Derek Williams was tired.
He’d shown up tonight because of a tip-off about Luis Rodriguez. The last time he’d been about to meet Rodriguez he’d been kidnapped, beaten and summarily deported. More than a decade had passed, but Williams had not forgotten about Charlotte Clancy and the mysterious American he was convinced Rodriguez had been protecting. He remembered his questions as if it were yesterday and he’d hoped tonight, he might finally have a chance to ask them, for Charlie’s sake.
But it wasn’t to be. Once again the bastard had slipped through his fingers, pulling a last-minute no-show. Thankfully, there were plenty of other guests here to occupy Williams’ attention. Exhausted as he was, it wasn’t long before the connections started firing in his brain, the synapses going off like fireworks, one after another.
Nikki was here, and as Haddon Defoe’s guest, no less. Williams hadn’t expected that. He still wasn’t sure what to make of his interview with Dr Defoe, or whether he believed his protestations of innocence about Doug Roberts’ mistress and her mysterious past. Or rather, her lack of a past. Increasingly, Williams was coming to the conclusion that ‘Lenka Gordievski’ was some sort of alias or alter ego. That the woman who had died in a ball of fire next to her lover, Nikki’s husband, had begun her life as somebody else. Witness protection was certainly a possibility. But until he knew more, Williams decided he would keep silent. Nikki needed answers, not more questions, and right now that was all Williams had.
Williams’ gaze shifted from Haddon and Nikki across to Rodriguez’s estranged wife, Anne, the violinist with whom his client was obviously besotted. And less than twenty feet from where she stood were Brandon Grolsch’s parents.
Williams now knew that Brandon was the eponymous ‘zombie’ so beloved of internet conspiracy theorists – the police had found his DNA on the bodies, or rather they’d found rotting cells from his body on Lisa Flannagan’s, which was certainly creepy and bizarre if it was true. Maybe the serial killer was one of those trophy-keeping types who held on to fingernails and locks of hair and jewelry? Maybe he had Brandon’s corpse floating somewhere in a vat of formaldehyde?
Surely it was odd that his folks were here tonight, sitting two tables away from Lisa Flannagan’s former lover Willie Baden and his wife Valentina, a frozen-faced fossil of a woman, dripping in more diamonds than a gangster’s whore. Earlier Williams had watched Valentina Baden and Fran Grolsch briefly acknowledge one another, exchanging the frosty nod of former friends. It was as if some mystery host had invited the entire cast of characters from the Zombie Killings files, right down to the moronic duo Johnson and Goodman, surely the Laurel and Hardy of the LAPD Homicide Division.
Right on cue, Detective Goodman popped up behind Williams like the ghost of Christmas past.
‘Hello, Derek.’
Williams jumped.
‘I would ask what you’re doing here. But you wouldn’t tell me the truth, would you?’
Suave, polite and very obviously educated, not to mention in perfect shape, Goodman wore the innately smug expression of a man who can’t help but be aware of his own superiority over another. Williams, being that other, bristled.
‘That’s right, I wouldn’t. Any more than you and Chubby Checker over there would tell me what brings you to a fancy party like this one. I’m pretty sure they’re not serving donuts, you know.’
‘Right.’ Goodman’s smile didn’t waver. ‘The only difference being that we’re investigating officers on a double murder case, doing our jobs. Jobs that you tried and failed to get for yourself – how many times was it now? I forget. But the point is, we’re working while you’re … what’s the word I’m looking for? That’s it.’ Goodman clicked his fingers patronizingly. ‘Trespassing. I’m assuming you don’t have an actual invitation you can show me?’
Williams bit his lip. Boy, would he love to smash his fist into Detective Goodman’s perfect features, to watch his straight white teeth fly out of his self-satisfied mouth like gleaming white bullets in a shower of blood.
‘Oh, I’ve got something I can show you, pretty boy,’ he replied menacingly. ‘You wanna take this outside?’
Goodman raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Aren’t I?’ snapped Williams. ‘How’s it going with Nikki, by the way? A little bird told me she still won’t sleep with you. That’s gotta hurt.’
‘And when was the last time a woman slept with you, Derek?’ Goodman shot back. ‘Without you having to pay her, I mean.’
‘Unlike you, I don’t have sex on the brain,’ Williams replied coolly. ‘Especially not with Nikki. I’m actually trying to help the lady. Maybe that’s why she trusts me, tells me things she wouldn’t dream of sharing with you and shit-for-brains over there.’ He nodded towards Johnson, who had unhelpfully chosen that moment to start picking his nose.
For the briefest of moments, Williams was rewarded with the sight of Lou Goodman losing his legendary cool. His olive skin flushed an ugly red and his nostrils flared. ‘Get out of here, Williams,’ he snapped. ‘Before I have you arrested.’
A mocking ‘Arrested for what?’ hung on Derek Williams’ lips but he thought better of saying it. It was important to pick one’s battles, and something told him there would be plenty of those ahead with Goodman and Johnson.
‘I’ll see you around, Detective.’
‘Not if I see you first.’
Picking up his jacket, Williams made his shambolic way towards the exit. As he left, the first strains of Anne Bateman’s haunting violin solo began echoing around the ballroom.
Sitting at her table, Nikki’s befuddled senses jolted back to life as the first notes of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending filled the air, stunning the room into an awestruck hush. There was Anne up on the stage, her eyes closed, a tiny, transfixed figure in black, her bow moving back and forth as if independent from her body. But for once it wasn’t Anne who was mesmerizing Nikki, but the music itself and the overwhelming nostalgia it provoked. Doug had loved this piece. He and Nikki had listened to it countless times, making Sunday morning pancakes, in the car on one of their long drives up the coast. In bed. On their honeymoon …
All of a sudden, emotion overwhelmed her. With an awful, embarrassing noise, like a sort of deep, desperate gasp, she leaned forward over the table, putting her head in her hands.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’ The charming neuroscientist put a concerned hand on Nikki’s shaking shoulder. ‘Would you like to get some air?’
Nikki shook her head, blinded by tears. In recent months she’d somehow managed to keep her grief for Doug in check, to file it under ‘pending’ while she tried to make sense of the terrible, terrifying events spiraling around her. But now, thanks to Anne’s exquisite playing, Pandora’s box had been unlocked. There was no way back now, no way to stop the tears and the shaking and the awful, visceral pain ripping her in two, twisting in her gut like a dagger.
‘It’s OK, Professor Jameson.’ Haddon Defoe’s voice, deep and resonant and strong, rang in Nikki’s ears. ‘I’ve got this.’