Fog Heart (37 page)

It was a game, Carrie thought. A nasty role-playing fantasy of sex and violence. Next: the woman half off the sofa, her arms dangling uselessly, Oliver sitting back on his heels. Next: the woman's face in close-up, swollen, cut and bruised, eyes rotated up. Throat slashed, ragged-edged, bloody. The woman was clearly dead. Decapitated, or all but. Not a game.

It was the ugliest photograph that Carrie had ever seen, an appalling image from life too real to abide, a ghastly intrusion that finally shattered for ever the order of things in her world. And the familiar male hand that held up the young woman's head by the hair was the hand of Carrie's husband. Her Oliver, in whose life she had chosen to root her own.

This charming man.

You'll spend the rest of your life trying to understand, she told herself, why you failed to understand.

Carrie dropped the photos to the floor. She never wanted to see them again. But she needed to see Oliver. She had no words for him, for what he had become, but she had to face him one last time. Look him in the eye, and he will know. The fear inside Carrie vanished abruptly, obliterated by the same scorching winds that swept away all of her doubt and uncertainty.

She moved along the wall. She was starting to get a better sense of the loft's absurd geography. The music was much louder now, and Carrie finally got an idea of where it was coming from. The low mechanical roar in the background was also stronger, but it provided no directional focus.

The temperature went up sharply as Carrie came round a high partition and faced a bank of industrial ovens, all currently in use. Sweat broke out on her forehead and face, and she was about to leave that area quickly when she saw some personal items lying on the floor in a small heap.

A handbag, a crumpled airline ticket, a UK passport. Roz. Carrie knew it even before she picked up the passport and saw the name, the photograph inside. She felt a tremendous sadness, then anger – and not just at Oliver. If Roz and Oona knew the truth about him, why hadn't they told her?

But would she have believed them? Probably not. It was too great a leap, too soon. Carrie remembered Oona telling her that she could help in the process, but Carrie would have to find her own way to the truth. And she had, at last, but the abysmal squalor and horror of that truth was no consolation.

The music roared as Carrie got closer to it. She continued to sweat freely in the awful heat, and the stench in the air was now almost unbearable. Not far from the ovens she found a series of troughs and vats made out of thick, heavy-duty plastic. Numerous wooden rods lay across the top of some of these containers, and several thin strips of cloth dangled from each, soaking in murky liquids. Oliver had mentioned acid baths and rinses, Carrie remembered. The smell was at its foulest here and it stung her eyes and throat.

Carrie found Oliver nearby, in a zinc trough. He was naked and his features were blurred. The fumes burned in her nose. Bits of his flesh floated in the liquid, and Carrie realized he was slowly dissolving in some kind of acid. The tears came, and she clamped a hand over her mouth as her body shook. But was she crying for Oliver or herself? She had lost him a long time ago, she now understood. It stopped after a while, the stifled sobbing, and she felt very still and calm. She felt cold to the bone.

She became aware of the music again, pulsing through the hot and bitter air all around her. Marthe. It didn't matter whether Oliver had died at the hands of Roz or Marthe – Marthe was still there, somewhere, and extremely dangerous. Now all Carrie wanted was to get away from that place and find the police.

But Marthe was just a few yards away, sitting at a workbench covered with hand tools and personal items. Carrie was trying to circle back to the door when she spotted her. She knew it had to be Marthe. Dark hair wildly teased and snarled, a leather apron. She was staring at her face in a small makeup mirror that sat on the workbench. Carrie watched for a moment as Marthe held a thin object – perhaps a carpenter's nail or a needle – with pliers and heated it with a cigarette lighter. Then she rubbed a dab of cream on her right cheek, just below the eye, and carefully pressed the hot metal across her flesh. She gave a short squawk that was all but lost in the relentless music. Her hand didn't waver, and when she was satisfied she put down the pliers and splashed her cheek with liquid from a glass. She looked quite pleased with herself.

Carrie shrank back, feeling ill again. She started to make her way silently through the infernal mess, using the ceiling and walls as a rough guide. She knew the general area where the door was – way back at the other end.

