Cold Heart (35 page)

Well, Lorraine thought, she had done her best. If Sonja shot Vallance, good riddance – perhaps she’d get a call in the morning from another of Harry Nathan’s wives facing a murder rap.

She could not face hearing the disappointment in Jake’s voice when she told him that she had decided to stay another night, so called Rosie instead.

‘Hi, darlin’.’ Rosie’s familiar voice, warm as a hug. ‘Where are you?’

‘Still in the Hamptons. I figured I might stay another night.’

‘What for?’ Rosie asked. ‘Didn’t you get to see Sonja Nathan?’

‘There’s something going on. Raymond Vallance just showed up out of nowhere.’

Well,’ Rosie sniffed, ‘you must be the only woman who’d hang around to see Raymond Vallance these days. Bill’s been looking in on the office and he says someone’s been calling and calling and hanging up after the machine kicks in. I bet it’s Jake – just wants to hear your voice.’

Lorraine felt a pang of conscience – but what difference could twenty-four hours make? She’d tell Jake as soon as she got back that she was winding up the office for good, that he would be her top priority from now on. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ she said. ‘And then I’m getting right out of this business. I’ll be home baking cupcakes and we’ll have coffee and watch the shopping channel every day.’

‘Dream on!’ Rosie said, and there was sadness under the laugh that she hardly understood, as though she knew she was listening to a vision that could never become real.

‘I don’t suppose you’d take Tiger for tonight, would you?’ Lorraine asked.

‘You mean would I call Jake and tell him you’re not coming back today?’ Rosie said, with a sigh. ‘I guess so. I don’t know why I do these things, Lorraine. It must be love.’

‘Thanks, Rosie – I’ll see you soon.’

Sonja Nathan stood at her windows, looking out over the bay. So Vallance was in town, she thought: So what? She had the gun and nothing frightened her now: she would not be frightened to rid the world of a piece of vermin, and if he killed her, he would only have outrun her own desires by a couple of hours. She felt tranquil now, as though all things were running steadily towards their appointed conclusion, feeling her own movements acquire the languorous grace of a clock that is steadily running down.

She saw the delivery van draw up outside, and a boy get out with a cardboard box in his arms. Arthur wouldn’t hear him in the studio, so she set off downstairs to let him in. ‘This is for you, Mrs Nathan,’ he said, handing her the form to sign. She glanced at the column marked ‘consignor’, and saw the letters LAPD printed in it. The police department, she thought. Some clerical officer had telephoned her about evidence gathered in connection with Harry’s death, which was now being returned to the family. ‘Thanks,’ she said, handing the form back. ‘Just put it here in the hall.’

‘Mrs Nathan isn’t home this evening.’ The words she had spoken to Vallance echoed in Lorraine’s head. The temptation to go back and see if she could get a look round the studio was irresistible.

She strolled out into the street, and walked into a suitably arty-looking café, where the poster for the deer protection meeting was prominently displayed: it was at seven. That left her with the afternoon on her hands, and she walked down to the bookstore. She had originally intended to pick up some light reading, but something prompted her to ask the owner if he had anything on modern sculpture, in particular Sonja Nathan’s career.

‘You mean Sonja Sorenson,’ he said. ‘She works under her maiden name.’ He produced a book devoted to three contemporary sculptresses, offering a fairly full treatment of Sonja’s work, which Lorraine bought. She walked back to the hotel, flicking through it. Sonja had had two major shows since
City of Angels
, after she and Nathan had split up. The first was called
In Perpetuity
, and was a group of immensely tall structures, part-pillar, part-woman, part-tree, a cycle of strange modern caryatids in a soft, bright, reddish wood. The positions of all the figures were almost identical, but the art of the piece was in some subtlety of their overall lines and expressions: somehow one knew that the earlier figures were struggling to break free from the wood, the later ones yearning to blend back into it. Only one central figure was at rest, her face so simultaneously blank of meaning yet flooded with peace that Lorraine could not take her eyes from her: this had been Sonja’s most successful show: she had then produced nothing for some time. Her latest work was a similar group, entitled
The Full
but this time of male figures, at least eighteen or twenty, the first ten or twelve almost unchanging, but the latter ones dwindling in size and displaying a rapid degeneration into coarse, priapic, ape-like creatures. The piece was cruder and darker than its two predecessors, and you did not have to look far to see the narrative of Sonja’s marriage to Nathan: it was eloquent with pain and contempt and made Lorraine speculate about what Harry Nathan had been like to inspire such intensity of feeling in the people around him. She wondered too whether, looking at the two pieces together, she could trace Sonja’s attempts to liberate herself from her past and her marriage. Could she have been so tormented by him that she would contemplate killing him? Lorraine found herself wondering what Sonja’s latest work would reveal, and was now even more determined to go out to Sonja Nathan’s house.

