The female officer looked at her for a long time.
"She was found in an old, worn out house outside the city."
Evy"s eyes had started to fill up with tears, and she remembered the day when she heard about Linda.
"In an old house outside the city. Just like my sister."
Her words had turned into a whisper, and she had to lean against the door frame. The male officer nodded and gave her his card.
"If you remember anything, please get in touch."
"But, wait. An overdose. I don"t understand."
"The coroner will write a report. We"ll have it in about a week. You"re welcome to call us."
"But an overdose...?"
"When was the last time you saw your mother? How did she look?
The words had hit Evy with a force she could never have imagined. The officer nodded at her, and she had closed the door very carefully behind them. Then she had leaned against the door frame and slowly fallen to the floor. There was no way she could stop her violent crying. It was dark before she had gotten up and walked through the dark living room and into the bedroom, where she had fallen down on the bed, exhausted. Her eyes had turned to the faded photograph in the silver frame beside the bed. Two girls in their best summer dresses sitting in a swing that"s painted bright yellow and red. Their faces full of courage for the future, adventure and security. Next to them is their mother. She smiles and waves at the photographer.
Evy opens her eyes and looks at the money in her lap. Then she picks up every bill and carefully folds it until she holds a bundle in her hands. She puts it on the bed and looks back at the night stand. The silver is shining in the sunlight, and the smiling faces make her shiver.
"Now I"ll never know who the photographer was."
She bites her lip, but feels the pain from the cut. Then she straightens herself and starts reading.
No one is like you when the night is long. Your body, our games, when your body...
"Oh, stop!"
The anger is growing inside her.
"You even found some s.a.d.i.s.tic pleasure in the fact that I didn"t like it."
Furious, she throws the letter away and gets out of bed. In the mirror, she sees how the robe falls down and reveals her one shoulder and breast and her naked stomach. She starts to shiver and awkwardly tears off the robe and runs over to the walk-in closet, tearing the door open.
"Who does he think he is? The exact same letter as every month!"
She grabs some underwear from a drawer, takes a t-shirt from a shelf and picks up her worn out jeans from the floor. But suddenly she stops moving, her lips are moving slowly and she reads.
"Dear Evy, it"s not a question of surviving. It"s a question of dying slowly, so things have time to change."
The letters are neat and beautifully made. She had found an artist to make the letters as beautiful as they deserved to be. The words are from the last note that Linda had put in her bag before she had left for school one Thursday. Evy had loved the little notes that Linda always put in her bag. It felt like Linda"s way of staying in touch with her. A sad smile fills her face. That note had scared her, but she never had the time to talk to her about it. On Sat.u.r.day, Linda had died in an abandoned house. Evy turns away, "or was she trying to tell me what was really going on...? Have I seen it all without accepting it? Or am I just blind?" Just a few days after Linda"s death, Evy had run into one of her friends in the street and had lost it. A police officer had approached them and Linda"s friend ran away. The only thing the friend had been able to say while Evy was shouting at her, was that it was the first time Linda had tried heroin. Later that day, Evy had realized how awful the friend had looked. Not only was it obvious that she had been crying, but she was just as skinny as Linda was and had the same dark rings under her eyes. "Dear Evy, it"s not a question of surviving. It"s a question of dying slowly, so things have time to change." She hears the words over and over and shakes her head.
"I really have to stop torturing myself."
She looks around in the small room and suddenly she understands. "This is where I"m Evy. This is my room!" She puts down the clothes on the chair in the corner and doesn"t return until she has taken a shower. She smiles as she slowly gets dressed. Then she ties back her long hair and puts her sungla.s.ses in the hair. She carefully closes the door to her walk-in closet and takes her bag.
"Now, where"s my credit card?"
She shrugs, gets her gold card, throws her bag on the floor and leaves the apartment.
Chapter 5.
Nathan is a polite man, so he sees Marc out, but all his strength had left him when he found out who Marc"s client was. Nathan sees the door close after him and slowly walks back to his desk. He falls down in the chair and flips it back so it lightly touches the window behind him. He listens but there"s no car leaving the drive way. After a while he gets up to see why, but stops when he sees Marc with a camera, the lens pointing directly at him. He gets angry, but stops himself when he looks up into the tree. He slowly looks at Marc and then at the branches higher up. The bird is grooming its feathers. Nathan snorts and walks over to pour himself another cup of coffee. The headache is coming back.
"Petra..."
His voice slowly fades.
"Oh, that"s right."
He leaves the office and returns with the entire gla.s.s of aspirins. "Whisky hangovers are the worst. Why didn"t I realize that? I could have opened a bottle of red wine instead... or not had any alcohol at all... and the cigars."
For a moment he feels regret, but that soon pa.s.ses. He gets back in the chair and swallows the pills with some lukewarm coffee. He slams down the cup on the table.
