Alchemist (15 page)

‘Christ – what the hell did they want in here?' Alan shouted in sudden fury. ‘Drugs? Is it bloody kids looking for a high?'

The newspaperman was silent. He strode out of the room and went back downstairs. Alan followed. They checked the sitting room, the dining room, the kitchen; none of the downstairs rooms had been touched.

Hubert Wentworth picked up the phone and called the police. When he'd replaced the receiver, Alan said, trembling: ‘Do you think we disturbed them? Is that why they haven't taken anything down here?'

By way of answer, Wentworth stood up, climbed the stairs again and went back into the bathroom, staring around thoughtfully. ‘Be careful not to touch anything,' he said as his son-in-law joined him.

‘Bloody kids!' Alan said again, close to hysterics.

Hubert Wentworth seemed far away. ‘Kids,' he said, reflexively. ‘Kids.' He knelt suddenly and squinted at a prescription vial on the floor, trying to read the label. Then he looked back up. ‘Was Sarah on any medications?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Anything – any kind of medication at all. Was she taking anything for her pregnancy; or
before
the pregnancy?'

‘Well – yes – yes, she was.' Alan's face reddened and he stammered a little. ‘We – we'd been trying for a baby f-for th-three years. W-w-why?'

The newspaperman's expression darkened, just a fraction. Then he said gently: ‘Just a wild stab in the dark. I wouldn't wish to jump to any conclusions. We – ah – should – ah – see what's been taken. The police will have some ideas, perhaps. It – ah – it is far too early for conclusions.'

London
.
Friday 4 November
,
1994

Seated at the dining table in Charley Rowley's London home, Conor Molloy felt he had entered a totally different world.

The small and elegant Georgian terraced house was imbued with an air of Old Money that he had previously only encountered in books and in the movies. Oil paintings filled much of the limited wall space; some were portraits of ancestors; some, bucolic country scenes and others, stormy seascapes. The carpet was buried beneath fine, well-trodden scatter-rugs, and every piece of furniture was an antique; there were some things that even today's finest interior designers could never emulate, Conor thought, and this room was one. The only way to acquire this effect was to inherit it.

The oval mahogany dining table had the right amount of scratches; the knives had blades worn thin with age, and bone handles that were cracked and stained; tiny mounds of salt sat in blue glass in silver holders, and the cut-glass goblets and tumblers were suitably mismatched. Charley Rowley sat at the head of the table, in a purple waistcoat over a striped shirt, green cords and suede loafers, reaching the punch line of a joke he had already told Conor, and which Conor had heard a year before in Boston.

‘And then he said:
I can't remember where I live?
'

There was a roar of laughter, followed by isolated snorts and brays as the others latched on, one brain cell at a time. Conor drained his glass of claret; he was feeling dangerously light-headed and realized he had lost track of how much he had drunk. Champagne; Chablis; now this Forts de Latour. He was feeling bullish, a little over-confident; playing the role of Mr Innocent Nice Guy was coming easily, in spite of the fact that none of the company interested him, least of all Rowley's girlfriend, Lulu, who was overweight and overbearingly loud.

He picked up his balloon of Armagnac, swilled the amber
liquid around, his thoughts slipping to Montana Bannerman, as they had done repeatedly since his second meeting with her two days ago. He compared the genuine warmth of her smile with the strained laughter of these supercilious young women, and realized he was more smitten than he liked to admit. But he was going to need a lot more help from her with her father's papers, so he was going to have plenty of excuses to meet her again.

He had ceased to bother about his blind date, who had been seated on his right and had not asked him one single thing about himself all evening. Pretty amazing, he thought, considering she had spent a year in Washington. She had responded to his own attempts at conversation with a mixture of monosyllabic replies and selective deafness. Obviously didn't fancy him. Well, the feeling was mutual, he decided, glancing sideways at her now.

Amanda something-something. Velvet headband, black dress that looked like a corset with her boobs shoehorned in the cups and bulging over the top. And she revolted him by chewing Nicorette gum between every course. ‘Just given up, darling,' she had said, addressing him the way she might have spoken to her hairdresser.

