She replaced the receiver on its cradle. As soon as the room was silent once more, she went to the bathroom and threw up.
She was pretty sure he’d call back again, whoever he was. When he did, fifteen minutes later precisely, she was ready for him—or as ready as she could make herself. With the aid of the flashlight and some candles, she had banished as much darkness as she could. On the desk, next to the telephone, she had placed her tape recorder. She had connected its microphone and inserted a new tape.
This was not the best way to record a call, but it was the only method available. When the telephone rang, she picked it up, spoke briefly. As soon as the man began speaking, she pressed her microphone tight to the earpiece. She could not avoid hearing some of what he said. She tensed, listened. The same words, the same sentences, in exactly the same order as before….
This was no ordinary caller, no ordinary man. She was listening to a tape. That was why he spoke over her words as he did: because this call was prerecorded. And with whom had she discussed prerecorded telephone sex lines not two days before? John Hawthorne. She listened, frying to block out the words and hear only the intonation of the voice. It was not Hawthorne’s, she felt, though she was uncertain. The voice was slow, and neither English nor American, but somewhere between the two. It sounded muffled, as if the man spoke through a piece of material, as if he had something pressed against his mouth. It was muffled, filtered, recorded—even so, the man was becoming aroused as he spoke. She could hear his breathing grow rougher as his script grew more direct.
“Let me suck your breasts,” he said on and on in that low, whispery voice. “Then I’ll tie your hands behind your back. You got the handcuffs, Gini? I’ll use those I think. Then I want you to kneel down in front of me, like you’re in church. I want you to watch me take it out…” There was a deep sigh, a rustling sound, then the whispering went on.
“Then, then—I’ll do all the things I like. I’ll rub my cock on your hair, on your face, on your lips. Over your breasts, where the skin’s soft. It’s hard, and it’s big, bitch—can you feel it yet? Open your mouth and suck me off. Then maybe I’ll fuck you, like you’ve never been fucked. …”
Gini could feel the anger begin. It was like something red in her mind. It drove out the fear and even the disgust. It was useful, this red anger: It felt good. Very carefully, she placed the receiver and microphone on the desk. She let him continue, and her tape ran. She wouldn’t listen, but she would record tape to tape.
She let him continue for ten minutes. Standing at a distance of five feet, she couldn’t make out the words, but she could hear the scratch of his voice. Ten minutes was enough.
She approached the desk again and disconnected the microphone. The man was approaching climax on the tape; she was afraid to hear what came after that—another woman’s scream, perhaps. She put the receiver down on the man’s groans. She switched the machine to answer mode. She went back to the bedroom and held Napoleon close. The rest of the night seemed interminable. She scarcely slept. The man did not call again.
In the morning she woke from a brief and exhausted sleep. All the lights were back on. When she went out to the kitchen, the rattling sound she had heard was explained. Her nighttime visitor had left her a present, pushed through the cat flap.
Same wrapping, same box, same shoe—to make a pair. No stocking this time.
Gini looked at the stiletto shoe for a while. Then she unbolted the back door. It was raining again.
She hurled the black shoe the length of the yard. It hit the back fence and fell among the shrubbery. Gini closed the door and bolted it again.
It was six-thirty, Tuesday morning. She showered and dressed. She fed Napoleon, and let him purr in slumberous luxury for a while on her lap. He purred, and she planned. She would do this first, and then that. Before this week was out, before Sunday came, she would find McMullen and wind this story up.
“I’m going to fix him,” she said to Napoleon. “I’m going to fix the bastard who did all this.”
Napoleon narrowed his topaz eyes. He washed himself, then went to sleep.
At eight precisely, Pascal called, as she had hoped.
“Not on this line,” he said. “Call me later—the way we agreed, yes?”
