The House That Jack Built (39 page)

    Harry handed Effie a second clipping, dated the following day. Textile Tycoon Vanishes. It told how Jack Belias' automobile had been found abandoned by Bear Mountain bridge, its doors open and its lights still shining. There was no trace of Jack Belias himself. It was thought that he might have drowned himself, but no body was ever recovered from the Hudson, in spite of the river running exceptionally low because of the dry winter.

    'That's it?' said Pepper. 'That's all you know?'

    'That's all I know. And a whole lot of that is theory and speculation. Only one of Jack Belias' weekend guests was prepared to talk about the game they played that night, Remy Morse, and by the time I was able to talk to him he was eighty-seven and wandering. But he said that he distinctly remembered the moment that Douglas Broughton lost Gina. He said that he let out a cry like an animal that's been mortally wounded. And I guess he was. Jack Belias killed him; just as sure as if he'd taken out a knife and stabbed him in the heart.'

    'But why did she stay so long?' Effie wanted to know. 'She was only supposed to stay three days. Why did she stay for eighteen months? I mean, what did he do to her? And how did she get blinded?'

    'I don't know about the blinding,' Harry shrugged. 'The sheriff opened an investigation but just as suddenly dosed it. Maybe somebody paid him off. As for the length of time she stayed - your guess is as good as mine. Why do some women stay with men who beat them? Being beaten makes them feel wanted. Being beaten rouses up the adrenaline, puts some excitement into their lives. I don't know what Jack Belias did to Gina Broughton, and I don't suppose I ever will, but in my opinion it was worse than anything you can even think about, and in the end it got so bad that even she couldn't take it. Listen... if you were seven months pregnant, what would drive you to throw yourself out of an upstairs window, with a 90 per cent chance that both you and your baby were going to be killed?'

    Pepper said, Jack Belias still frightens you, doesn't he?'

    'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't be frightened.'

    'He died in 1957?'

    Harry looked at her narrowly. 'You don't believe that any more than I do. That's why you're here. You believe that Belias is still living in Valhalla, excepting he wants out of the past and into the present day. And he's using these folks to do it… Mrs. Bellman here, and her husband.'

    Efifie didn't have to ask if it were possible for Jack Belias to return from that long-ago evening in 1937. She had already seen what had happened to Craig, the way his face had changed, his voice had lowered, his skin had softened. She had seen changes in Pepper, too, and not just the tattooed roses on her breasts. It was the way in which she herself was changing that worried her the most. She felt the same, and yet she was beginning to suspect that she was growing weaker, and more acquiescent, and that soon she would be nothing more than a brainless, obedient puppet, quite willing to lick men's shoes if they asked her to, dancing on broken glass, opening up her body and her soul to anything that they wanted to do to her.

    The terrible part about it was that she found the idea of being degraded vaguely exciting. To be exposed, to be opened up, to be punished in front of other people.

    Harry said one thing more. Jack Belias built that house because he wanted to live for ever. He thought he was holy, almost, from what people say. He was going to write his own bible one day; his own book of magic and ethics and revelations. Megalomaniac bullshit, of course. But if you could ever find his diaries, you could probably find out why Gina decided to stay with him, and what happened that night she threw herself out of that window.'

    Pepper said, 'Did the baby survive?'

    'I surely have no idea. If it didn't, they'd have cremated it. If it did, it'd be - what - fifty-nine years old by now, going on sixty.'

    Effie said, 'Do you have any pictures of Jack Belias? I've only been able to find one.'

    'There was only one picture taken of him that I've ever seen.' He reached into an old brown envelope and drew out a print of Jack Belias standing on the boardwalk at Deauville. 'Is this the same as the one that you found?'

    Effie took it, and nodded. But then she looked at it more closely. A cold feeling of dread crawled down her back.

    'Look,' she said, and passed the photograph to Pepper. There was no question about it. The man in the photograph was standing in the same place and in the same position as Jack Belias had been in Effie's book. But his face was different. He looked distinctly like Craig.