‘Conor, your turn,' Rowley said, blowing out a cloud of cigar smoke. ‘Any good jokes?'

Conor had been wracking his brains desperately for the past ten minutes, trying to think of something appropriately lewd and funny that wasn't a hundred years old. He had come up with only two gags both of which had now been told. ‘How about my party trick?'

‘What's that?' said the man opposite him.

‘I can hypnotize people.'

‘Yah?' said the girl at the far end of the table, on Rowley's left. She had long straight blonde hair and a pouting, almost aggressively beautiful face. ‘I think hypnosis is a big con; that guy on the television fakes it, you can see he does.' She lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. ‘Anyhow, I don't see how you can prove someone's hypnotized – they could just be acting.'

‘I could hypnotize you
and
prove it,' Conor said.

‘No way. People have tried before. I'm not suggestive – or whatever the word is.'

‘You don't need to be. I can hypnotize anyone. It's Camilla, right?'

‘Corinthia,' she said.

‘OK, Corinthia. You want me to prove it to you?' He was aware of the sudden silence.

‘Yah, go ahead – but I apologize in advance for ruining your trick,' she said with a trace of hostility.

‘OK.' Conor stood up and walked, unsteadily, around the table. He nodded at his host. ‘Charley, mind if I sit in your place for a moment?'

Rowley vacated the chair and Conor sat down; the girl wasn't quite so striking close up; he could see through her make-up that her skin was sallow. ‘Want to put your cigarette down first?'

She shrugged and set it down, then stared back at him defiantly. Conor picked up the cigarette and held it by its lipsticky butt. All eyes were now on him. He turned it around theatrically, making an arc with the smoke, then pushed the left-hand cuff of his jacket and shirt up his wrist, exposing his watch and a couple of inches of bare skin above it.

He blew gently on the lighted end of the cigarette, making it glow a fierce red. While it was still glowing, he brought it slowly down on to the skin above his watch. There was a smell of singed hair, then a slight rustling sound as he crushed the cigarette out on his wrist. One of the women gave a tiny shriek of horror.

He continued stubbing the cigarette, rotating it methodically, then held up the blackened, crumpled end for all to see, savouring the shock on their faces.

‘Have you got asbestos skin or something?' said a rather arrogant male art dealer.

Conor shook his head. ‘Power of the mind.'

‘It's impossible,' Corinthia said. ‘It's obviously some clever sleight of hand.'

‘You must have switched cigarettes,' Lulu said.

‘I could do the same on any of you,' Conor said. ‘I could prevent you feeling pain.' He smiled. ‘Would someone like to volunteer?'

Corinthia looked at him hesitantly. Then she thrust her hand forward. ‘Burn me and I'll sue,' she said.

There was a titter of laughter.

‘I have insurance for this,' he said good-naturedly, avoiding eye contact and staring instead at the bridge of her nose. ‘OK, I'm going to count to ten and you're going to go into a deep sleep; when I want you to come out I'll count to ten a second time and tell you to wake up – OK?'

‘Yah, OK.' She gave a bored shrug.

He deepened his voice and allowed himself to become aware of the blur of her eyes, a brilliant emerald, so lurid he wondered if she was wearing tinted contact lenses. ‘One,' he said and moved his head a few inches closer, without glancing away. ‘Two.' He inched closer again. ‘Three … four … five … six.' A couple of inches gained each time. Her blinking slowed right down and her eyes began to close. ‘Seven … eight … nine … ten.'

He waited a beat. ‘OK, Corinthia, you are now asleep, deep asleep, deep deep asleep. Do you feel awake or asleep?'

Her eyes were shut tight. Her voice sounded like a tape being played at the wrong speed. ‘Sh'I'm shleep.'

Conor glanced briefly around the table; all eyes were watching. ‘You sure you're not just pretending, Corinthia? You're really asleep?'

‘Realshleep.'

‘You want me to test whether you're telling the truth or not? You did tell me you were impossible to hypnotize, so how do I know you're not just lying to me now?'

‘Realshleep,' she mumbled again.

‘OK.' Conor took out a cigarette and handed it to the girl on his left. ‘Could you light this for me – just so everyone here knows it's really alight and not some trick.'