"Old coffee!"
Then he sees the envelope from Walter, Walter & Walter. He picks it up and flips back his chair so far it almost falls over. Trying to stop it, he bangs his hand against the table and the cut in his palm opens again when he hits the paper knife.
"Ouch! Ouch, ouch!"
He looks at is left hand where the blood is flowing steadily, dripping on the writing pad.
"A mistake a kid would make."
He pushes back the chair and quickly leaves the office. After a while, he returns with a white bandage on his hand. The writing pad on the desk is covered in blood. "Petra will have to get a new one tomorrow." He picks up the paper knife and pulls out the carefully folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and slowly wipes the blood from the blade. He holds it up to the light several times, letting the rays from the sun run over the blade. He drops the handkerchief and opens the letter. From the letter he pulls another envelope.
"That"s strange!"
He immediately recognizes the thick, structured paper. Once again, he picks up the paper knife and opens the next envelope. He takes out the letter before putting down the knife, pushes the chair forward a little, falls back in the chair and crosses his legs, letting both envelopes fall to the floor.
This moment reminds him of the small company where he had his first job. They had been two employees beside the boss, who had always put his legs up on the table when he had to read many pages. The boss had made it clear to him the risk he had taken in hiring him. He can still feel how that comment was like a slap in the face, and he has always felt that he was broken by the business even before he had even begun. His love-hate relationship to the business has never changed. He loves being in court, manipulating with the jury, holding them in the palm of his hand. But he deeply despises having to play by the rules. Nathan turns his attention to Stuart"s letter. He smiles peacefully. His body suddenly seems smaller and he relaxes. Many years before, when he had met Stuart, it was like meeting someone who understood him. Stuart had hated the rules and regulations of the trading business as well. After a night out, they agreed that they had to do things their own way. The next day, with huge hangovers, they both quit their jobs and started their own businesses. Soon, Stuart had found people willing to let him invest their money for them, and this meant work for Nathan as well. It was still with mixed feelings that Nathan looked back on that period. He hadn"t been young and money had been scarce. Stuart"s business had spread out into other areas, that Nathan wasn"t sure were exactly legal. He chose to look the other way. Stuart was smart enough, that the cases where he involved Nathan, were only verging on being illegal, and Nathan was able to make them legal by using the right arguments. Through Stuart"s connections, Nathan landed still more clients. He had to refuse some of the cases because they were so blatantly illegal that he could never win them. But the rumor was spreading that he never lost his cases, and he started getting clients from outside Stuart"s network, and that meant more legitimate cases. But Stuart"s business had always been the biggest part of Nathan"s turnover. Nathan waves his hand in the air a little, when the pain won"t go away.
He had always enjoyed Stuart"s extravagant handmade paper. He holds the paper up to the light and smiles when the light shines through the watermark. He sighs and starts reading.
"Nathan, When you get this letter, it will be the last thing you hear from me. You will receive it in an envelope from Walter, Walter & Walter. Had you been hoping to work with them, maybe even go up against them? But no, Nathan, you"ll do neither."
Nathans looks down at the floor. Then he stares at the envelope from Walter, Walter & Walter, before focusing on Stuart"s letter again.
"I know how much it has always bothered you that I also used them. But for some cases, I had to use a firm with a reputation of being honest. You were good at the other stuff, you were like a predator. You wanted to win at any cost. Very useful quality. Let"s see if the widow kills her next husband a small bet I think she does. The black widow. I can recommend her, though. Just don"t stay the night."
Nathan snorts and shakes the paper. He remembers telling Stuart about the case over a little too many whiskies. But that Stuart had sought the woman out just for the thrill of it! And that he even dares to mention it on paper!
"Was I just doing his dirty work?"
He almost throws the letter down on the writing pad, but stops when he sees the blood.
"Do I have blood on my hands?"
He looks at his hands, tracing the lines on the surface. "I"m getting too old. Too old to discover all this. I should have realized it a long time ago. Did everybody else in the business see it but me? I was doing Stuart"s dirty work." He slips his hand over his face, while the other hand is still holding on to the letter so hard it starts to crease.
"Nathan, there is one thing I have always envied you, and that"s Denize. Oh yes, lovely Denize. You loved her so much that you changed. It was even reflected in the cases you took. Did you know that I had to use some seedy law firm in a shabby alley to fix the case about the missing payments for the apartments by the waterfront? Well, I"m not sure how much law was used in the handling of that case. You told me there was nothing we could do, that it was my own fault, and that I would never get my money. That the case would go to court and that I would lose. But I got my money back, Nathan. Every penny, and with interest too."
Nathans is stunned, his eyes dart around on the lines before him.