    'Something wrong?' asked Harry. 'You look kind of pale all of a sudden.'

    Somewhere in the house, Effie heard a door quietly closing. She was sure that she heard the lightest of footsteps, crossing the hall. A man's feet, in evening pumps. A man who listened when you least expected it. A bad, immoral, exciting man, who brought people to their knees, just because he could.

    

    

    When she returned to Pig Hill Inn, Lieutenant Hook and Sergeant Winstanley were waiting for her. Both of them looked tired and hot. They were accompanied by a podgy deputy sheriff who kept blinking and clearing his throat.

    'We called,' said Lieutenant Hook, 'but they said you were out.'

    'I've been sightseeing, that's all,' Effie told him, guardedly.

    'You didn't go with your husband?'

    'I went with a friend. My husband's been busy, sorting out our new home.'

    'Mrs. Bellman… did you and your husband visit the Hudson Inn yesterday evening?'

    'Yes, we did. We were supposed to have dinner there. Why do you ask?'

    'You were supposed to have dinner there, but you didn't?'

    'That's right. We were late, and they gave our table away, and so we left.'

    'Peacefully?'

    'What?'

    'Did you leave peacefully, or was there some kind of fracas? Some kind of contretemps between your husband and the management? What I'm trying to say is, was this a resigned shrug of the shoulders and a strolling out of the door, or was it an ear-on-the-sidewalk job?'

    'My husband may have been less than patient. I don't want to say anything more than that.'

    'Your husband was violent and abusive and they frogmarched him out. Isn't that nearer the truth?'

    'He was provoked! They gave our table away to these-' she stopped herself, suddenly realising what she was saying.

    'Yes?' prompted Lieutenant Hook, patiently. 'They gave your table away to these…'

    Effie was silent for a long time. Then she said, 'These people. They gave our table away to these people. They looked like they were wearing polyester.'

    She was quite aware of the insanity of what she was saying. Yet she knew that she had to defend Craig, no matter what. Craig had acted irrationally, but that wasn't important. What was important was that they stay together, and that she helped him, and gave him whatever he wanted, no matter what it was. The very thought of it made her feel excited.

    Sergeant Winstanley said, 'I was in the prosecutor's office yesterday afternoon; and the last I heard, it still wasn't a crime to wear polyester.'

    Lieutenant Hook said, 'Your husband threatened the barman, didn't he? We have plenty of witnesses to that.'

    'He was upset, that's all. We were planning on a special evening out, and it all went wrong.'

    'It couldn't have gone as wrong for you as it did for the barman. His name was Michael Shelby and he was twenty-five years old and he was engaged to be married in six weeks' time.'

    'But Craig didn't hurt him. He didn't even touch him.'

    'Somebody did. Michael Shelby was found in the parking-lot about a half-hour after closing time. Somebody had stabbed him in the neck with a broken beer glass, and then mutilated his face. Cut off his nose and his lips, if you want to know the grisly truth.'

    Effie said nothing. She pressed her hand against her mouth. She felt as if time had slowed down; as if the whole afternoon was suspended in treacle. She could see every detail sharp and hot: the brickwork on the wall just behind Lieutenant Hook's shoulder, and the pale ivy leaves that slowly fluttered on it, like the handkerchiefs of hundreds of orphans, waving goodbye. The black unshaved prickles on Lieutenant Hook's upper lip. The fork-shaped scar on Sergeant Winstanley's cheek.

    Sergeant Winstanley reached into his coat and produced a plastic forensic envelope. Effie found herself glancing at it sideways, as if she were afraid to confront it directly. She could clearly see a playing card, a nine of diamonds, stained with blood.

    'They found this lying on top of the body. The county sheriff immediately remembered those homicides in Manhattan and called us late last night.'

    'But those other murders… you checked the fingerprints, didn't you, and they weren't Craig's.'

    'We brought copies of those fingerprints with us today, and we've already had the chance to check them up against the fingerprints that were lifted from the broken beer glass that was found beside Michael Shelby's body. Whoever killed Michael Shelby also killed those other three.'