The girl put it into her mouth, ducked forward towards a candle and lit the cigarette from the flame. She inhaled, coughed and handed the cigarette back to Conor.

Conor glanced around his audience, then took his subject's left arm in his own left hand. ‘OK, Corinthia, you have a beautiful arm. Do you have any scars on it?'

‘S … no.'

‘You sure about that? No cigarette burns or anything like that?'

‘No scars.'

Conor held the arm out and rotated it, like a conjurer showing an empty box, so that everyone could see it. Then slowly and theatrically, he brought the lighted tip of the cigarette up to her skin.

There was a crinkling sound, then a crackle like greaseproof paper as the flame pressed into the skin. Someone gasped. Someone else said: ‘Jesus!'

Conor pressed harder, rotating the cigarette until it was completely extinguished, then solemnly handed it back to the girl who had lit it. ‘Could you check that it's out – I don't want to start a fire or anything.'

He heard an uncertain titter of laughter from two places away. Then he lowered his subject's arm on to the table. ‘Right, Corinthia, I'm going to bring you back now. I'm going to count to ten and you'll open your eyes and be awake. Here we go. One … two … three …'

On the count of ten, she opened her eyes and blinked with a confused expression, first at Conor, then around the table.

‘Welcome back,' he said.

She frowned at him, darting short, suspicious glances, saying nothing.

‘Did you feel anything?' Conor asked. ‘On your left arm?'

‘Yah – think someone was tickling me with a feather brush or something.'

‘Have a look – do you see any kind of mark there?'

She glanced at where he indicated with his finger, and rubbed a fleck of ash off, looking puzzled. ‘Mark? Can't see anything.' She held her arm up under the candlelight.

Conor reached over and picked up the crumpled cigarette. ‘You didn't feel that being stubbed out on your arm?'

‘Come on! You didn't!'

‘Christ, Conor!' Charley Rowley said. ‘How the hell did you do it?'

Conor smiled and said nothing.

‘It just felt like a tickle,' Corinthia said, her voice subdued suddenly. ‘Just a tickle.'

‘It's a trick,' the art dealer said. ‘Bloody clever, had us all fooled.'

‘It's not a trick, Julian,' a girl said. ‘I saw it. He actually stubbed it out on her skin.'

‘I still don't believe I was hypnotized,' Corinthia said, recovering her poise. ‘It's obvious you have some trick cigarette you switch with the real one.'

Conor raised his eyebrows. ‘That's what you're comfortable believing, right?'

‘It's not a question of
comfort
. It's the truth. There's no way you could influence my body just by looking at me and speaking to me. I don't believe it.'

Conor was silent for a moment, glancing around the table. Then he turned to the young woman and said, quietly: ‘There's a glass of red wine in front of you, right?'

She looked fleetingly at the cut-glass goblet, then back to Conor. ‘Yes.'

Conor focused on the bridge of her nose once more. ‘I want you to watch that glass very very carefully, don't take your eyes off it, not for one second, just keep on staring at it.' As he spoke his voice became deeper and slower. ‘Keep staring at it, Corinthia, and as you stare you can feel the power growing inside you, spreading through your body, you can feel energy radiating out from deep in your stomach, travelling through your veins, building in your muscles. It's making you feel strong, so strong. You love that glass, don't you, Corinthia?'

She nodded and said, in a slurred voice: ‘Sh'yesh.'

‘You love that glass very much. It is one of the most beautiful glasses you have ever seen in your life. You covet it, don't you? You would like to have glasses like that on your table at home. The truth is, Corinthia, that you are a little envious of Charley for having these glasses, aren't you?'

‘A liddle.'

‘Only a little? I have a feeling you might be very jealous indeed. I think you might have a burning hatred for Charley for having these glasses. But there's something you can do about that, isn't there? And you know exactly what it is. Concentrate on the glass. Concentrate all the energy that's
inside your body, feel it building up. Centre on the glass. Hate the glass, Corinthia! Hate it more than you've ever hated anything in your life. Are you hating it now?'

‘Yes, yes,
hating
.' There was an almost messianic fervour in her voice.