Chapter 21
GINI LEFT HER HOUSE at eight-thirty. She headed south for the News offices, through heavy traffic, cursing every red light. If she could reach the office around nine, she had a good chance of cornering Nicholas Jenkins before the crises that made up his editorial day barred her from entry. Jenkins, she was now certain, had been less than totally frank when originally briefing her and Pascal. He must have told someone else who would be assigned to the story. He might have told Daiches. She was also beginning to wonder if he could possibly have told Appleyard, even indeed, if the first hint of the story had come from Appleyard, and not McMullen, as Jenkins claimed. This made some sense: It was characteristic of Jenkins to snatch the credit entirely for himself; it was also characteristic of him to react strongly to one of Appleyard’s hints. She knew the two had been in touch in recent months. Now that she considered it, she realized that both the Hawthorne story and the telephone sex story had come her way the same week.
Halting at red lights outside the Barbican, she had a brief, ugly, and disturbing vision of Appleyard in that Venice room, two weeks dead. She closed her eyes. The driver behind her leaned on his horn. The lights were now green. Gini jerked the car into gear and drove on. A squall of rain smashed against her windshield. She switched on her headlights. It was a dark, cold, wet morning; she could already foresee a day of perpetual twilight.
Appleyard, she thought. Appleyard, who had always been Jenkins’s favorite tipster. Appleyard, who was a notorious gossip, though protective of his own leads. There was some connection, some link, she felt certain—but what?
On the fifteenth floor, Charlotte, the senior secretary, together with her two assistants, was already at her desk. The door to Nicholas Jenkins’s office was shut. And it would be likely to stay shut, Charlotte implied with a weary glance. Jenkins was in conference with his witchy familiar, Daiches; both had a meeting later that morning with their proprietor, Lord Melrose. In Charlotte’s opinion, as Gini well knew, Melrose had inherited his father’s newspaper empire but not his father’s aptitude: It was Charlotte who had to try to shield Jenkins when Melrose had one of his periodic flaps.
“Melrose is making waves again,” Charlotte said. “Something blew up over the weekend, apparently—don’t ask me what. You won’t get near Nicholas all day, Gini, don’t even ask, all right?” She paused, and gave a small, secretive smile. “Whatever it is you want, you can discuss it tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“This just came for you. By messenger.” She handed Gini a large vellum envelope. “I know what it is already. I had Lord Melrose’s personal assistant on the phone about it, at half past eight.”
Gini opened the envelope. Inside was an engraved invitation to a dinner given by the Newspaper Publishers’ Association that night. The chairman of the association was currently Lord Melrose; the dinner was at the Savoy, the guest of honor and main speaker was His Excellency the U.S. Ambassador; and the subject of John Hawthorne’s speech was to be privacy and the press.
Written across the top of the card was her name, in exquisite italic script. Gini stared at this thoughtfully. “Lord Melrose’s office sent this?”
“Oh, yes. At the behest of the great man himself.” Charlotte gave her a narrow look. “So what have you been up to, Gini? I didn’t know you hobnobbed with the great and the good.”
“I don’t. Not often.” Gini looked down at the card again. She knew precisely who had procured this invitation for her. John Hawthorne. Well, well, well: Under the circumstances she would be interested to hear his views on privacy and the press.
“Nicholas knows, by the way.” Charlotte grinned. “And he was beside himself with curiosity. He says you can drive there and back in his c
ar.” She made a face. Be there. That was the gist of what he said. He’ll pick you up at your flat at seven-thirty. Can I tell him that’s fixed?”
“Sure,” Gini said.
The door to Jenkins’s office opened; Daiches came out. He gave Gini a pale glance. Charlotte, who had her back to him, seemed to sense his presence through her shoulder blades. She turned back to her word processor and began to type. Daiches made straight for Gini, a little smile on his face.
“Well, Gini,” he said, walking beside her toward the elevator. “I hear you’re now a friend of Melrose’s, no less. Congratulations. This should do your future career here a great deal of good. Friends in the right places—the secret of every lady journalist’s success.”
“Oh, fuck off, Daiches,” Gini said.
Daiches gave a little pout of delight “Gini, language, language! And you’re usually so polite. You’re going down? Me too. How nice.”
Daiches followed her into the elevator. He was carrying a pile of papers. The floors flashed by. Daiches turned to her, and indicated the topmost fax.