    'But it wasn't Craig, was it? You said so yourselves.'

    'Fingerprint evidence says it wasn't, Mrs. Bellman. But all the other evidence strongly suggests that it was. Your husband had a possible grudge against all four victims. Even before this happened, we were prepping ourselves to come up here and talk to him again.'

    'What grudge did he have against Steven Fisher? Steven was his partner, they'd known each other for years.'

    'Mrs. Bellman, we have eyewitness evidence that a man answering your husband's description was regularly seen at the apartment belonging to the victim Khryssa Bielecka, and a check on his phone records shows that he called Ms. Bielecka's number two or three times every week.'

    Effie was so stunned that she couldn't think what to say. Lieutenant Hook said, 'Listen… why don't we go inside and sit down. You're going to find this pretty difficult to take.'

    'Craig… was having an affair with her?'

    'It looks that way. I'm sorry that you had to find out about it like this.'

    'Do you know how long it had been going on?'

    'Over a year, from what our witnesses told us.'

    Effie said, 'I think I do need to sit down.'

    They went into the lobby of Pig Hill Inn and sat down next to the window. Sun shone through a large bowl of sweet peas; and flashed on the swinging pendulum of a long-case clock which stood against the wall.

    Lieutenant Hook offered Effie some gum, but she shook her head. He folded a stick between his teeth and started to chew. 'Your husband placed a call to Ms. Bielecka on the morning before he was attacked at the K-Plus Drug Store. The last call he placed to her was a week after he returned to your apartment from hospital. Well, the last call we know about. We haven't checked the phone company records for this place yet.'

    'What did she look like, this Khryssa?' asked Effie. 'I never saw her picture.'

    Sergeant Winstanley searched through his pockets again and eventually produced a Polaroid of Khryssa on the deck of the Staten Island ferry, smiling and finger-waving.

    'She's very pretty,' said Effie. She kept on staring at Khryssa as if the photograph could talk to her, and explain why Craig had been unfaithful. What did this face have that hers didn't? Was she funnier? Was she more passionate? Was she better in bed?

    Lieutenant Hook gently took the photograph from her and handed it back to Sergeant Winstanley. 'I think I know what you're asking yourself, Mrs. Bellman, and she's none of those things. She's dead.'

    Effie swallowed. Her mouth had no saliva at all. 'What about those other people?' she asked. 'That taxi driver, and those gang kids?'

    'The taxi driver is harder to figure out. But the day after your husband was hospitalised with his groin injury, he made a statement to the police in which he said that some "dumb, know-nothing immigrant taxi driver" had failed to get him to his destination because of gridlocked traffic… which is why he was walking along 48th Street in the first place. The driver who was killed was an immigrant Egyptian name of Zaghlul Fuad, and he was working the night that your husband was attacked.'

    'But you don't think that Craig would have hunted him down and killed him, just because he got stuck in traffic?'

    'Sounds kind of cold-blooded, doesn't it, Mrs. Bellman? But Mr. Fuad had no other enemies that we know of, and no money was taken from his taxi when he was murdered.' He paused, and chewed, and then he said, 'As for the gang kids, it's extremely likely that your husband was attacked by Samuel Joseph Carter and Malcolm Oral Deedes, with the collusion of Susan Amelia Clay. It turns out that a hammer found in the dressing-room where they were killed hadn't been left around by a stage carpenter, as we originally thought, but that it was habitually carried by Samuel Joseph Carter as a weapon.'

    'So he could have been the one who attacked Craig in the first place?'

    'We don't have incontrovertible proof of that; but it seems like a strong possibility.'

    'What about the fingerprints?'

    Lieutenant Hook gave a laconic shrug. 'That's why we're here. We've had cases of criminals burning off their fingertips with acid, and I've seen two or three attempts to produce false fingerprints by using surgical gloves with latex prints moulded on to the fingertips. But none of those has been at all convincing. No... what we want is to make quite sure that some kind of clerical error wasn't made when your husband was fingerprinted at the precinct. And, of course, we'd like to talk to him, too.'