She went a short distance and then found a narrow path that snaked between racks and steel shelves. Before stepping into the aisle Carrie glanced back down it in the direction of where she'd seen Marthe – but Marthe was standing right there.

She grabbed Carrie by the hair and yanked her violently into the passageway. She clapped her hands over Carrie's ears with such force that her head rang and she lost her equilibrium. She seemed to be floundering in thick air. A kind of happy growling sound came from Marthe as she kicked Carrie's feet out from under her, locked an arm under her throat and dragged her slowly towards the workbench area.

Carrie's vision was a confused swirl and she had difficulty breathing. She tried to grab something, but her hand slapped uselessly against racks and shelves. She managed to dig in one heel briefly and push up with her leg, knocking Marthe off balance – but the other woman steadied herself at once and tightened her clamp on Carrie's throat.

Carrie got hold of the edge of a tub, fingers dipping into liquid that burned sharply. Acid. But then it was too late to try splashing it at Marthe, who tugged her into the small open area by the workbench. She slammed Carrie's ears again, and in a shower of swarming images Carrie saw the brown leather apron swim closer to her face, and then Marthe's face zoom in, antic-eyed with glee, three horizontal scar lines on one cheek and the fresh burn wound on the other. Behind the bench, a clump of tall floor fans droned and rotated like giant motorized insect heads.

Marthe hesitated for a couple of seconds, as if deciding to take her time and enjoy this. Calmly she ripped Carrie's blouse and then started to slap her about the face, a sudden flurry meant to keep her off balance more than to hurt her. Carrie took a wobbly step back, grabbed things blindly from the workbench and flung them at Marthe.

But Marthe was in her face again, unbothered, choking Carrie with both hands. There was a smile of casual delight in Marthe's eyes and her mouth moved silently to some unknown language as she bent Carrie backwards, pinning her spine against the hard edge of the workbench. She eased her grip just long enough to let Carrie get a breath, slapped her several more times, and then went back to the slow strangulation.

Carrie knew dimly that she was being used as a toy. Marthe was a veteran at this, and had no fear. It would be so easy to give in and let her life be ended now. I've seen your world. Some world. Keep it. Maybe I'll come back as a ghost to haunt this woman – but no, people like Marthe and Oliver are not haunted by the dead; they're haunted by the living.

Carrie got the plastic mirror in her hand and banged Marthe on the side of the head with it a couple of times. It was enough to loosen her grip slightly – though she smiled, as if amused at the act of resistance. Carrie turned her head, saw something she thought was a gun, fumbled it into her hand and shoved it up into Marthe's face as she leaned forward again. Marthe knocked it to the side with a jerk of her head.

Carrie's blurred vision was quickly disappearing altogether. She rammed the heavy gun at Marthe's head once more, and rapidly pulled the trigger several times.

‘Oooooh…'

Click, click, click, click – nothing, empty.

But Marthe exhaled loudly, and her hands went slack. Carrie blinked and wiped at her eyes until she could see clearly. Then she discovered that she was squeezing the trigger of a soldering gun. The red-hot element had slid easily past Marthe's eyeball, straight on into her brain.

A faint sizzle, a curl of smoke.

Horrified, Carrie screamed. She dropped the soldering gun and staggered back several paces. Marthe tottered vacantly for a few moments, her mouth and hands still moving slightly. Then she came to a stop, face turned to her chest. Marthe's stalled body sagged to the floor and did not move again.

The gummy air reeked. The fans droned. The music raced and roared. The heat was dissolving her.

Carrie turned and stumbled away.

25

The affair with Heather ended quietly not long after Charley got back to New Haven. He'd called her once from Wisconsin, when he was a little tipsy and very miserable in his motel room on the eve of Jan's funeral. At the wake earlier her relatives had been pretty cool to him. Some, no doubt, believed that Charley should be in jail, charged with murder. It was probably not the best time to phone Heather, but he did. She was careful to say all the right things. So terrible about your wife, it must have been awful, hope you're all right, and so on. Yes, you can call when you get back to New Haven.