“Johnny Appleyard’s dead,” he said. “Had you heard? This just came in from our stringer in Rome. Murder, Gini—how about that?”
Gini glanced down at the fax. It gave some details of the killing, and they were already inaccurate. She made no response.
“Appleyard and that weirdo he lived with. What was his name?”
“Stevey, I think.”
“Stevey, that’s right. The farm boy with the pretty face. Bound hand and foot, Gini. One of those queer killings by the sound of it. Heartbreaking, the prejudice in this wicked world of ours.”
“Give it a rest, Daiches.”
Daiches gave her a long, cold, pale look. “Ah, well,” he said, shuffling the pages. “It is murder. Worth a couple of columns, don’t you think?”
They had reached the features floor. With relief Gini stepped out of the elevator; Daiches held the door open.
“Just one little thing, Gini, before you rush off.” His smile became sweet. “Don’t forget the telephone sex story, will you? Nicholas did mention it to you last Friday. I need it, and I need it soon.”
“When?”
“Not later than the end of the week.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Then make it possible, dear,” he said in his mildest and most dangerous voice. The elevator doors began to close. “Friday, three P.M. at the latest,” he called through them. “On my desk, Gini. On my desk.”
Back in the features department, Gini went through her notes. She took a pen and a fresh sheet of paper. A list of priorities, she told herself: a shopping list. She wrote:
1) Find McMullen. Call Oxford college. Try Jeremy Prior-Kent.
2) Trace/speak to Lorna Munro.
3) Where hire high-spec blondes? Escort agencies?
4) Appleyard. Any connection this & telephone sex?
5) Talk Mary’s crossword friend re codes.
The first two of these tasks were straightforward. She called Christ Church, and quickly discovered that McMullen’s tutor there had been a history don whose name she knew well: Dr. Anthony Knowles, a man with a maverick reputation who was something of a media star, a frequent television pundit, and a contributor to newspapers, as well as a very eminent historian. To her surprise, she was even able to speak briefly to Dr. Knowles himself, and most amiable he was. He gave her considerably more information about McMullen’s brief Oxford career. However, he proved no help at all when it came to the question of McMullen’s whereabouts.
“My dear, I wish I could be of help. But alas, I cannot. James used to call on me occasionally for old time’s sake if he was passing through Oxford. And I’m always delighted to see him—an excellent mind, one of my best undergraduates. But I’m afraid I’ve neither seen nor heard from James for at least a year. Let me see, whom might you try? There was a rather foolish young man who was at school with him, who came up the same year. They had rooms on the same staircase. I believe they remained in touch. Now, what was his name? Jeremy something, I think…”
“Jeremy Prior-Kent?”
“That’s it. Of course. And now, I’m afraid I must curtail this conversation.”
She tried the offices of Prior-Kent’s film production company in Soho. Unfortunately, his secretary said, he had changed his plans; he would now not be returning to London until late Thursday night. He and his location manager were scouting locations in Cornwall, and so could not be reached.
The woman made Cornwall sound like the Sahara Desert. She made Prior-Kent sound like Cecil B. De Mille.
“Of course, should Mr. Kent get in contact, I’ll pass on your message. You’re calling from the News? If it’s urgent…”
“It is urgent. Very.”
“I expect I could find a small window for you on Friday. Let me just check his diary….”
“A window? Thanks.”
During the long pause that followed, Gini leafed through the office directory of film production companies. Kent’s company, Salamander Films, had a few listed credits for TV commercials and minor documentaries; no feature films as yet. Windows, Gini thought; location scouting in Cornwall: pretentious idiots. Why were all film people, especially the minor ones, like this?
“Twelve on Friday.” The girl came back on the line. “It’s his only gap. He could spare you an hour then. After that he has a big lunch. Shall we say The Groucho? It’s right around the corner from here. It’s convenient for him.”
“Thanks very much. Luckily, I can spare an hour on Friday too. I’ll see him at The Groucho, then.”
