Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire (14 page)

Daniel placed his arms around her, comforting her as her head sank into the warmth of his chest. Before her, steam curled and danced from the dark surface of the coffee cup, and grimly she noticed a smear of blood—whether her own or Francis’s, she could not tell—on the shining surface of the table.

Hospital, yes. She had to get there. Her face stung but that was trivial. She could still feel the imprint of a fist on her abdomen, and when she thought of the damage he might have done her anxieties rose into her mouth, leaving a bitter taste as they mixed with her anger. Yes, she would have to go to hospital, but there was something else that she needed to attend to also.

“We have to call the police,” she said quietly.

To her surprise, Daniel said nothing and she felt the muscles in his arms tense ever so slightly. Lifting her hands, she placed them gently against his chest, the diamond of her engagement ring and the gold of her wedding band shining in the mid-day light. She pushed back, softly but firmly, against him so that his arms opened and let her free.

Looking up into his face, she saw a slight tic appear in his cheek, causing the scar to fluctuate like a creature on his skin. “We have to call the police,” she repeated.

He nodded, a terse gesture. “Yes, of course,” he replied at last.

She frowned at him and his strange eyes flickered away from her. What was this? She had seen many things cross Daniel Stone’s face, but never fear, not like this. Never weakness.

Her heart beat a little more quickly, a sense of rising anger blooming beneath her skin. Trying to control herself, her voice became steely.

“What’s wrong?”

He hesitated. “Nothing. You’re right. But... perhaps I should try to speak to Maximilian first.”

“Oh, because he’s been so helpful in dealing with you so far. Yeah, that will help.” She realised her sarcasm was unfair, but she couldn’t help herself: in the light of the violence she had suffered Daniel’s failure to stand with her now opened a fresh wound.

His eyes flickered back to hers then moved away again. “He wasn’t there. I found out from one of his staff that he had no intention of him seeing me. As soon as I realised Francis had lied to me...” His voice trailed away as he realised what could have been.

Kris, however, was relentless. Her hand still rested on his chest, but her muscles had frozen so that she seemed to become a statue. “Daniel,” she said, her voice as rigid as her body, “they were going to rape me.”

He clenched his jaw at this, his teeth grinding together. Anger flared across his eyes and his nostrils flared. “I’ll kill him,” he muttered.

“No, no you won’t. We’ll go to the police, report it as a crime. He won’t get away with this.”

Now Daniel’s face returned to hers, his eyes full of pain once more. “Won’t he?” he asked, then laughed, hollowly.

At this, she let her hand fall from his chest and pulled herself away, resisting his attempts to hold his arms in place around her. Though she only sat a few inches further away from him now it felt as though a gulf had opened up between them.

“Before, after Victor’s, I let you talk me out of doing anything.” She shrugged, but she could feel her skin prickling beneath her ripped dress and the gown she wore over it. “I didn’t actually
know
what was going on, but I think you had a good idea, and yet you did nothing.”

His jaw moved back and forth, teeth grinding as she spoke, but he remained silent.

“You did nothing, Daniel. That could have been me—it nearly
was
me. A man like Francis Roth can’t be allowed to get away with that.”

Now Daniel’s head dipped down and he refused to accept her gaze. Her own anger was becoming clearer now: part of her was still furious with him, but she was more certain where her own real fury lay. Nonetheless, she felt a little something inside her wither when she realised that this man, her husband, almost her idol, had a weakness which should not have been allowed to endure.

“It may be a cliché, but bad men can do good things when good men do nothing.”

He lifted his head back up, not looking at her but gazing off with eyes filled with pain. He shook his head. “If only it were that simple,” he said. “You don’t understand.”

She snarled at this, for a second directing her anger at him, pure and clean. “Don’t give me that! I understand
precisely
what he was going to do, him and that piece of filth he called his business associate.”

Daniel took a deep breath. “No, not that,” he tried to explain. “In a court case, they’ll murder you... they’ll murder us...”

“Is this what this is about? Your fucking reputation? Fuck you, Daniel! Your wife can be raped, but all you care about is how you’ll appear in the eyes of a scumbag like Francis Roth.”

His own eyes flashed with anger as he glared at her, but he restrained himself. “That’s not what I mean. Maximilian Roth can hire the best lawyers there are—a whole army of them, long after I’ve been drained dry. And they’ll scour every aspect of your life, every detail—they won’t be content for you to lose any claim you bring against Francis. They’ll destroy everything you own, everything you want, everything you care about.”

At this, her hands dropped unconsciously to her belly. She looked at him for a moment, her eyes hard, determined.

“It’s not right, Daniel,” she said at last. “He can’t be allowed to get away with this. How long till the next time?”

Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know...” he started to say, but Kris pushed on.

“How long till he actually rapes a pregnant woman?”

The question threw him and he stared at her uncomprehendingly. Then, at last, he noticed her hand, defensive on her abdomen. His eyes widened, and a small gasp escaped from his mouth.

“You... you...” He couldn’t speak, but Kris nodded, her face softening a little.

“Yes, me,” she replied. at last. “I’m pregnant.”

“How long... how long have you known?”

“Only since yesterday. I was going to wait till we returned to London, till I could see a doctor, before telling you.” Her voice was hard now, but not unkind. Still, however, she held Daniel in her gaze while he stared down at her belly, barely comprehending. In his eyes there was a light mixed with the pain that was engraved on his features.

“But how... but how did it happen?”

Her face darkened at this. “For God’s sake, Daniel! If I have to explain that to you, there’s no hope for us.”