It was half past six when Lorraine walked down to Reception and decided that she would sit in a coffee shop with a view of the entrance to the town hall and make sure that both Sonja and Arthur went into the meeting before she set out for the Springs.

People began to file in after about a quarter to seven. A few minutes later she saw the Blazer pull up and Arthur get out – alone. Lorraine almost groaned aloud with frustration.

Just as he walked up to the doors of the hall, Lorraine saw a couple approach him – a tall, heavy, blowsy-looking blonde woman and Raymond Vallance. They stopped and exchanged a few words with Arthur, who seemed barely inclined to give them the time of day, then continued to walk towards the hotel.

Was it Lorraine’s imagination, or had Vallance suddenly quickened his own and his companion’s pace? Was he now rushing back to the hotel to dump his companion and get out to the Springs? Lorraine decided she wasn’t taking any chances. She flagged down a passing cab.

Sonja Nathan’s house was in darkness, but all the lights were on in the studio on the far side of the garden. Approaching the studio, Lorraine stepped out of the shafts of light streaming from the windows and walked up in shadow to look inside. There were various packing materials on the floor, and it was clear that whatever work Sonja Nathan had completed was now gone. The interior was almost bare except for a row of cupboards built along one wall and a long wooden table, at which Sonja sat, staring into space, a handgun lying in front of her.

Jesus, Lorraine thought, what was the woman doing? Waiting for Vallance seemed the most likely explanation, the man who had blighted her marriage and had, if Lorraine’s suspicions were correct, killed the man she had loved. The minutes passed and Sonja did not move a muscle. Something in her unnatural rigidity made Lorraine suddenly certain that Sonja Nathan intended to kill herself.

She moved noiselessly along the wall, pressed her back against the wood next to the door frame and extended her arm to its full length to rap on the door.

‘Mrs Nathan,’ she called, ‘it’s Lorraine Page.’

There was no reply.

‘Mrs Nathan?’ she called again. ‘Can I come in for just a moment?’

Silence.

‘Can I speak to you please? It’s important,’ she tried again, and was rewarded with the sound of the woman getting up and coming to the door. Lorraine heard a bolt being drawn, then the handle turned slowly and the door opened.

‘I’m working, Mrs Page,’ Sonja Nathan said. She looked deathly.

‘I’m sorry. I saw Arthur on his own in town and I wondered if you were all right,’ she said. It was more or less the truth, and the frank expression of concern seemed to touch Sonja.

‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. Her eyes were turned towards Lorraine, but seemed not to see her.

‘Can I come in for a minute?’ Lorraine asked again.

‘All right,’ Sonja said. ‘Just for a minute. There really are things I have to do.’

She stepped back from the door and Lorraine followed her inside. She had not bothered to conceal the gun, which lay untouched on the table.

‘You see,’ she said, her manner lightening, as though some oppressive third presence had left the room as soon as Lorraine had walked into it, ‘if Mr Vallance comes calling, he’ll find us well prepared. I’ve already seen a good deal of him today, as it happens.’

Lorraine raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘Did he come out here?’

‘No. I received a package today from the LAPD. Videotapes of Harry’s. Have you seen them?’

Lorraine nodded.

‘Well, Vallance got what was coming to him. He fed all that in Harry and got bitten himself. If he walks through that door I ought to just shoot him cold,’ Sonja said casually, crossing to one of the long cupboards. ‘He’s a destroyer.’ She took out a bottle of vodka and an antique stemmed glass. She poured herself a drink.

‘What were you working on?’ Lorraine asked.

‘Oh, nothing. What I’m always working on,’ Sonja said, knocking back half of the vodka.

