Once Bitten (12 page)

I was surprised how quickly he'd remembered the film which he'd made more than sixty years earlier, but Alzheimer's Disease can be like that, wiping out whole chunks of recent memories but leaving other, more distant ones, untouched. Maybe I'd be lucky.

“I enjoyed it,” I lied, and smiled.

“Bullshit,” he said.

“It was a good story.”

“What are you, a critic?” he wheezed. His chest shuddered and I thought for a second that he was having some sort of attack and then I realised that the old man was laughing. The only sound coming from his mouth was a rasping wheeze but his eyes had crinkled up and the furrows either side of his mouth had curved into a smile.

Nurse Orlowski came over and dabbed at Turner's face with her handkerchief. “Please don't get us too excited,” she said to me.

I looked at her tight-fitting uniform which did nothing to conceal her figure underneath. If anything was likely to excite the old man it would be her, she had enough sex appeal to arouse the dead. I wondered what it must be like, to be old and confined to a wheelchair and to have a sexy young blond like Nurse Orlowski administering to your needs. Wiping your face, feeding you,

bathing you, taking you to the toilet. When Turner was in his prime I bet he had girls like her queueing up to sleep with him. I bet he'd had to fight them off. He'd been so good-looking then,

and rich, and famous. And now, what good had any of it been? He was just a dried-out husk, a shell, and the blonde with the ball-busting figure treated him like a baby and waited for him to die.

“I'll be careful,” I said as she went back to her book.

Turner's eyes slowly closed and then he jerked awake. The claw-hand twitched and his eyelids fluttered and then he went still but his eyes were open and focussed on me while he waited for me to speak. I wanted to ask him what it was like to be so old, to be so close to death. I knew the statistics, knew that there was a fair chance that I'd end up like Greig Turner, if I lived that long.

Alzheimer's hits one out of four people by the time they reach eighty five years old and it's the fourth biggest cause of death in the Western world, after heart disease, cancer and strokes. There's no cure, it may be genetic, it may be an illness, but if you get it there's nothing that can be done, the brain cells die in their millions and that's all there is. Doctors used to reckon that it was a normal part of aging and that it happened to everyone in varying degrees, but a Swiss psychiatrist, Dr Alois Alzheimer, all the way back in 1901, did an autopsy on a woman who'd gone ga-ga in her fifties and he discovered the lesions in her brain that identified the disease that was named after him. The one blessing is that by the time you've got Alzheimer's, you've forgotten you had it, if you see what I mean. It's like the old joke. Doctor to patient: “I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that you've got AIDS. The good news is that you've got Alzheimer's disease so you'll be able to forget all about it.” Ha ha. Looking at Greig Turner and the dribble on his chin, Alzheimer's didn't strike me as a laughing matter. It wasn't a prospect I relished. Maybe death would be better.

Maybe. I wanted to ask Turner whether there were any advantages at all in having lived so long,

whether the memories made up for the awfulness of being alive in such a decrepit old body. But more than that I wanted to know about Terry Ferriman.

“Mr Turner, do you know a girl called Terry Ferriman?”

“Never heard of her,” he said.

“Terry Ferriman,” I repeated. “Long black hair, about five-four, five-five. Bright girl.”

“So many girls,” he wheezed. “You think I'd remember them all?” Yes, I thought. This one you'd remember. No matter how many opened their legs for you, this one you'd never forget.

“You are sure?” I pressed, wondering if I'd strayed into one of the blanks in his memory.

“When? Back when I was a star? Jesus, I can't remember the movies, never mind the dames.”

“No, this would be recent. Within the last few years. She had your photograph in her room.”

“I don't know anyone called Terry. She had my picture? A fan, huh? I thought all my fans had died long ago.”

“This girl is young. I thought she might have been related. Do you have any children, Mr Turner? Or grandchildren?”

“Not that I know about,” he cackled. He screwed his eyes up at me. "What are you suggesting,

that I can't remember if I have a relative called Terry? What was your name again?"

“My name? Jamie Beaverbrook.”

“I might be old Mr Beaverbrook. But I'm not stupid.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. I realised I'd fallen into the trap of treating him like a child, of behaving like Nurse Orlowski. “But this is very important to me. The picture she had of you was taken on the set of Lilac Time. There was a girl in the movie, a girl called Lisa Sinopoli.”