“No, please.” He shook his head, looking confused. “I mean, I thought you were on the pill.”

She looked somewhat crestfallen, even embarrassed by this. Through her mind flashed all the accusations she could have launched against herself, that although they had not spoken much about this it was to have been something they would have planned together. “So did I. But, when I was preparing for the exhibition, we were travelling around so much...” Her excuses sounded lame to her, but also irrelevant. “It happened, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting it, but that’s how it is.”

For a while she said nothing, simply watching the turmoil on his face, the mixture of love and anger, a sudden storm that had come from nowhere. “Come on,” she said at last, her voice soft and almost breaking with grief. “We better get to the hospital”.

When she had been admitted the nurses had viewed Daniel suspiciously as soon as they glimpsed Kris’s bruises across her face. Kris had deflected their attention, redirecting it to the main task and telling them, briefly, that she had been mugged and wanted to check the condition of a suspected pregnancy.

After a battery of questions and tests, they ran an ultrasound on her. On the screen, amid the ghostly, grey shadows, a black shape grew and pulsated, the amniotic sac of the foetus that beat in time with its heart.

“You’re very lucky,” the nurse told her. “There seems to be no trauma whatsoever.”

“Is it a boy or girl?” Daniel asked, watching the monitor with a look of wonder on his face.

The nurse looked at him askance. “It’s not that easy to tell at six weeks,” she remarked wryly.

With one hand on her belly, Kris reached out with her other. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

He looked down at her, smiling, and shook his head. “No, no. Today’s brought a lot of shocks, that’s all. I barely know what I’m saying.”

At this, Kris’s face hardened slightly and her feelings of protection became tougher. “There’s something else we have to do.”

His face appeared sad but, finally, as resolute as her own when he looked down at her. Then he nodded and returned his face to the screen once more. The life on the screen,
their
child, was little more than an amorphous dark shape. As he watched it, Daniel’s hands clenched and his face watched the pulsating blob grimly.

“When I think of what he could have done to you...” His voice trailed away in anger. Kris reached across and took hold of his hand, gripping him tightly.

“It will stop, it has to stop,” she told him. “I don’t care who he is, but people like him can’t simply do whatever they want. There are always consequences.”

“There are always consequences.” Repeating her words, Daniel gave a tense smile. “Perhaps more than we realise.” The two of them sat in silence for a moment, watching the screen.

“It’s been a long time since I’d seen him, Francis, I mean.” Daniel did not take his eyes away from the dark beat of life against the grey. “I’ve had a couple of meetings with Maximilian, but nothing came of those.”

As he spoke, Kris continued to hold his hand, saying nothing, letting him continue in his own time.

“He’s changed, changed a lot. And in some stupid way, I’m partly responsible.”

This was too much for Kris. “You are not responsible for him!” Her tone was sharp, suddenly annoyed at her husband’s self-introspection.

He smiled and now glanced at her, his eyes shifting in the light, pupils dilating and contracting under complex emotions. “
Partly
responsible. When I first met Francis, he was still a teenager, I think, certainly still at Harvard. Maximilian and I... I wouldn’t exactly say we were close: I don’t believe anyone gets truly close to Max.” He shrugged at this and smiled. “Hell, at that time, nobody got close to me, not really. We were made for each other.

“I think Francis realised that. He saw Max reacting to me in some sort of father-son relationship. It wasn’t—in the end it was nearly always business.”

“Nearly always?” prompted Kris.

He nodded. “Yes. Even I have to admit that there was sometimes a little more—as much as Max and I were willing to give. Francis saw that, and he also saw this... man who was able to take what he wanted, when he wanted. For whom pretty much everything and everyone was property.” Daniel pulled a face at this, shaking his head. “What he couldn’t see, because I didn’t show it, not to anyone, was the emptiness inside, the slow hollowing out—dead, drying up.” He shrugged and looked directly at Kris. “What he couldn’t see was a man who got everything he wanted—except for the one thing he
really
wanted.”

She nodded, watching him. Despite the terrors of the morning, he was now calm within himself. His shoulders, as broad and strong as ever, no longer heaved with emotion as he thought of what was to come, and his face was resolute and calm. His tics, signs of anxiety and nervousness, had gone, and after considering the unborn child on the screen he turned to face her again.

“Let’s call the police,” he told her. “If this is to be done, then best it were done quickly.”

And so began what was to be one of the hardest days of her life

When she descended in the elevator with Daniel the doors opened to reveal three men dressed in dark suits, all of them a build that was close to that of her husband’s though with somewhat more stolid expressions on their face than the look of grim determination that he wore. These were to be their escort while the arraignment took place, not because Daniel believed that they would particularly be under threat but rather that media attention in the case was already beginning to grow.

Kris had seen clear evidence of that the evening before. At the hospital she had spoken to police after Daniel had called them, outlining what had happened to her that morning. Daniel was silent as she spoke, only commenting when asked a direct question by the police and supporting Kris’s statement. After the words that had passed between them that morning, however, his silence was of a different nature now. While she spoke he listened carefully, and once or twice his face twitched in pain as she recounted how Francis and his associate had hit and abused her. When she had finished his resolve was as fixed as hers.

And then, when they returned to the hotel and switched on the television set, they saw that Francis Roth and Matthew Doherty had been arrested. There was a bustle outside a large, Italianate house on the outskirts of San Francisco where Roth was living, his being the arrest that was filmed live with a tagline at the bottom indicating the simultaneous arrest of Doherty. Excited questions were thrown out by reporters there, with the professional voice of the anchor offering a commentary as the clip was shown.