Full Stop (26 page)

Hands sneaked round her waist, big, alien, masculine hands on Toni's turquoise shirt, crushing it like a belt. She started back with an intake of breath, colliding with their owner, and the hands gripped her waist, the stubby fingerss played, digging into her flesh.

She let out a shriek but they were alone between the two walls, out of sight even of the people sitting outside the café. One of his hands jerked up, seeking her mouth, the other snaking further round her body. She bit his fingers and heard a startled cry:
'Shif.
He was unprepared for the ferocity of her counter-attack,
her elbow thrusting into his chest, and he let go for a few seconds. Tor Christ's sake,' she heard him pant, ‘you're not —
stop,
you're hurting us
both
.'

He had her by the arms, pinioning them at her sides, and she lurched forward, unable to escape but twisting her neck until she got a view of his features. Her right arm hurt, her sore hands were agony, but before he averted his head, recoiling from her scrutiny, she registered a pudgy face, mottled complexion, wispy fair hair falling over a domed forehead. Even at this unnatural angle, she knew straightaway she had
never
seen him before in her life.

She had given him time to recover and although he was still out of breath, a smile twitched the corners of his lips.

‘Loretta,' he gasped, still not meeting her eyes, ‘can I —
phew
— is it safe to let go of you now?'

She didn't say anything but he released her anyway, took a couple of steps back and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. Breathing heavily, in obvious discomfort, he panted: ‘Know who I am now, huh?'

She shook her head, breathing hard, studying her palms, the scratches from that morning reopened and dribbling blood.

He smoothed down his shirt, tucking it into his trousers, the waistband straining against the plump soft flesh.

‘What'd you do to your hands?' He reached out, touched one of them and she snatched it back, moving out of range. ‘Look,' he said defensively, coming after her. ‘I know I gave you a fright — OK, I was stupid, creeping up on you like that, but you didn't get
those
scratches from me.' He felt in his jacket pocket and drew out a folded white handkerchief, holding it out to her. ‘Want to use this?'

She ignored the question, accepting the handkerchief reluctantly, only because she didn't want to ruin a second shirt with blood stains. Dabbing at her palms, not looking at him, she said: ‘Pete Dunow, I suppose.' She hesitated, troubled by his accent, which veered erratically between American and English. ‘You know my name so obviously you've realised I'm not Toni –'

‘Pete? Tony? Who are all these people?'

She lifted her head and at once his eyes slid away, focusing somewhere beyond her right shoulder, on the wall with all the names. She said: ‘What do you mean, who are they?'

He started to fiddle with his jacket. ‘Bugger, I've lost a button. Can you see a button down there?' He crouched, patting the ground, gave a little crow of triumph and put it in his pocket.

‘Toni,' he said, straightening up, ‘I'm with you now, it's her
apartment you're staying in. Old habits die hard, don't they, Loretta? No pun intended, of course, but wouldn't life be a lot simpler if you coughed up for a hotel instead of always doing it on the cheap?' She was staring at him, the handkerchief limp in her hand, but still he didn't look her in the eye. ‘So who's Pete?'

She didn't answer and he added, incredulous: ‘You really don't know who I am? You always forget guys you sleep with so easily?'

Her mouth fell open. ‘Sleep with? I've never seen you in my life before.
Never
.'

‘Come on, Loretta.' Indignation speeded up his voice, which was light and distinctive, and he began to gabble. ‘You're not really going to keep this up? I know it was a long time ago, nineteen-eighty — nineteen-eighty-something, d'you remember the name of that café, it went right out of my head and I've never been back, I kind of avoid Paris. Not that I really think the French cops ... I can't
believe
you've forgotten.'

She stood very still, winding the blood-speckled square of fabric in and out of her fingers.

‘Well go on, say something. Aren't you going to say
anything?
'

In a strained voice, as if she feared the answer, she whispered: ‘Jamie?'

He lifted a hand, silencing her, and she noticed that the fingers were a little swollen. ‘James, please. James Noel.'