Which he did, though it took him a few days. He sat around the apartment, listened to Mahler and Bruckner, sorted papers and some of Jan's possessions, and finally he cleaned the place in a fit of manic energy. Then he slept for thirteen hours and awoke feeling weak and groggy. The world did not look any better to him. It was still his life, and he was still in it.

Heather was just as vague in the second call. She offered a few uplifting platitudes, an all-purpose exhortation or two, and a foggy murmur of indecision when he suggested a rendezvous. She wouldn't say yes and she wouldn't say no. She did say maybe, but when the appointed hour came she failed to appear at Gene's Tap. Probably not the best choice of venue.

Not much of a surprise, really. He was, after all, somebody whose wife had died of a slit throat while alone with him, a fact that was bound to have a cautionary effect on other women. Funny thing: the
New Haven Register
and the local TV news programmes gave only brief and quite restrained coverage of Jan's death. Few of the grim details were made public, although word leaked out by way of cops and newsmen in the know.

The police had certainly pegged him as a murderer, at least for the first twenty-four hours. That, undoubtedly, had been the second or third worst day of his life. The questions, the insinuations, and then the open accusations. Charley bore up very well under it all, he thought. He could have called a lawyer and shut up, but that would only make things look worse. So he answered all their questions patiently, denied guilt heatedly and finally persuaded them when he took and passed a polygraph test. The fingerprints on the knife were Jan's alone, which also helped. The police let him go – reluctantly.

The Brownes had been helpful and supportive, though Malcolm did seem a tad relieved when Charley dropped the summer-school course he had been about to start teaching. Perfectly understandable, a wise move, you need time to heal, to accept your loss and to arrive at closure. Ah yes, good old closure. But it was true that, at odd moments now, Charley felt himself unburdened. That whole phase of his life was over. It was time to pack up and move on, start another life in a new place. Whether you want to or not. Moving on. It's the American way, bud.

He and Jan had done such a thorough banjaxing of their lives that deep and genuine sorrow was now somewhat difficult to dig up within himself. What Charley felt was a kind of detached regret. The last twenty years had been a bad idea in which they had both persisted for far too long. Not entirely her fault, not entirely his, but theirs. And now Charley had no particular desire to trade places with Jan, but part of him, perhaps, envied her in some small way for getting out of it.

Charley crossed the Old Campus and the city green. He ought to make the move to Hamilton soon, take the time to settle in and find his bearings. He could spend the first semester writing his paper on Dunsany and Beckett. He'd also been thinking about one on Dunsany and Calvino – fantasy literature in what Iris Murdoch called the ‘crystalline' mode. Clever and sound ideas. He could earn liquor and cigar money by tutoring a few hours a week.

The apartment was pleasantly cool, but stale. Charley got a tumbler and poured some Powers. He put on his beloved Bax, three early tone poems, and settled in his armchair. Great music, fine whiskey, a smoke – the wee pleasures that help us abide.

Charley had barely lit the Honduran cigar when Oona appeared in the archway by the front hall, one hand clamped on the wall as if to steady herself. She had a duffel bag, and let it drop to the floor. She gave him a weak smile. Charley was astonished to see her there, but then felt a swirl of anger gathering within his chest.

‘What do you want?'

‘I need help.'

‘Try the Connecticut Mental Health Center.'

Oona looked around, eyes widening. ‘Your wife.'

‘What about her?' Charley said in a growl.

Oona was shocked. ‘Oh, my God, she's dead.'

‘Thank you, Psychic News Network.'

‘I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.'

‘A mass card in the mail would have done.'

‘So's Roz.'

‘What?'

‘Dead.'

‘Roz is dead, is she?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, that trumps me.'

‘I mean it, Charley.'

‘Oh, sure. And I suppose I'm next.'

‘No.' Oona sagged a little. ‘I am.'

‘If you're trying to cheer me up, that's a good start.'

‘You're the one. I told you.'

‘What one?'

‘I always thought it would be you.'

‘What are you talking about?'

Oona didn't answer. She continued to look around the room, her eyes brightly fearful, as if the white ceiling and grey walls were closing in on her. She sagged a little more, her eyes fell shut, and then Oona slumped to the floor. Thin streams of blood were trickling from her mouth and nose when Charley stepped past her to close the apartment door.