Authors: Harold Robbins
“Did you talk to your husband about your feelings of wanting to kill yourself?”
“I told him how I felt. His contribution to my mental health was to lecture me on how I have to get control of myself. I bawled like a baby that morning and he asked that same question again: ‘Oh, what’s the matter now?’ I told him I didn’t want to live. He said I was crying wolf again and went to dress for his ride. I stood at the top of stairs and then … then a darkness washed over me and I fell down the stairs.”
“Can we say you fainted?”
“No, it would be a lie. I was distraught, confused, but I was conscious when I went down the stairs.”
“Were there any other, uh, incidents?”
“You mean did I try to kill myself? No, I didn’t go that far, but I did try to hurt myself. Did they tell you about the glass cabinet?”
Marlowe shook her head.
“I threw myself into it, into the glass.”
“You threw yourself into glass. Were you hurt?”
“Not seriously, just cut a bit. And then there was the penknife.”
I had been keeping my voice level, but I could feel myself slipping now. A tremble had come into my voice.
I looked away, ashamed. “I took his penknife and cut my legs.” I gasped for breath. “He just watched, just watched as I cut my legs and the blood ran down. Then he went out to play polo.”
The shock on her face turned my stomach. She didn’t understand, she was strong, she had never been to that dark place where there was no hope. I felt so stupid, so utterly worthless. My lunch expanded in my stomach and moved into my arms and legs, bloating them. I staggered away, hoping to get to the loo before my lunch made its second journey in my throat.
Soho
Dutton got out of a taxi and rang an apartment bell. He identified himself when the query came over the speaker and said, “Tell Lady Grey I’m here.”
She came out ten minutes later, a sexy woman, perhaps in her thirties, dressed provocatively, too much breast showing, too much leg—thigh—showing, whorish-red lipstick sparkling with glitter, all perfect for a night out on the town.
“Get your tush back upstairs, Henry,” Dutton told Lady Grey. “Get a coat to put over what little there is of your dress.”
“You told me to dress sexy.”
“I said sexy, not lewd. I want to get into a hotel room, not a jail cell. They’re not going to let us into a respectable hotel with your boobs hanging out and your dress up to your … whatever it is you have under that dress. Do you still have a bat and balls, or did they get chopped when you got the boob job?”
“You’re so coarse.” Lady Grey shook a finger in his face. “You promised me a full-page spread in
Burn
for my services. I’m playing the new La Cage show. I need coverage.”
“Would I lie to you?” Dutton was happy the transvestite didn’t think too much about the question as Lady Grey went back up to get a coat.
He checked his watch as the taxi dropped them off in front of Marlowe’s hotel. The news conference the princess’s defense team was holding was scheduled to take place in an hour. Add a half hour for the conference and another half hour for the American lawyer to bail out and get back to the hotel, and that gave him at least two hours.
Plenty of time for a leisurely search of her room.
“Mr. and Mrs. John Grey,” Dutton told the check-in clerk.
“Lord and Lady Grey,” Henry said.
“Welcome to our hotel, Lady Grey.”
Lady Grey gave the clerk a grin and lewdly licked her lip. Dutton was tempted to stick the pen he was using to sign with in her eye.
“We want Mike the Bellman to show us up to our room.”
“Mike has been sent on an errand for a guest. We can have one of our other bellmen take you up.”
“We’ll wait for Mike. When will he be back?”
“Sir, we—”
“We’ll wait for Mike. It’s an old superstition I have.”
“We came here on our honeymoon,” Lady Grey interjected. Her tone and expression left no doubt that the honeymoon had been a threesome and Mike had been the third.
“When will Mike be back?” Dutton snapped.
“In about an hour.”
“We’ll wait in the lounge.”
He grabbed his “wife” by the arm and marched her toward the lounge, checking his watch on the way. An hour’s wait still left him plenty of time.