“My wife,” Turner said.

“No, Lisa Sinopoli. She played the schoolteacher.”

"Yes, I know. She was my wife. We married after we'd finished the film.

“I didn't know. She was very pretty. You made a good team.”

Turner snorted.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

He fell silent for a while and I listened to his uneven breathing. He dribbled and the claw of a hand made as if he wanted to wipe away the saliva but it fell back. “She left me,” he said eventually.

A thought struck me. “Did you have any children?” I asked.

He looked at me and frowned. “Children? No, no children. Lisa could never have children.”

“Is that why she left?” I asked, knowing that I had no right to ask the question but knowing also that Lisa Sinopoli could be the clue I was looking for. Her resemblance was so close to Terry that I was sure they were related. And if Terry was Lisa's daughter, or grand-daughter, or even cousin,

than that might explain the photograph of Turner being in her room. A family heirloom, maybe.

“No, that's not why she left,” Turner said. He thrust his head forward, the folds of skin around his neck hanging loose like badly-fitting drapes. “You from the agency?”

“What?” I said, confused.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Beaverbrook. Jamie Beaverbrook.”

“You a detective?”

“No, I'm a psychologist,” I said. He'd started rambling so I tried to steer him back to the movie business where at least I appeared to be on safer ground.

“Did the two of you appear in other movies together?”

“Just the one. She didn't even want to do Lilac Time, but I talked her into it. Have you found her?”

“Found who?”

“Lisa. Isn't that why you're here? Because I paid you to look for her?”

Shit, he'd started rambling again. “No, I'm not looking for Lisa. I'm trying to get information about Terry Ferriman.”

“Never heard of her.”

I took the black and white photograph out of my inside pocket and held it out to him. His hand twitched and I realised it would be too much of an effort for him to hold it so I stood upright and walked to the side of the wheelchair where I could hold it in front of his face.

He stared at the picture, breathing heavily through his nose. “That's her,” he wheezed.

“Yes, that's Terry,” I said.

“No. That's her. That's Lisa.”

“No, this is a new photograph. This is Terry Ferriman.”

“No. That's Lisa. You think I don't know my own wife?”

“Lisa had blonde hair,” I said.

He shook his head adamantly. “She insisted on wearing a wig for the movie. Wouldn't do it otherwise.” He sounded suddenly stronger, more coherent, as if his anger was revitalising the fatigued neurons in his weary brain.

I moved around in front of him and showed him the picture again. The day seemed to have gone suddenly cold. The nurse was watching me with a concerned look on her face.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Of course I'm sure.” He looked up with pleading in his eyes. “You've found her?” he said, and the hope in his voice was pitiful.

“I'm not looking for her,” I said.

“Then what are you doing here?” he shouted. “Why are you doing this to me? Why are you torturing me like this?”

Nurse Orlowski got to her feet and came up to me. “I think you should go, you're disturbing us,”

she said.

Turner was trembling and there was a dry rattle coming from his throat. His claw seemed to have gone into spasm.

“I just want to ask him a few more questions.”

“No,” she said, and there was steel in her voice. "This man is my patient. You must leave.

Now."

I could see she was serious, but I could also see that there was little chance of getting any more sense out of Turner. I left the nurse kneeling next to the wheelchair and went back to the main building in search of Dr Lyttelton. He was in his office and he stood up to greet me.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“He seemed fairly lucid to me,” I said.

“He comes and goes,” he agreed.

I showed the photograph to the doctor. “Has this girl ever been here to visit Mr Turner?”

He studied it and then pushed his spectacles up his nose. “Can't say I've ever seen her.”

“Terry Ferriman's her name,” I said.

He shook his head. “Easy enough to check, though. We keep a note of all the visitors.” He picked up Turner's file which was still lying on the desk and flicked through it. He scrutinised one page and shook his head again. "No. No Terry Ferriman has ever visited him. In fact, he's had only one visitor in the past three years.“ He looked up from the file. ”That's to be expected when they get to his age, of course. Relatives, even children, and friends, tend to fall off with time.