She hung up on the girl’s wails about confirmation, and dialed the number of Lorna Munro’s Rome hotel. This would be her sixth call to the model, and none had been returned. It was of no surprise to learn that yet again, Lorna Munro had left. There was a contact number, though, for a French magazine. It took Gini fifteen minutes of toil, in rusty French, to discover that Lorna Munro was now in Paris. She called Pascal at once. It was ten, the time she had arranged to call him, but the telephone was answered by Helen Lamartine. It was a shock to hear her voice.
To Gini’s surprise, she sounded almost friendly, if brisk.
“Marianne?” she said. “Oh, she’s much better this morning, thank you, on the road to recovery. We’ll have to watch her carefully, just for the next twenty-four hours or so. But the penicillin seems to have done the trick. One moment, Pascal’s in the other room…Pascal, it’s London. Work.”
While she waited for Pascal to come on the line, Gini stared into space. That “we” had hurt. All the old familiarity of a marriage, that was what she had heard in Helen’s voice. Even if it had been an unhappy marriage, her own claims seemed beside it very tenuous, very frail. She felt an instant’s foreboding, but it passed the second she heard Pascal’s voice.
She told him quickly the news about Lorna Munro: That she was in Paris for just twenty-four hours; that she was doing a photo session of Gaultier dresses for Elle magazine—no, not in studio; the location was the left bank, outside the church of St. Germain.
“That’s fine,” Pascal said quickly. “I can cover that. Marianne’s much better today. She won’t miss me for an hour or two.” He paused. “Her temperature is still fluctuating. I ought to stay one more day here, Gini, just to make sure she’s well again. I’ll fly back tomorrow. Meanwhile”—his voice altered—“I miss you, you know.”
“I miss you too.”
“Darling, tell me, you were all right last night?”
Gini would have liked to tell him that she had been far from all right; she would have liked to tell him about the strange postcard, the footsteps, the power cut, the darkness, and that horrible whispering obscene tape. But it was better to wait.
“I was fine,” she said quickly. “I saw Lise, as I mentioned. Very strange. I have a lot to tell you. I’ll explain all the details when I see you. Now I’m tying up a few loose ends. Tonight I have to go to some grand newspaper dinner. With
Jenkins.”
“Well, you know what to ask him. …”
“Yes. I do. Whether he’ll answer is another matter. Meantime”—she paused—“I’m going to work on the Appleyard connection.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know. But I know there is one. I think it has something to do with women—and the different ways in which you can hire them, for sex.”
When Appleyard had given Nicholas Jenkins the original idea for the story on telephone sex, he had produced the names of three companies whose primary business this was. The first two of these were just as Gini had imagined them: small hole-in-the-wall affairs. One operated from a back street in Hackney, the other, which doubled as a minicab firm, appeared to be a mother and daughter operation. It functioned out of one-room premises behind King’s Cross Station, in the red-light district there. The mother, a hard-faced woman, said little. The daughter, a fat girl unwisely encased in Lycra leggings, explained in an antagonistic way that this work was easy money, that it was easy to find women to recruit.
“Look,” she said to Gini, “which would you prefer? Sitting at home with a tape recorder and a script, or turning tricks with some fat slob in a car behind the gasworks up the street?” She gestured out the window to the wasteland that covered several acres to the north of the station. “Which would you rather?” The girl’s voice took on a derisive note. “Five quid for a hand job up a back alley—or this? We look after our girls, Mum and me. And since you’re asking—I write the scripts. All legal and above board. Now, piss off.”
Gini obeyed. She moved on to Appleyard’s third company, and when she saw its premises in a bright terraced house in Fulham—Sloane Ranger territory—her hopes increased. If Appleyard’s tip could be trusted at all, if there were some more large-scale operator behind these businesses, this was the kind of front for it she would expect.
And the kind of front man she would anticipate too, she thought, when the door opened on a sharply dressed, gold-braceleted youth. His name was Bernie, and Bernie proved to be the perfect interviewee—garrulous, knowing, flattered to talk to a reporter, and unused to dealing with the press.