Mike the Bellman had provided tidbits about the extracurricular activities of celebrities and government bigwigs over the years. Permitting Dutton to use a hotel master key to get into the American attorney’s room was beyond the realm of what Mike would do for money. But Dutton had learned long ago that what people wouldn’t do for money, they would for sex. And Mike had a special prurient interest that Lady Grey could satisfy.
* * *
A
N HOUR AND FIFTEEN
minutes later, Dutton left Mike and Lady Grey alone to pursue whatever piqued their interest, with Mike’s pants coming down even before Dutton reached the door.
He entered Marlowe’s room, took one look around, and shook his head with admiration. The American attorney was no fool—she had a rented safe in the room. It was too big to carry away and would take serious explosives to blow it open. No snoopy reporter was going to stick his nose into her files. However, her notebook computer was on the room desk. A security chain from the computer to the desk kept one from walking off with the computer without a bolt cutter. But not from using it.
“Should have put your computer in the safe,” he told the absent Marlowe.
He opened the computer and turned it on. It stopped booting up as a menu came on that demanded a password.
“Son-of-a-bitch.” That was why she didn’t bother putting it in the safe. That might stop the maid from snooping, and even put the skids under your average reporter, but
Burn
reporters were a special breed of felon.
He called the office and got the tech on the line whose payroll description was computer maintenance but who spent a good portion of his time hacking into other people’s computers for the tabloid.
“Cohn the Barbarian said you’d been fired,” Hacker told Dutton.
“Not a bit of it! That’s a cover story, lad, Cohn got me working undercover on something bigger than the royal killing.”
“There’s nothing bigger than that.”
“Help me crack the code for this computer and you’ll have your place in history.”
Tower of London
Philip Hall was waiting with the limo to take Marlowe to the news conference to be held outside Trent’s office when she came out of her meeting with the princess. She got into the back and stared straight ahead as the limo made its way out of the tower compound.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes—no. I’m disturbed about my meeting with the princess. I’m having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees.” She didn’t want to discuss it, didn’t want him to know that the princess had become emotional and rushed out of the room. A few minutes later a stone-faced servant told her that the princess would be indisposed for the rest of the day.
“Anything I can help with?”
“I’m afraid I’m a lost cause at the moment. It’s the time that bothers me, it all happened so quickly. She’s chosen as the bride for the prince, they’re engaged, married, she’s pregnant and throwing herself down stairs and into glass cases, all in a very short period of time, only about six months from the stunning wedding until the first attempt on her own life. People don’t usually descend to hell that quickly.”
“Unless they were already there at the beginning.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Did she bring a lot of emotional baggage into the marriage?”
He shrugged. “How else do you explain how we go from A to Z in less time than it takes most married people to get to B or C?”
“Maybe he just pushed her harder, and maybe she was just a more vulnerable victim.”
“Which is it?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that I’m not ready for a news conference. Drop me off at my hotel.”
“Anthony will—”
“Be delighted. He and that fossil Lord Bluenose will get along fine with the newspeople. They’d prefer I wasn’t there, anyway.”
She smiled sourly at Hall. “As far as that goes, I’m sure they’d prefer I fell off the end of the earth.”
“It’s not working!” Dutton gave the little computer a hit with the phone receiver just in case that might do it. He put the phone back to his ear as Hacker spoke.
“You have to bring it in, it will take hours to break into it, she isn’t using the manufacturer’s code program, she’s got something custom.”
“I can’t bring it in, it’s chained.”
“Break the chain.”
“With my teeth?”
He hung up and thought fast. Maybe he could get Mike the Bellman to borrow a plumber’s tool that cuts pipe. He checked his watch—he’d killed another twenty minutes, but was sure he still had another half hour, yet there was little chance of getting a pipe cutter in that time—he didn’t even know if there was one in the hotel. He’d have to find Mike, too—the assignation with Lady Grey would be over and the transvestite on her way back to theaterland. And he’d have to figure out a way to convince the bellman to risk his job again, only this time just for filthy lucre.
The security chain was held together by a simple key lock. He grabbed a letter opener and started working on the lock. His phone rang.
“She’s on her way up!”
“What!”