Lorraine sensed that she had been about to say something else, but had stopped herself. ‘Well, that can’t be true,’ she said. ‘You’ve produced a well-regarded body of work, haven’t you?’

‘A well-regarded body of work,’ Sonja repeated, almost mimicking Lorraine. ‘Much fucking good it does me.’ She drained the rest of the glass. ‘People don’t live on “regard”. Or on the past.’ She was silent for a moment, then began to speak again, her manner now almost academically impersonal. ‘What’s the point of the past, do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lorraine said, ‘I often wonder.’

Well, I can tell you,’ Sonja went on, bitter again. ‘It’s to flavour the present. In some people’s lives the memory of the past is constantly present, like a sweetness, but for others it’s like a poison or a mould. No matter how far you think you’ve got away from something, it’s still always there – in every word you speak, everything you are. Every piece of work you do.’ She gestured around her at the empty room.

‘Are you talking about Harry?’

‘Of course,’ Sonja said, pouring herself another drink. ‘All I ever do is talk about Harry.’ She paused again. ‘I can’t seem to stop. I loved him, you know. Perhaps I didn’t realize how much.’

‘Until he died?’ Lorraine said gently.

‘Until he died.’ Sonja fell silent. ‘Something in me died too.’ She looked up at Lorraine, her strange eyes bright and still, and Lorraine felt again the presence of something behind them, as though death itself were looking out.

The atmosphere was unbearable, and Lorraine felt she had to talk, to make some connection with the other woman. ‘That’s how I started drinking. Someone I loved died.’

‘Your husband?’ Sonja asked.

‘No,’ Lorraine said. ‘He was my partner at work. I used to be a cop.’ She felt a strange intimacy with Sonja, so that it didn’t matter what she said. Lorraine began to talk about her own life, remembering her police training and how she had been taught to talk people back from the edge, to make them feel connected. She found that she wanted to tell it all, wanted someone to understand. She could not stop herself, as though a dam had been breached. But then, mid-flow, her voice suddenly tailed off. ‘God knows why I’m telling you all this.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ Sonja said, taking another slug of vodka with a smile. ‘Why don’t you just spit it all out? You tell me your ghost stories, and then I’ll tell you mine.’ Life seemed to flow back into her with the current of sympathy, and she swung her feet up on the table with a lop-sided smile. ‘We’ve got a while.’

A while till when? Lorraine was sure that it was no coincidence that Sonja Nathan had been ready to blow her brains out the day before she would become the legal owner of all of Harry Nathan’s property. Did she want to show she didn’t care about money – or was it something she felt she had no right to accept? She smiled to see how Sonja’s problems were distracting her from her own.

Lorraine could feel the past surging up inside her again, and she had to get up and walk around. Sonja said nothing, and it was because she didn’t speak, either to encourage or discourage anything, that Lorraine’s pent-up emotions were able to find release. ‘Drinking became my life – I refused point-blank to believe I had a problem, but I was on a downward slope.’

Lorraine put her hands over her face and started to weep. Sonja sat motionless. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s got into me.’

‘Same thing that’s got into me,’ Sonja said simply, swinging her legs down. She walked over to Lorraine and touched her shoulder lightly. Lorraine knew that the touch had been something Sonja felt she ought to do rather than an instinctive response: she was not a caring woman. ‘Except my drug is my work. Was my work. I won’t do any more now.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Lorraine said, wiping her eyes. ‘All artists get blocked from time to time.’

‘Art!’ Sonja said. ‘It’s all just fucking pain and damage. Harry damaged me. I didn’t know how much.’

Until he died, Lorraine mentally filled in.

‘He made me like himself – dirty, commercial, tacky,’ she went on, describing a mirror image of the process Vallance had attributed to her, and Lorraine wondered what she was talking about: no one could call her own austere and disturbing work commercial, but it was clear that Sonja’s standards were not those of other people. ‘He made me feel things, do things, I never wanted to feel or do, filled me up with bitterness and hate. I did my best to . . . exorcize them. But I didn’t succeed. They possessed me, diminished me.’ She was talking slowly and deliberately. ‘They caused me to lose my work. Which he gave me too. Which is myself.’

What the hell did she mean? She was raving, everything she said was a riddle.

‘But you said you were working here tonight?’ Lorraine said.