Heathen/Nemesis

Fifteen

He used to call it The Cell.

The room where he imprisoned himself for six hours a day, five days a week. The room where Christopher Ward sat, with only his thoughts for company, pounding away at a typewriter until a new book was completed.

The silence in the room was something Donna had always found unsettling. Only the sound of the water in the radiators broke the oppressive stillness. One day, jokingly, she had said to him that he had an easy job, just sitting behind a desk alone all day. He had locked Donna in there behind the typewriter. After just ten minutes she had called to him to let her out. Laughing, he had agreed.

Laughing.

She had almost forgotten what the sound was like. At times she wondered if she would ever hear such joyous noise again. Certainly not now, seated in The Cell, peering round her at the notes scattered over the desk, at the books and the files.

He had always kept his work private. What went on inside his head was his concern, he’d once told her. And what went on inside his office was his concern, too. He hadn’t excluded her through any act of antagonism; he preferred to keep his work and his life with her separate. She had asked him about his methods of working, about how each of his books was progressing; she’d even been allowed to read portions of them before they were published. But as a rule Ward kept his work to himself. What little else she discovered was by reading interviews with him in newspapers or by hearing him on radio, watching him on television.

And now, as she sat amongst the remnants of his work, she felt a heavy sadness at this exclusion. Now it was too late for him to tell her, she felt she wanted to know every single stage of the processes involved in turning an idea into a finished book. But she knew it could never be.

She began by searching his attaché case, going through the papers. She needed the insurance policies, for instance.

She wondered why she felt as if she were intruding in the small room. It was as if she had no right to be in here, with the night closed tightly around the house like a tenebrous glove. Only the dull glow from the desk light illuminated the blackness.

Donna felt that chill she had come to know only too well over the last few days.

She found what she sought and pulled it clear of the case.

The photos came loose with it.

They fluttered into the air and then fell to the floor. Half a dozen of them.

Donna picked them up.

There was a publicity shot of Chris, unsmiling. His sinister face, he called it. She smiled thinly as she gathered the other photos, turning the next one over.

Chris again.

With other men.

She searched their faces but didn’t recognise any of them. They were sitting at a large table, two younger men, no older than Chris, then her husband, then an older man. Very much older. She squinted at the picture but could not make out his features. It was as if that particular part of the photo were blurred.

It was the same with the next man.

Very old again and, once more, the image was blurred.

Not so with the last of the group, a young man in his early thirties, handsome but with cruel eyes and short dark hair. She could feel those eyes boring into her as she studied the picture.

The next one was the same, except that Chris was in the centre this time.

And again she saw those two blurred images. As she looked from one to the other she realized that it was just the faces that were blurred; the rest of the image was as sharp as a knife.

No one in the photo was smiling. Chris and the other five looked impassively into the camera. She assumed that was what the two older men were doing, too, just looking at the camera. She knew they were old from the wrinkles on their hands; there were deep folds of skin around the knuckles and the base of the thumb. Their clothes looked old, too. Almost archaic, in fact.

What did stand out with sharp clarity was something on their hands.

Both the blurred figures wore rings on their left index fingers, large heavy gold signet rings.

She peered closer at them, aware that there was a symbol of some kind at their centre, but no matter how closely she looked she could not make it out.

Donna sat back on her haunches, breathing heavily.

Then she picked up his diary, flicking through it.

JANUARY 11th: Phone Martin.

JANUARY 15th: Confirm interview for next week.

JANUARY 17th: Shooting - 7.00-9.00.

The entries were mostly uninspiring, some scribbled in pencil, others in pen.

FEBRUARY 5th: Check train times. She read on.

FEBRUARY 9th: Ring S.

Donna gritted her teeth and flicked back and forth through the diary. There were numerous entries of a similar nature. Sometimes just the initial. Others just bore the initial D.

Well, it didn’t refer to Donna, that’s for sure.

Another mistress?

Donna flicked to the back of the diary, to the addresses, and ran her index finger down the list. Through the hotels and restaurants, the business addresses, the private addresses, the ...

SUZANNE REGAN.

Donna read the address, then reached for a pen and scribbled it down on a piece of paper.

SUZANNE REGAN,

23 LOCKWOOD DRIVE,

NOTTING HILL GATE,

LONDON W2 She got to her feet, the piece of paper gripped in her fist.