanne thought she did. Nic Gabriel was an assiduous detective,
Crippen
was the proof of that. He could never have explored the doctor’s mind so thoroughly if he had not first familiarised himself with every by-way of the little quack’s life. The clothes he wore, the music he liked, the food he ate. If he was toying with the possibility of writing about her, he would need to be even more meticulous in ripping the curtains aside. She wasn’t like Crippen, cold in her grave and largely forgotten. He could not risk making a mistake in any point of detail. She would be allowed to have no shred of privacy, no space left in which to keep a secret. For all she knew, he was on his way up north at this very moment, travelling to interview Hilary Metcalf.

Roxanne had been seven when her grandmother had died. Granny Lee had been pretty in her youth
and didn’t take kindly to old age. She compensated for it by making the most of every opportunity to be unpleasant. Roxanne didn’t remember much about her except for the smell of peppermints which she refused to share around and a favourite phrase which she rolled out whenever she had to do anything.
No peace for the wicked
, she would say, with a malicious cackle. Roxanne only learned the truth of that after doing something wicked herself.

All she wanted for the present was to think about the Situation and what she could do to change it. She switched on the
engaged
light on her door, set the phone to
do not disturb
and spread bundles of documents across her desk, to give the appearance of intensely lucrative activity. None of it helped. The hands on the computer clock that recorded her chargeable time did not move, but she might as well have been working feverishly for all the good the break did her. It was true: there was no peace for the wicked.

Chloe popped in and said she had to catch up with her work over lunch. Roxanne bought herself a salad bap and an orange juice from a sandwich bar in the Strand, but when she tried to eat, she found she could not bear the taste. For the first time in years, she remembered an old superstition of hers, that if she kept her stomach empty, her thinking would sharpen up and her spirits would lift. Lately she’d been eating too much anyway. Chloe was inches taller, but her clothes had not been such a bad fit as she’d expected. For a little while, until the Situation was sorted out, she could afford to lose a few pounds. She hated feeling bloated, especially in this heat. It wasn’t healthy. At a time when she must focus on trying to save herself, the
last thing she needed was to waste time and effort guzzling down food.

Returning to the office, she bumped into Joel Anthony in reception. When he smiled at her, Roxanne nodded and hurried past. To her dismay, he followed her to the lift and started making pleasant conversation about the heatwave. Roxanne’s stomach muscles clenched as she watched the lights showing the lift’s descent. She wasn’t in the mood for company and she feared giving herself away. It would be the final irony if, after all her anguishing over Nic Gabriel, she let something slip which caused Joel to realise that Roxanne Wake did not exist and that the woman he and Ben had recruited was the freed killer, Cassandra Lee.

‘Chloe seems bothered by something today,’ he remarked as the lift arrived at last and they stood back to let the occupants out.

‘Like you say, it’s so hot. Even the air-conditioning isn’t enough.’

He gave a satisfied nod. ‘Strange, isn’t it, how the heat takes us in different ways? Fast workers slow down, likeable people find their tempers starting to fray…’

She thought he was casting round for another example and, for a mad moment, was tempted to add: ‘And mild-mannered paralegals decide to kill their enemies.’

Joel had that sort of effect. With a simple word or gesture, he helped you to articulate what had been swimming around in your head for a long, long time. Quite a talent. She contented herself with a nod of agreement, but it was as if a door had opened in her mind, a door she had believed was shut for ever.

Later, as she walked back into her room after a visit to the loo, the phone was ringing. She pressed the loudspeaker button and the receptionist said, ‘Nic Gabriel for you.’

For a moment, Roxanne could not breathe. She felt dazed and light-headed. It was not simply hunger, but the suffocating awareness that he was closing in on her. She could not escape and, oddly, she was not even sure now that she wanted to escape. What would be, would be.

‘Put him through.’

Two long seconds passed before Nic Gabriel’s voice filled the room. ‘Roxanne Wake?’

‘Yes.’

They had never spoken to each other before, yet it was as if she had known him all her life. When she was a girl, her grandmother had told her stories of the Bogeyman. Now he had tracked her down to her hiding place.

‘Our paths crossed yesterday, although we weren’t introduced. I…’

‘I know who you are, Mr Gabriel.’ She marvelled at the steadiness of her voice. ‘As a matter of fact, I bought your book yesterday. Just to see if it lived up to its reputation.’

A pause. Perhaps he had not expected her to sound so self-possessed, had hoped to take her by surprise, like the advocate who commences cross-examination with his most devastating question. A classic technique, but Roxanne thought it flawed. If the witness keeps her wits about her, the initiative is lost.

