1
Gentle called Klein from the airport, minutes before he caught his flight. He presented Chester with a severely edited version of the truth, making no mention of Estabrook’s murder plot, but explaining that Jude was ill and had requested his presence. Klein didn’t deliver the tirade that Gentle had anticipated. He simply observed, rather wearily, that if Gentle’s word was worth so little after all the effort he, Klein, had put into finding work for him, then it was perhaps best that they end their business relationship now. Gentle begged him to be a little more lenient, to which Klein said he’d call Gentle’s studio in two days’ time, and if he received no answer would assume their deal was no longer valid.
‘Your dick’ll be the death of you,’ he commented as he signed off.
The flight gave Gentle time to think about both that remark and the conversation on Kite Hill, the memory of which still vexed him. During the exchange itself he’d moved from suspicion to disbelief to disgust and finally to acceptance of Estabrook’s proposal. But despite the fact that the man had been as good as his word, providing ample funds for the trip, the more Gentle returned to the conversation in memory, the more that first response -suspicion - was reawoken. His doubts circled around two elements of Estabrook’s story: the assassin himself (this Mr Pie, hired out of nowhere) and more particularly, around the man who’d introduced Estabrook to his hired hand: Chant, whose death had been media fodder for the past several days.
The dead man’s letter was virtually incomprehensible, as Estabrook had warned, veering from pulpit rhetoric to opiate invention. The fact that Chant, knowing he was going to be murdered (that much was cogent), should have chosen to set these nonsenses down as vital information was proof of significant derangement. How much more deranged then was a man like Estabrook, who did business with this crazy? And by the same token was Gentle not crazier still, employed by the lunatic’s employer?
Amid all these fantasies and equivocations, however, there were two irreducible facts: death and Judith. The former had come to Chant in a derelict house in Clerkenwell; about that there was no ambiguity. The latter, innocent of her husband’s malice, was probably its next target. His task was simple. To come between the two.
He checked into his hotel at 52nd and Madison a little after five in the afternoon New York time. From his window on the fourteenth floor he had a view downtown, but the scene was far from welcoming. A gruel of rain, threatening to thicken into snow, had begun to fall as he journeyed in from Kennedy, and the weather reports promised cold and more cold. It suited him, however. The grey darkness, together with the horn and brake squeals rising from the intersection below, fitted his mood of dislocation. As with London, New York was a city in which he’d had friends once, but lost them. The only face he would seek out here was Judith’s
There was no purpose in delaying that search. He ordered coffee from Room Service, showered, drank, dressed in his thickest sweater, leather jacket, corduroys and heavy boots, and headed out. Cabs were hard to come by, and after ten minutes of waiting in line beneath the hotel canopy he decided to walk uptown a few blocks and catch a passing cab if he got lucky. If not, the cold would clear his head. By the time he’d reached 70th Street the sleet had become a drizzle, and there was a spring in his step. Ten blocks from here Judith was about some early evening occupation: bathing perhaps, or dressing for an evening on the town. Ten blocks, at a minute a block. Ten minutes until he was standing outside the place where she was.
2
Marlin had been as solicitous as an erring husband since the attack, calling her from his office every hour or so, and several times suggesting that she might want to talk with an analyst, or at very least with one of his many friends who’d been assaulted or mugged on the streets of Manhattan. She declined the offer. Physically she was quite well. Psychologically too. Though she’d heard that victims of attack often suffered from delayed repercussions - depression and sleeplessness amongst them -neither had struck her yet. It was the mystery of what had happened that kept her awake at night. Who was he, this man who knew her name, who got up from a collision that should have killed him outright, and still managed to outrun a healthy man? And why had she projected upon his face the likeness of John Zacharias? Twice she’d begun to tell Marlin about the meeting in and outside Bloomingdales; twice she’d re-channelled the conversation at the last moment, unable to face his benign condescension. This enigma was hers to unravel, and sharing it too soon, perhaps at all, might make the solving impossible.
In the meantime, Marlin’s apartment felt very secure. There were two doormen: Sergio by day and Freddy by night. Marlin had given them both a detailed description of the assailant, and instructions to let nobody up to the second floor without Ms Odell’s permission, and even then they were to accompany the visitor to the apartment door, and escort them out if his guest chose not to see them. Nothing could harm her as long as she stayed behind closed doors. Tonight, with Marlin working until nine and a late dinner planned, she’d decided to spend the early evening assigning and wrapping the presents she’d accumulated on her various Fifth Avenue sorties, sweetening her labours with wine and music. Marlin’s record collection was chiefly seduction songs of his sixties adolescence, which suited her fine. She played smoochy soul and sipped well-chilled Sauvignon as she pottered, more than content with her own company. Once in a while she’d get up from the chaos of ribbons and tissue, and go to the window to watch the cold. The glass was misting. She didn’t clear it. Let the world lose focus. She had no taste for it tonight.
There was a woman standing at one of the second-storey windows when Gentle reached the intersection, just gazing out at the street. He watched her for several seconds before the casual motion of a hand raised to the back of her neck and run up through her long hair identified the silhouette as Judith. She made no backward glance to signify the presence of anyone else in the room. She simply sipped from her glass and stroked her scalp and watched the murky night. He had thought it would be easy to approach her, but now, watching her remotely like this, he knew otherwise.
The first time he’d seen her - all those years ago - he’d felt something close to panic. His whole system had been stirred to nausea as he relinquished power to the sight of her. The seduction that had followed had been both a homage and a revenge; an attempt to control someone who exercised an authority over him that defied analysis. To this day he didn’t understand that authority. She was certainly a bewitching woman, but then he’d known others every bit as bewitching, and not been panicked by them. What was it about Judith that threw him into such confusion now, as then? He watched her until she left the window, then he watched the window where she’d been, but he wearied of that finally, and of the chill in his feet. He needed fortification: against the cold, against the woman. He left the corner and trekked a few blocks east until he found a bar, where he put two bourbons down his throat, and wished to his core that alcohol and not the opposite sex had been his addiction.
At the sound of the stranger’s voice Freddy, the night doorman, rose muttering from his seat in the nook beside the elevator. There was a shadowy figure visible through the ironwork filigree and bullet-proof glass of the front door. He couldn’t quite make out the face, but he was certain he didn’t know the caller, which was unusual. He’d worked in the building for five years, and knew the names of most of the occupants’ visitors. Grumbling, he crossed the mirrored lobby, sucking in his paunch as he caught sight of himself. Then, with chilled fingers, he unlocked the door. As he opened it he realized his mistake. Though a gust of icy wind made his eyes water, blurring the caller’s features, he knew them well enough. How could he not recognize his own brother? He’d been about to call him and find out what was going on in Brooklyn when he’d heard the voice and the rapping on the door.
‘What are you doing here, Fly?’