“I saw her get in the elevator a minute ago, but the manager called me over and asked—”
Dutton didn’t wait to find out what the manager had asked. He knocked over the desk chair as he shot up and raced for the room door. He heard the lock click before he reached it. Panicked, he pressed himself against the wall where the door would cover him as it opened.
Marlowe stepped in and swung the door closed behind her. She saw her computer open and on. “What the—”
He grabbed her from behind, putting his hand over her mouth, clutching her around the waist with the other hand. She struggled and he exclaimed, “Stop! I won’t hurt you!”
She didn’t stop, but back-kicked his shin. He howled and loosened his grip enough for her to twist out of his grasp. She let out the start of a scream before he threw himself at her, clutching at her mouth as he forced her toward the bed and lay atop her.
“Stop! I’m a reporter!” He glared down at her. “Stop, damn it.”
She stopped struggling. He had one hand on her mouth and another on her breast, holding her down.
“Now, look, I’ll let you go if you promise not to scream. You promise?”
She nodded.
“I’m serious, damn it. I’m a reporter, not a rapist.”
She nodded.
He let her go. She jerked up and butted him in the nose with her forehead. He staggered back, holding his face, and she reared back on the bed and kicked him in the groin.
He screamed and ran from the room, wounded and in pain.
She locked the door behind her and called the police.
“I’m well aware of the perversions of this man,” Inspector Bram Archer told Marlowe. “He is known to have sex with the dead.”
Behind him, Sergeant Lois Kramer rolled her eyes.
The three of them were standing in Marlowe’s room.
“Does he kill them first?” Marlowe asked.
“That’s under investigation.”
More eye-rolling.
“I have a special interest in this subject, that’s why I was called when the report came in that he had attacked you.” He pulled a picture out of a leather folder. “Is this the man who attacked you?”
“That’s him.” She hesitated, then said, “I don’t know if you police people here do it the same as back in the States, but I’m used to a photo lineup where witnesses get a six-pack, six pictures of suspects. It usually isn’t legal if the witness is only shown one.” She smiled. “I’m a criminal defense lawyer.”
“Oh, we have the same procedure.” Archer pulled out five more pictures. “Recognize any of these?”
“Uh, yeah, all six are of this man Dutton.”
Lois Kramer was standing behind Archer. She caught Marlowe’s eye and shrugged.
Archer said, “Sergeant Kramer will take down your statement. I’m going to question the hotel staff. There was a lapse in security somewhere, for this maniac to have gotten into your room.”
After he was gone, Marlowe said, “I’ve never seen a photo six pack with six pictures of the same suspect.”
“Neither have I. You have to excuse Archer, he’s getting close to retirement, his wife is divorcing him rather than face having him around the house twenty-four/seven, and Dutton cost him a promotion that reduces his pension. It seems to have all come and dropped on his head. He’s not been himself.”
“Who is this Dutton character?”
“He works for
Burn,
the tabloid—it’s the most outrageous paper in the city. Actually, I think he’s freelance.”
“Does he really sleep with the dead?”
“Actually, he said I was the last dead body he gave a poke to.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to burn his ass for that one, but Archer’s gone around the bend, focusing on Dutton as the cause of all his problems. Dutton’s a first-class bastard, not above a little breaking and entering for a story, but there’s nothing kooky about his sexual appetites. He can still come three times in a night, not bad for a chap past the four-oh.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Marlowe murmured.
“At one time Dutton was a top reporter, the real kind, an investigative journalist who got a prize for bringing down the government when he uncovered the fact that they were sitting on another one of those MI6 double-agent scandals.”
“How’d he go from bringing down governments to peeking through keyholes for a tabloid?”
“He wrote a story that got his girlfriend killed. Shit happens, doesn’t it?” Sergeant Kramer grinned. “I heard that one in a movie.”
* * *
S
HE HAD JUST GOTTEN
rid of the police when the phone rang.
“Yes.”
“Why did you call the police?”
She took the receiver away from her ear and stared at it for a moment before putting it back.