The Decoy (6 page)

Those wishing to access record no. FGY554/ny/348 are requested to contact Dr C. Leichtman at the FBI Facility of Behavioural Science, Quantico, VA.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Claire gets home just as Bessie is getting ready to go out to the theatre. Bessie's channel-hopping, her head turbaned in a towel.

'Good day?' she asks as Claire dumps her groceries on the counter.

'Weird day.' Claire explains about the policeman and the murdered client. 'I feel a bit strange,' she concludes. 'Apart from the hotel staff, I guess Henry and I were just about the last people to see Mrs Vogler alive.'

'Did you say Vogler?'

'Yes. Why?'

'He was on the news just now.' She thumbs the remote. 'There.'

The screen shows a tall, bald man, his face dark with tiredness, speaking to a battery of microphones. Flashguns strobe his face.

'That's him,' Claire says. 'Turn it up, will you?'

As the volume increases they hear him say in a soft voice that's barely more than a whisper, '… grateful for any assistance, any assistance at all, that can be given to the New York Police Department.' He stops, blinking owlishly in the renewed barrage of flashes. A uniformed policeman sitting next to him reaches for the microphone.

'Press conference,' Bessie says significantly. 'You know what
that
means.'

'They're having a conference for the press?'

'No, stupid. They think he did it.' She sighs, exasperated at the incomprehension on Claire's face. 'God, you are so
innocent
sometimes. When the police think the husband did it, but his lawyer's stopping them from asking any really tough questions, they get him to do a press conference so the journalists can ask the questions for them. Next time you see him on TV he'll have a blanket over his head.'

Claire shakes her head. 'Not him. He was a happily married man, remember?'

'Don't give me that crap,' Bessie says lightly, towelling her hair. 'There's no such thing.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

The next day Claire goes to see Henry.

He's given up on the fifths of bourbon now. Instead, his liver-spotted hand is curled round a full-size bottle of Wild Turkey.

Seeing her, he puts it in a drawer. 'Claire,' he says. 'What can I do for you?' His words aren't slurred, but she knows that's just the old actor's voice training. Henry would fall over before he'd misplace his diction.

'The police came to see me, Henry.'

He pulls the drawer open again. 'Want a drink?'

'Yes,' she admits.

While he's finding glasses he says, 'There won't be any more work for a while, Claire. The police paid me a visit, too. They weren't impressed. Apparently recording people without their permission requires a warrant or a licence or some such thing. I'm to stick to missing pets in future.' He pours the first shot and immediately swallows half of it himself. 'Not much call for acting in pet work, I'm afraid.'

'Are you firing me, Henry?'

'Of course not.' He makes a gesture with the glass. 'Intermission. Curtain down. Ice creams in the stalls. We'll be back, Claire.'

She knows he doesn't believe it, either.

Time passes.

For a while the Lexington murder is a
cause célèbre.
As details leak out, they are pored over by newspapers, pontificated on by columnists, speculated about in bars and offices all over New York.

Then a major soap star is photographed in a bondage club, the Lincoln Tunnel is closed for repairs and the president sends American troops into Antigua.

People move on.

Bessie, whose dad turns out to be something big in oil, gives Claire a little leeway on the rent. She waits tables, sometimes, in bars where they need help over the summer holiday season. Marcie gives her the number of someone who manages exotic dancers. Somehow Claire has managed not to call it yet.

She's scraping by — just. But soon the acting classes will have to go.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The room is filled with sunshine. They're lying on the floor in a starfish pattern. The whole group, their heads touching, staring up at the ceiling.

From somewhere near by she hears Paul's voice. 'This is a very old game. A ritual, almost. It's called The Story Tells Itself.

'The way it works is, we're going to start a rhythm with our hands on the floor, and every time we make a beat, we're going to take it in turn to add one word to the story.'

Someone says, 'What's the story about?'

Paul says, 'I don't know. That's the point. The story's there already. All we have to do is let it out.'

