Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

with perhaps, one more for effort, why not?

‘You’ll understand from this, obviously, that I won’t be seeking to renew our acquaintance. But do let me wish you every future success - once you have ironed out all those glitches.

‘Best Wishes,

K.P.’

The moon, unwatched, has reached the top of the eight-sided window. It always goes faster - or sometimes more slowly - if unobserved. It is bone white now; ivory.

Nick sits staring at the letter from K.P., who is - is it? - Kit Price.

Suddenly he bursts out laughing, and as he does so, he hears himself.

He too sounds young, years younger, about twenty, maybe.

Amused, amazed, he starts to read the letter again.

Then abruptly, instead of hilarity, a wave of the most intense and primitive anger grips him.

He finds he has stood up. He is crushing the letter in his fist as if it were Kit Price’s pure white neck.

And again, caught in the core of this rage - this murderous rage - he is astounded, now at himself.

Why is he angry? If he even needed it, there has been plenty of contrary proof. Besides, if it comes to it, to coin a phrase, orgasm may be felt in muscular spasms not only watched as acted out. Kit Price had come like a fucking roller coaster, three times.

He puts the crumpled ball of letter on the table, and goes to the fridge for another juice.

Only gradually he sees that perhaps his animal reaction was not for himself at all. He has, decidedly, the sense she has written this letter, or similar stuff, before. Not every man is confident, or has reason to be. Is she then complimentary to them?

If not, how many have got hurt? And why has she done it? She is mad, that must be the answer.

Nick remembers knocking on the door of the basement flat and the figure, perhaps Kit or not, perhaps not there, but if there, seeming to hide and to listen - in fear? Probably she has needed to take refuge, to hide, quite frequently.

He smiles again. But is even that real?

And someone knocks.

Someone knocks on the door of Nick’s flat.

Only one clipped thump. But Nick now stands there unmoving. He has forgotten Kit. He too is now listening, even hiding. Trying to decide again if the shadow is far enough behind, or getting close again. And if it is sensible to open the door.

He had been apprehensive this man would return, and then when circumstances changed, had wanted him back but been unable to get hold of him: Pond. Now Pond stands there in the full light of the open door.

“Mr Lewis.”

“Mr Pond.”

“I understood, sir,” says Pond blandly, (Nick had mislaid how neutral Pond’s face is) “that you wished to contact me.”

“I called your mobile. No answer.”

“I was tied up, sir. But now that’s sorted out, and I thought I’d drop by.”

“Come in,” Nick says, and lets Pond in over his threshold. With, again, the same inchoate tinge of misgiving as before.

As before too, Pond flicks a look round, then up at the window, and so sees now the last edge of the moon sliding out of it. Tonight though Pond makes no comment.

“You’re not,” says Nick, “any sort of policeman, are you?”

“Would you say not, sir? Then I’m sure you’re right.”

Nick glances at Pond. “Can I offer you a drink?”

Pond says, as if to be different from last time, “That would be very nice.”

“Hard or soft?”

“Oh, hard tonight, I think, if that’s an offer.”

Nick goes off to the fridge, calls, “Vodka? Wine?”

“Vodka would be the ticket, sir. Straight, no mixer.”

When the drink is poured, Nick adds a splash to his orange juice. As he had opened the flat door, the figure of Pond had not looked, anymore, like that of the break-in drawer-man. Nick’s hands are not shaking, but something inside him somehow is.

They sit down. He stares at Pond, and becomes aware of the two letters, one balled up, and one on the floor where Nick has trodden on it.

But Pond leans back on the couch, his overcoat undone, and looks up instead at the high ceiling. His neutral face changes gear and assumes a fierce expression, and he says to the ceiling, “So how can I help you, Mr Lewis?”

“Let me get something straight first. Angela, my brother’s wife, hired you to try to find him.”

“In a way.”

“How do you mean, in a way? He’d disappeared and she thought the police were slow, so she got hold of you…”

“Not exactly, sir.”

“Then what?”

“I doubt if it will matter now,” says Pond, with gentle regret. “Mrs Lewis hired me less to find where Mr Lewis was, than to find out whom he was with.”

Nick swears softly.

“Yes, sir. Mrs Lewis has long suspected Mr Lewis of infidelity. To paraphrase Mrs Lewis, she did not precisely mind that he saw other women, but objected to the increasing amount of time he spent with them. She was, she told me, extremely aggravated by all the spells he spent away, and the money he spent when away on them. Recently it seems it was often over a long weekend he would be with his various ladies. That is Friday through to Monday. Mrs Lewis told me she had come to the conclusion she would like to have grounds for a divorce, because that way Mr Lewis would have to reimburse her for all the annoyance he was causing her. So she applied to me. I was to watch him and take notes.”

Nick drinks his vodka and orange. He considers all the policeman-like questions Pond had asked him during his first visit. Had Laurence come here? What had he been wearing? All a blind, then. Or just to double check.

“Right,” Nick says. “And did you find him and take notes?”

“Inevitably, sir. First of all a while back, in Manchester with a young lady. Then at a pub near Manchester called the High Heart, with another young lady. On what I must come to call, I’m afraid, the fatal