Eventually they're totally alone. I guess about half the residents here have no....."

I interrupted his depressing chain of thought. “The visitor,” I said. “Who was it?”

He looked at the file again. “A Mr Blumenthal. Matt Blumenthal. Ah, yes, I remember. He was a private detective.”

“A detective?”

“Yes. At first we thought it was just one of his delusions. I remember, the first time he turned up we sent him away after explaining about Mr Turner's illness. Mr Turner ended up contacting a lawyer and the next time Mr Blumenthal spent almost an hour with him.”

“When was this?”

He read from the file. “A year ago. And again about two months ago.”

“Could you do me a big favour, Dr Lyttelton? Could you give me the name of his company. I'd really like to talk to Mr Blumenthal.”

The good doctor gave me the details and I thanked him and left. It was just after six o'clock and I didn't fancy the drive back to Los Angeles so I checked into a motel a few miles away from the home. I rang Rivron. He wasn't in the office but I left a message explaining that I couldn't get in that night and asking if he would hold the fort for me again. I didn't sleep well but at least I didn't have any nightmares.

The Suicide I woke up just after dawn and rang Rivron again. He was sleeping so I gave him a few seconds to clear his head before I explained that I was still out of town and wouldn't be able to get to the office before the afternoon. He said he'd cover for me and mumbled goodbye and hung up. It was too early for breakfast and I didn't feel hungry so I got into the car and drove back to LA. I was keen to call Blumenthal but I figured his office wouldn't open until nine o'clock and by then I was almost half way there and I was driving on auto-pilot, hands gripping the vibrating wooden steering wheel,

eyes fixed on the road, ears filled with the roaring of the engine. I don't like driving long distances,

especially in the Alpine, I always worry that I'm pushing the old car too hard.

At just before eleven I stopped for brunch at a road-side restaurant and I pulled up in front of my house at about two o'clock. There was a message on the machine from Terry saying that she'd call me later that night and one from Chuck Harrison asking if I'd phone him. I rang the phone company and got the number of Blumenthal's company. The switchboard girl seemed confused when I told her who I wanted to speak to and then I was put through to a secretary who said she was very sorry but Mr Blumenthal wasn't with the company any more. I asked where he was working and there was an embarrassed silence and the girl said that actually Mr Blumenthal was dead. It was obvious from the way she'd said it that there was something she wasn't telling me so I told her I was attached to the LAPD and asked to speak the president of the company. He was a nice enough guy and once I'd told him who I was he was more than happy to tell me the circumstances surrounding the demise of Mr Matt Blumenthal. The detective had been murdered. He'd been found in an alley with his throat cut. My blood ran cold. I didn't ask for any more details because I didn't want to make waves, but I did ask him if he could tell me what case he had been working on. He said he'd have to get back to me with that information and he rang off. I telephoned Filbin in the precinct and luckily he was at his desk. I made polite conversation about a couple of cases then asked him if they'd managed to identify the body in the Ferriman case. Yeah, he said. The corpse was a private dick, he said. One Matt Blumenthal. I went and poured myself a vodka and tonic, a big one, and nursed it on the couch. Ten minutes later Blumenthal's boss called to say he'd been hired to track down one Lisa Sinopoli. The client, surprise-surprise, was Greig Turner.

My hand shook as I replaced the receiver. I tried to fit the facts into a coherent shape, some sort of pattern that I could deal with. Terry Ferriman had been discovered crouching over the body of a man who had been drained of blood. That man was Matt Blumenthal, a private detective. In Terry Ferriman's apartment was a photograph of a 1930s movie star, Greig Turner. Greig Turner had been married to a girl, Lisa Sinopoli, who was the spitting image of Terry. And he had hired Matt Blumenthal to track down Lisa Sinopoli, who must have been in her late eighties at the very least.

It was almost a perfect circle, yet it made no sense. I drained the glass and poured myself another vodka and after I'd drunk I went to the bathroom. I held the brush in my hand and pulled out the black and white hairs that were there. An idea was forming in my mind, an idea so weird that I didn't want to put it into words. I took the hairs to my desk and slid them into a brown envelope and than I called a friend of mine, a scientist at UCLA, and arranged to meet him in a bar later that evening.