‘I’m flattered,’ he said.

‘Don’t be.’ She was determined not to let him off the hook. He needed to understand that she wasn’t a born
victim. Crippen had been a soft target; she would be different. ‘I was curious, that’s all.’

‘And?’

‘Congratulations. You write well. I’m surprised you haven’t published a second book. Or is a follow-up in the works?’

‘I haven’t even typed the first chapter heading.’

‘Oh dear. Writer’s block?’

‘No, it’s just that since I laid poor old Crippen to rest, I haven’t found another subject I wanted to write a book about.’

‘Nothing worthy of your talents?’

‘It’s simply,’ he said, ‘that I need a subject that takes over my life. Becomes an obsession.’

‘Well, good luck in your search’ she said calmly. It struck her that, in his own way, he was nervous. He’d never spoken to Crippen. Now he was exchanging small talk with a woman who had murdered her lover. She didn’t feel light-headed any more. She had the exhilarating sensation that he wasn’t sure how to deal with her.

‘I was wondering if we could talk. Not on the telephone. Face to face.’

‘You want to meet?’

‘Please.’

‘I don’t suppose I have any choice, do I?’

‘Of course you have a choice,’ the disembodied voice said. ‘All the same, I would like to see you. Tomorrow? Not in the office, of course.’

‘No, not in the office.’

‘Perhaps I could offer you dinner?’

For God’s sake, Roxanne thought. The man who is planning to shatter my life is inviting me out for a meal. It’s like going out on a date with your appointed
executioner. Like having sex with someone who is about to kill you.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

After Chloe rolled off her that night, they lay side by side, thighs touching. Roxanne’s eyes were closed. Chloe liked to pull hair and rake with her fingernails as they made love. Tonight she had been fiercer than ever before. Roxanne wished she hadn’t had anything to drink at the bar. She wished Chloe hadn’t hurt her so much. Sex and starvation had left her melancholy.

Chloe always liked to talk afterwards; Hilary had been the same. ‘Remember our first time, when I asked you to take control, remember what you said? You were right, it did take me a while to learn how to let go. But now that I have, I see what you meant. There’s nothing like that sense of power. Having someone else under your thumb.’

‘Mmmmm,’ Roxanne said.

She breathed in her lover’s perfume. She wondered how things would work out when they got through all this – if they did get through it all. Suppose she managed to get Nic Gabriel out of the way, so that he would never bother her again, what did the future hold at Creed? Would the two of them still be together in a month’s time, a year’s? She couldn’t forget what Hilary had said to her at the time she’d moved out of the house they shared. Every relationship she’d ever had, she had wrecked.

‘You’re still awake, aren’t you? There’s something I want to say.’

Roxanne shifted on to her side. ‘Hush now.’

‘No, this is important.’ Chloe propped herself up on her elbow so that they were facing each other. She
peered at Roxanne, as if hoping to find the solution to a riddle. ‘You’re not going to like it, though.’

‘What is it?’

‘I love you.’

Roxanne went cold inside. ‘I told you that first time, remember? I don’t believe in declarations of undying passion. I’ve played that game before. In the end, no one wins. Trust me. It’s dangerous. Let’s just…’

‘I know, I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sure you think I’m such a pain. But this is all new to me. New and strange and frightening. I can’t help myself.’ Chloe traced round Roxanne’s breast. ‘I’d do anything for you. Anything. Even…’

Her voice changed for a moment before it trailed away, became harsh and defiant. The bedroom window was wide open and had let in a chill. Roxanne said roughly, ‘Even what?’

Chloe enveloped her with her arms and squeezed tight. ‘If it meant I could save you, and be with you forever, I’d kill him.’

Roxanne summoned up a few last ounces of strength and broke free of the grip, pushing her lover away from her and rising up above her. ‘You don’t understand what you’re saying.’

Chloe looked up at her, breathing hard. ‘You may not believe me, but it’s true.’

Perhaps it was. Chloe saw everything in black and white, not shades of grey. Was she capable of murder in cold blood? Why not? Most people were. What they lacked was the final push to tip them over the edge, the prompt to translate fantasy into the real thing.

All I have to do, Roxanne thought, the blood rushing to her head, is to say one word. Let her know what I want from her – and she will do my bidding. I’m in
control, I have the power of life and death. She’s like a robot at my beck and call. If I want, she will murder Nic Gabriel. She is sure to be caught, but I will be innocent. I can walk away, and I will be free.

‘If it wasn’t for him,’ Chloe said dreamily, ‘everything would be so perfect.’