Over the last few months the exercises have become progressively harder. Paul has made them spend whole days calling everything by the wrong name, just to see how it feels. He has made them improvise bizarre, extravagant characters — a salesman with a suitcase full of sweaters knitted from hippopotamus wool; a soldier armed with an invisible machine gun — then sent them out into the street, still in character, to accost passers-by and tell them about it. Rather to her surprise, Claire found that the passers-by were generally happy to listen. Either she's becoming better at what she does, or the passers-by are getting crazier as summer kicks in.

'Let's go,' Paul says, and starts to slap his palms on the floor. First one, then the other. A slow, loping rhythm. Gradually they all pick it up.

'Once,' he says.

A fraction off the beat, the person to Paul's left says, 'Upon.'

'A'

'Time'

'There'

'Was'

'A'

It's her turn.
Don't think, act.
Though in truth there's no time to think, the implacable rhythm of the hands forcing her to say the first thing that comes into her head. 'Princess,' she says.

And the story passes on, gathering momentum as it goes round and round the group. A fairy tale, something about a prince who falls in love with a statue in his garden.

The next time Paul makes it harder. If you hesitate you have to drop out. And the rhythm gets a little faster each time it goes round.

This time he doesn't start with anything so obvious as 'Once'.

It's a strange, glittering story that emerges this time, a dark fantasy about a little girl who lives in a graveyard among ravens and crows.

One by one they stumble, curse and get to their feet.

But not her.

And in the end it's just the two of them, Claire and Paul, lying at right angles on the rehearsal space floor, their hands clapping in triple-time, the words flowing so thick and fast it's as if she's memorized them.

She feels possessed, exhilarated, captured. As if she's simply the mouthpiece of another personality, a host to some voodoo spirit.

She understands now. Don't think, act.

At last Paul stops, and she lies there, coming back to her senses. Propping himself up, he sees the look on her face and smiles.

The group stands silently. She raises her head and looks around. Usually, at the end of an exercise, they applaud.

Detective Durban is there, watching her. He looks exhausted.

'Miss Rodenburg,' he says. 'Can we talk?'

===OO=OOO=OO===

She takes him to the little refectory bar. Around them, students sit in groups of two or three, chatting or reading.

It's too hot for coffee, so he gets them each a Diet Coke from the machine.

'America,' she murmurs. 'Land of the calorie-free.'

He doesn't smile. Again she notices how tired he looks.

'Miss Rodenburg,' he says brusquely, 'I'd like you to do something for me.'

She shrugs. 'What?'

'We're backtracking over some old ground here. Re-checking statements, seeing if there's anything we missed the first time around.'

'You haven't made an arrest, have you? I've been following it in the papers.'

'We've eliminated a lot of people from our investigation. There was a media appeal for other guests at the hotel to come forward. Eventually all four hundred and twenty-six were accounted for. We haven't been idle.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean—'

'Most of our work has been centred on one individual,' he says.

'Can I ask who?'

Now it's his turn to shrug.

'The husband,' she guesses, remembering what Bessie had said about press conferences.

He looks at her, as if unsure how much he should be telling her, then leans in close. 'After the television appeal we were contacted by a young woman who dated Christian Vogler before he met Stella. They were engaged, in fact. She broke it off.'

'Why'd she do that?'

'She didn't like the things he was asking her to go along with. Violent stuff. Then she started waking up in the mornings with headaches and unexplained bruises on her body. This went on until she woke once in the middle of the night to find herself naked. Vogler had stripped her of her nightclothes, laid her across the bed and surrounded her with candles. That's all she recalls before she became unconscious again. She believes he drugged her with Rohypnol and was using her in some kind of passive sex ritual.'

Claire makes a face. 'Why don't you arrest him?'

'The girl made no complaint at the time. And if he did drug her, what she saw might have been a hallucination. A good defence attorney would make mincemeat of her in court.' He pushes his fingers into the thin metal of the Coke can, denting it.