‘Not–'

‘No, it seemed ... a sensible precaution to change it. You know, new life and all that.' His vocabulary was eclectic, an unpredictable blend of American and upper-middle-class English. ‘Noel's my middle name, in case you wondered. I read somewhere, if you have to change your name, go for something familiar.'

He was looking over her shoulder again, jumpy, not as confident as he sounded, unwilling to meet her gaze. She stared at him, confused by the voice, which had begun to stir old memories, and the astonishing change in his physical appearance. It wasn't just that he was older, he was
unrecognisable
.

As if he had guessed what she was thinking, he snapped: ‘You're no spring chicken yourself, Loretta. You're what, ten years older than me?' He folded his arms and caught sight of the hand she had bitten, a fading red semi-circle extending over the knuckles. He thrust it at her and said satirically: ‘Love bites. How appropriate.'

His eyes narrowed and for once he looked at her, making it clear he was assessing the physical changes in her face. He said spitefully: ‘Still on your own, I guess? Where're you living now, did you ever move from that poky flat? Islington, wasn't it?'

She said evenly, not rising to the provocation: ‘I found one of his books yesterday.'

‘Whose books?'

‘You know.' She was beginning to get over the initial shock of seeing him again after all these years but she couldn't bring herself to say Hugh Puddephat's name out loud.

He put his hands on the sea wall and heaved himself on to it, grunting with the effort. Thinking back to Jamie as she remembered him in the Café Costes — Loretta had never forgotten its name, it was the most fashionable place in Les Halles, all polished chrome and fake art deco — was almost physically painful. She had left him sitting at an upstairs table while she walked down the pale green stairs to the ground floor, then down more steps to the basement, to the ladies' loo. When she came back she glanced up at the balcony where they'd been sitting and he was gone. A completely irrelevant detail occurred to her now, she couldn't remember either of them paying for their drinks, which was laughable given what they'd just discussed. Loretta had never known where Jamie disappeared to but her last view of him, staring into space, without the energy even to stir his coffee, had stayed with her for years afterwards.

He had been thin, charming, his fair hair falling forward in a way that reminded her of a photograph of Rupert Brooke, though even then it embarrassed her to admit it. She had slept with him once, that was all, but it had been one of those rare nights when she voluntarily abandoned her habitual self-consciousness,
giving in to the imperatives of desire to a degree which frightened and exhilarated her. She felt as if, in that brief time with Jamie, she had caught a glimpse of another, more instinctual self and the ache when the experience was not repeated was almost intolerable. The memory was so powerful that even now, scrutinising the man sitting on the wall in front of her, trying and failing to find a resemblance, she heard a distant echo of that unbearable longing and had to make a conscious effort to push it away. It helped that she was still unable to connect him with Jamie, not so much because of the fleshiness of his face, a bloated look which age all too frequently superimposes on youthful good looks, but because of the alteration in his eyes. She remembered them as wide and brown, he had a habit of glancing down as though he was afraid they might reveal too much, but now — now, she thought, they were watchful, shifty almost, looking out from behind his face as though through holes in a mask.

He had been distracted by something on the far side of the commemorative wall but now he said again: ‘Whose books?'

‘You were
there
,' she burst out, ‘didn't you see me pick it up? Someone else wanted it, we nearly came to blows.'

‘Some old bat was eyeing me up,' he said, his expression darkening, ‘she didn't give me much chance. I must say, Loretta, you've led me quite a dance the last couple of days.'

Realising she had allowed herself to be diverted, she brushed this aside and said bleakly: ‘You know perfectly well who I'm talking about. Hugh Puddephat.'

Whatever reaction she had expected, it wasn't boredom. James Noel glanced down at his hands, turned and stared across the water at Manhattan. ‘Great view,' he said.

She gasped. ‘Is that it? Is that all you've got to say? Don't you ever
think
about him?'

He lifted his right leg on to the wall and began to re-tie a shoelace. She wasn't consciously aware of it, but she remembered later that his shoes looked expensive, like his jacket. ‘Hugh?' he said casually. ‘No, why should I?'