"Right, Nathan, back to Denize. For me she was really the one that got away. First to James, who she left when she met you. But, to be honest, Nathan, she didn"t really get away. Before you married her, I went to see her. It was such a pathetic place that she had, far below your standards. I surprised her one evening when she was on her way home. She gladly got in to my car when I told her I wanted to talk to her about you. You had been so nice to introduce us, more than once, actually. She was so in love with you that she agreed to go with me to the apartment. You know, the apartment I"ve had all these years. Anyway, I told her you would be there.
Nathan starts curling up the heavy paper.
"At first she didn"t want to. I had to be very rough with her. But I think she enjoyed it in the end."
Nathan gets up with so much force that the chair falls over and breaks one of the old windows. He clearly remembers a period in the beginning of their relationship when Denize had pulled away from him. He had noticed some marks on her ankles and wrists that she had tried in vain to hide with makeup. He recognized the dark color of the marks. He had seen the same marks many times before on his clients. "Why did I never ask her about the marks?" Nathan walks back and forth before returning to the same place.
"I adored her!"
He stares blindly at the letter and has to smooth it out before he can continue reading.
"But still, she didn"t want anyone but you. Well, sometimes you have to admit defeat. But I never let her go completely. The threat of telling you that she had been unfaithful to you before you were even married, was enough to keep a psychological pressure on her. But that was all I could do, unfortunately. Too bad. "
"Oh, Denize, why didn"t you tell me?!"
"She never let me do anything else. I"m not sure you know this, but she got herself a gun. A nice little pearly one."
"Ha! The gun was a present from me. You didn"t know that!"
He sits down on the corner of his desk.
"I"ve always hated you for being the one Denize loved. Why never me?"
"I think that"s rather obvious."
Nathan"s voice is hard and full of contempt.
"Well, here"s another surprise for you. Denize has a daughter. I"m sure you didn"t know that. You didn"t even bother to do a background check on her before you married her. Strange that you have always been so sloppy with your private life, but never with your professional life. Well, enough about you. Denize"s daughter, Evy. Pretty little thing. I discovered her when she was nine."
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Nathan looks at the picture of the two girls in their summer dresses, smiling on the steps in front of the yellow house. Nathan shakes his head.
"I have a step daughter. A little piece of Denize."
"I made sure she got into the best schools, had the right friends, and was invited to the right parties. She blossomed and turned into a beautiful woman. You"ve even met her."
Nathan swallows. He breathes heavily, tapping the edge of the paper against the side of his hand.
"In fact, her sister"s death and her mother"s decline made things a lot easier for me than I could ever have imagined. Evy isn"t stupid, you know. She"s ambitious and wants the good life and is willing to pay a high price to get it. A perfect combination for me. I made sure she was at the party, and that I was there too. Beautiful woman, beautiful. It was a pleasure. I really enjoyed that evening, pulling her in little by little before I struck. Pure power. Power, Nathan. You know the feeling and you enjoy it too. No reason to lie about it."
Nathan crumbles up the letter and throws it away as if it burns his hand. He steps away from it and his breathing becomes more and more frantic. He shakes his head as he walks around his desk. His eyes never leave the balled up letter. Because of the thick carpet, it seems to hover over the floor. Nathan leans on his desk as he starts to feel dizzy. "I"m hyperventilating. I have to stop." He leans back, supporting himself on his arms. His head has fallen to his chest and his body is tense. He focuses on his breath, which gradually gets slower and returns to a rhythm almost close to normal. He stands up and notices how blood is seeping through the bandage on top of his hand. There"s a blood stain on the desk as well. He looks at the letter for a long time before finally and laboriously bending over to pick it up.
"Ok, Nathan, no more detours. Evy also put up a fight, you know. When she saw herself in the mirror. You know the big one in the bedroom."
Nathan makes a sound almost like a sob. He clearly remembers the mirror. A proud Stuart had shown him around in the apartment when he had bought it all those years ago. Stuart had gone into great detail, and Nathan had thought that his behavior was strange. There had been an underlying tone that he had never heard before. It was as if Stuart wanted Nathan to know every corner of the apartment. Nathan didn"t really care much about the place, but he had been politely interested and even made a joke about the size of the mirror and the fact that it was placed in the bedroom. Just a few months later, Stuart had invited him back to the apartment to show him his latest investment. That was what he called the woman in the apartment. Stuart had said that he needed to keep the cost of this investment down, so he needed a co-investor. When Nathan had realized what Stuart meant by that, he had politely declined the offer.
"But she stopped fighting it, and I didn"t have to be as rough with her as with Denize. Which was a shame, really. I had been picturing it for all those years, since she was nine. But, I guess you win some and lose some. I invited her to stay and paid for her. But only until she had gotten used to the good life, and it had become vital to her. Then came her big test, but you didn"t want to be part of that."