She makes a helpless gesture. 'What can I do?'

'Can you still recall your conversation with him? The poem and so forth?'

'Of course.' She's been over it in her mind many times since then.

'We've got someone who's looking at Vogler's background, his personality, all that kind of stuff. A psychiatrist. Come and talk to her.'

'When?'

'Now would be good.'

'Well…' she hesitates, glances back at the rehearsal room.

When he speaks again his voice has hardened. 'This is important, Claire.'

She notes the use of her first name. 'It's just that … what use can I be? He wasn't even interested. The man had nothing to say to me.'

'Why did he leave?'

'What?'

'Vogler. When you had that conversation you said he seemed in a hurry to get away. That's what I keep wondering about. Since he was only going home, and his wife was away, why the hurry? Why break off a conversation with a pretty girl in a bar who's prepared to discuss French poetry like she really gives a shit?'

'I think I bored him,' she says.

'Well, maybe. That's one possibility.'

'What's the other?'

'Maybe he broke it off because he thought he'd said too much.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

They take a yellow cab. Frank gives an address in Queens. The Puerto Rican driver tells him he'll need directions once they're over the river.

'Illegal immigrants,' Frank mutters under his breath.

She feels him glancing at her.

'Here,' he says, taking a piece of paper out of his pocket and passing it to her.

She unfolds it. It's a photocopy of her immigration card, dated nearly a year ago. Purpose of visit: tourism. Duration of visit: sixty days.

'I've got better things to worry about,' he says.

'If I hadn't agreed to come with you, would you still have had better things?'

He shrugs.

The cab driver has turned off the air-conditioning, to save fuel. They sit and sweat on the vinyl seats all the way to their destination.

It's a long, low building, just another ugly office in a street full of ugly offices and half-empty parking lots. Though she notices that it's the only one in the block with no company logo outside.

He signs her in at reception and walks her down a long, humid corridor. There's a faint smell she can't identify for a moment, before she realizes.

It smells like a hospital.

At the end of the corridor they're met by a large black woman, who whispers something to Frank. 'In here,' he says, opening a door.

The room is tiny, as bare as a cell. On the metal table is what looks like a portable TV.

Frank turns it on. It's not a TV, she realizes, but a closed-circuit monitor. The image is grainy. At first she thinks she's watching something recorded earlier, in this same office. The furniture is identical. Then she sees that the room on the screen is larger than this one.

Frank manipulates a joystick and the image moves.

'The camera's just on the other side of this wall,' he says, fiddling with the sound.

She understands now: this is an observation room.

There are two people in the other room. An elegantly dressed woman in her forties, with her hair pulled back in a tie, and a man in his twenties, with a thin weasel face. They sit facing each other.

'What am I wearing?' the woman asks. Her voice is deep and husky. A smoker's voice.

'Panties,' the man mumbles. 'White panties. And a skirt. A short skirt. A blouse that buttons.'

That doesn't make sense. The woman is wearing a suit. Claire looks at Frank for an explanation, but he indicates for her to go on watching the screen.

'Where am I?' the woman is asking.

The man says, 'In a playground.'

'Can you see my white panties under my skirt?'

He nods abruptly.

'And how does that make you feel?' she asks softly.

He licks his lips. 'Aroused.'

'That's good, isn't it?'

'Yes,' he whispers.

'I turn around. I see how aroused you are. Then what?'

'You smile.'

She nods. 'Of course I do. I smile.'

'You know how you make me feel. You want it as much as I do.'

'And…?'

'You take my hand and lead me behind the bushes.' He swallows. 'You're wearing white socks. I can see they're dirty. They've got mud on them. I tell you they'll have to come off.'

'Do I agree?'

'Oh yes.' He smiles weakly. 'You agree because you want it.'

'Of course.'

'I lift up your legs, one by one, to take off your shoes and your little white socks. Your legs are bare and very smooth. I can see your little white panties at the top of your legs.'