‘
You killed him
.'

He finished tying a double bow. ‘It's not like you to go all coy, Loretta,' he said petulantly. ‘Why beat about the bush? I
murdered
him.'

The breath was knocked out of her and she began to stutter, unable to get a complete sentence out. ‘You said — you told me -it was self-defence, manslaughter, that's why I didn't — ‘

‘Turn me in to the cops?' He swung his leg down, leaned forward and put his hand under her chin. ‘The reason you didn't turn me in, sweetie, is because you fancied me. Go on, admit it. You couldn't get enough of it.'

She knocked his hand away.
‘He
attacked
you
, that's what you said, you were only trying to defend yourself, he was bigger than you, you didn't — ' Loretta hadn't actually witnessed the attack, it had taken place in the tiny Paris flat she had borrowed from an English friend, by the time she arrived Jamie was gone and she found the body. A phrase flashed into her mind from a newspaper report of the murder:
a frenzied attack
. . .

James Noel slid off the wall, brushing dust off his hands. ‘Hugh was scum, he deserved everything he got, the guy really fancied himself.'

‘Didn't you?' she retorted. In the café, when she accused him of being responsible for Puddephat's death, Jamie admitted luring the don into an affair. His sole motive, he said, was revenge for the suicide of his cousin, Melanie, a student who had been in love with Puddephat, not knowing he was gay. Jamie insisted he was heterosexual but said he knew he was attractive to men, and had used it to ensnare Puddephat, intending to teach him a lesson. But Puddephat had reacted furiously to Jamie's rejection, there'd been a struggle in the flat, the don had died —

James Noel said with satisfaction: ‘I never had any problem, there were always plenty of girls. Sorry, women. And men.'

‘Men?'

His eyebrows flicked up, mocking her. ‘Does bisexuality bother you, Loretta? That's not very PC.'

‘Not bisexuality,' she said in a low, hurt voice. ‘You mean you were lying, that's what I can't stand –'

‘You started it, you couldn't wait to get me into bed, you'd have done
anything,
you even asked me to write an article for that magazine of yours, what was it called?
Fern Sap,
poncey bloody title — I mean, for fuck's sake, did you really think I was a feminist? A new man?'

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘I can't — I've had enough of this,' she mumbled, and started to walk away.

He slipped off the wall, moving quickly for a man of his bulk, blocking her path. In an entirely different tone of voice, he said: ‘Loretta, don't go, please, I'm sorry.' He put his hand out and stroked one of her arms through her shirt, pleading with her. ‘I haven't had a chance — why d'you think I followed you all the way out here?'

She shook his hand off. ‘I don't know. I don't care.'

‘I saw you on Friday,' he said rapidly, ‘in the Met, I'm an art dealer, I've got my own gallery in TriBeCa, I had a meeting with one of the curators, I've been trying to get a picture authenticated, it didn't take as long as I thought and I had some time left over. I couldn't believe it was you at first, it was the hair that made me think –'

‘So it
was
you? Behind the
diadoumenos?'

‘The? Oh, the statue, yes. I was absolutely gobsmacked, I didn't know what to do, I followed you out of the Met and all the way down Fifth Avenue.' His voice rose again. ‘I saw you go into a café, I waited a while, I thought you hadn't recognised me –'

‘I hadn't
seen
you, not properly.'

‘Loretta, I walked into the bloody café and sat down at the next table and you looked straight through me.'

‘That was
you?'
She was genuinely astonished.

He snorted. ‘Your friend even gave me my own matches back.'

She remembered the matchbook. ‘I don't understand, why didn't you ... I mean, why wait till this afternoon?'

‘You're being a bit slow on the uptake, Loretta. You're the one person in the world who can tie me to an unsolved murder, I've
been waiting to get you on your own, somewhere nice and quiet where there aren't any cops around. When you got on that boat, there was me thinking — oh fuck, she's going to climb the Statue of Liberty. It was a hell of a relief when you didn't get off with those Italians, I can tell you.'