When he understands what the words mean, Nathan feels sick, and he puts his hand over his mouth. He can still feel how his cheeks are burning and sweat has started to form on his forehead.
"Once again, Denize ruined things for me. It would have been so right if you had been the one that made her what she is today: Paid for by men. Not just one man, but men, Nathan, men. My revenge over Denize. My revenge. But you ruined that part of it.
My revenge over you, Nathan, for taking Denize from me. How can I not want revenge? Here it is: I have left a letter with Walter, Walter & Walter with some of the cases you fixed for me. I have even said that it was you that fixed the case with the missing payments for the apartments by the waterfront. You know that Walter, Walter & Walter are honest people who will protect the legal system tooth and nail. I expect them to report you."
"Oh, and from now on Evy has to live for the small sum that you give her every month. Only she can"t, not with the life style she has thrown herself on the bed for all these years. She will probably start looking for a new play mate. And you turned her down at that party in the harbor over a sick Denize. Have all your desires left you after you met Denize? Anyway, with Evy you can still have Denize, or at least part of her. Think about that.
Have a nice life.
Stuart"
Nathan is in shock. He puts the letter down on the desk and walks over to the window, with his hands in his pockets. Marc"s car is gone, and Nathan has no idea when that has happened, or if Marc was really just taking pictures of the bird.
Chapter 6.
The front door closes with a bang. It"s dark when Evy is back in the living room, a room that has never felt like hers. The curtains and the furniture are much too heavy for a woman her age, and some of the furniture have clearly been there for a very long time. The curtains were already in the apartment when she moved in, and from the beginning they had seemed like they were only there to keep other people from looking in. The apartment has always seemed strange to her, as if it didn"t belong to her in any way. It"s just a place where she happens to be staying at the moment. She puts down the sungla.s.ses and the credit card on the coffee table and drops down in a chair. The chair is a little springy and she feels how she is being pushed up slightly before she settles into it. As her eyes trace the city"s skyline, she can see the horizon in the distance. The planes are lined up for landing in the airport, like pearls on a string. She smiles a strange smile. "How many times have I watched the planes, but I"ve never been in one myself. Ironic would be a nice way to put it."
The afternoon, which she had expected to spend with friends, had ended with an unpleasant surprise. She puts her hands behind her head and wonders if they are really her friends, considering the way they had treated her. She hadn"t told anyone what had happened. She knew that most of them knew Stuart through their families, but she had never as much as indicated what the nature of their relationship was. But today they seemed distant and they didn"t seem to care about anything she said at times they were even arrogant to her. She scratches her head with a finger. "Hmm, it actually started two weeks ago." She stops scratching. "Two weeks ago, how strange!" She pushes her head against the back of the chair. "But today it was downright degrading and embarra.s.sing at times."
She slowly gets up and walks into the kitchen where she removes the cork from a bottle of red wine. The sound makes her smile. She carefully puts down the long stemmed gla.s.s on the table and makes a little snorting sound.
"Winegla.s.ses are the only investment I have made in this apartment."
She fills the gla.s.s to the brim, and sits down in the chair again. She sighs when her mind registers the taste of red wine, and her breathing gets slower. She takes another large sip and closes her eyes. Last night, she had a new customer. James had recommended her to him. Actually, he had none of the same ideas and fantasies as Stuart or James, which came as a surprise to her. He was a nice, polite man who seemed to respect her. It was so overwhelming, that she had almost cried when she had let him out. No bruises that she had to try and hide with make up the next day, no pain after being beaten, no pictures in her head that would haunt her for days if she didn"t keep her mind busy or numbed it with something. She flicks the gla.s.s, and the fine sound makes her smile. She takes another sip before she leans forward and pushes the gla.s.s to the middle of the table where she can"t reach it from the chair. Not really focusing, she looks at the city lights and thinks about the man from last night.
"What are you doing, Evy?!"
She pulls her ear lobe as she leans forward. Then she picks up the gla.s.s and takes another big sip. She looks down into the gla.s.s, swings the wine around and takes another sip and then another. The gla.s.s is empty. Her breathing gets heavier and she gets up slowly, trying to forget about yesterday. With determined steps, she walks back into the kitchen and soon she is back at the window with a full gla.s.s. "They had seemed annoyed.... no, they had seemed like they didn"t care arrogant." She sits down, less careful this time, and the wine spills over and runs down the side of the gla.s.s before dripping from its foot. Evy watches the drops as they fall, shrugs and moves her legs to one side, so the wine spills onto the chair. She wipes the foot of the gla.s.s clean with her hand and then puts it down on her thigh. She smiles a little, "but what really got to me, was when Susan asked me how I was going to make a living now that Stuart is dead."
Her phone rings in the bedroom and makes her turn her head. She blinks before she gets up to answer it in time.