Instantly the associations rose for him, ones that were both warm and worrying.
She wasn’t Emily. She could pretend to be, though. If he wanted.
“I’m just like the woman in the movie, aren’t I? I can be anything you like. That’s what I do.”
He felt uneasy; he wondered whether it was time to leave, whether that was even possible.
“Is that what you’d like, Nic? Would it make things easier?”
“I want you to be you.”
She threw the false hair onto the table, brusquely, as if she hated the things. “That’s very noble. What if I don’t know who I am?”
“Then it’s time to find out.”
“Doing what? Commercials? Too cheap. Theatre? I’m not good enough. Get them to revive L’Amour L.A. so I can stare into the camera one more time and say, ‘But ’oo can blame Françoise?’ ”
Her eyes were glassy. This was a conversation she both needed and feared. “Or become one more suburban housewife who used to be something. Getting pointed at in supermarkets while I buy the diapers. Getting pitied. I don’t think so.”
“Doing whatever you want.”
She took a deep breath, looked him in the eye, and said, “The only thing I want right now is you. I’ve wanted that ever since the moment I saw you in the park, Nic, looking lost and so sad, not knowing who the hell I was and still wanting to help me, protect me, in spite of all that pain you had inside. That’s never happened before. Something so selfless. Not anything like it. And I’ve seen them all, Nic. The filthy rich, the astonishingly beautiful.” She pushed away the glass on the table. “I’ve been drunk on this shallow little existence since I was thirteen years old. It was only when I got to know you I realised I might as well have been dead all that time. Or a creature from someone’s imagination. Like that woman who pretended to be Madeleine Elster.”
It had to be said. He couldn’t avoid it. “I’m just a Roman police officer. I do what I do in the place that I know. That won’t change. Not ever. That’s me.”
“I know,” she replied, still staring at him. “But that’s not what scares you. I scare you. What you think I am. Some being from a different planet. Out of your reach.”
He felt the need for a drink and reached for the glass of Greco di Tufo. It tasted warm and a little too complex. There were cheaper wines he preferred. Cheaper places than this luxurious apartment in a city where he didn’t belong. He’d lost track of time. He’d no idea where any of his team were, or whether they’d simply given up on him.
“I was never much interested in anything that couldn’t last,” he said, and found he couldn’t look at her when he spoke those words.
“Because of what I am?” she asked. “Some perfect untouchable movie star? Listen to the truth.” She lifted her hands to her face. “This is an accident and maybe not a lucky one. I’m the most flawed, most damaged human being you’re likely to find. I’ve been off the rails more times than you could imagine. I’ve woken up in the wrong place, the wrong bed, so often I don’t even have to blot out the memories anymore, there are so many they do that for themselves. I’m weak and pathetic and stupid. Someone can even poison me with an apple. Remember? Without you I might be dead.”
“I remember.”
She got on her knees on the sofa next to him and hitched up her skirt. “Does this look like perfection to you?” she demanded.
The mark of the hypodermic pen was still livid on her thigh, darkening purple at its centre, yellow at the rim.
“If I was naked on a set, with a million men pointing lights and cameras at my body, they could cover that with makeup. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
She took his head in her hands. Her eyes were wide and guileless, her fingers felt like fire on his skin. “I bruise, I bleed. I weep. I ache … I need. Just like you.”
His fingers reached and touched the mark on her leg. Her skin felt soft and warm, like Emily’s, like anyone’s.
She leaned forward, took his head more firmly, pulled it towards her.
Her breath was hot and damp in his ear. “You can kiss it better if you want, Nic.”
His hand spread over her leg without a single, deliberate thought.
“Please,” she whispered.
Costa bent down and brushed his lips gently against the mark, then let his tongue touch the warm flesh. She tasted of something sweet: soap and perfume. His fingers ran around her torso and felt the taut, nervous strength there.
Then he got off the sofa, picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the bedroom. Her frantic kisses covered his neck, his face; her hands worked at his shoulders. Gently he placed her slender frame on the soft white cotton coverlet. She looked at him, pleading in silence, unmoving, arms raised.
He removed her shirt with a slow, deliberate patience. She was naked beneath. Her hands tore anxiously at his clothes. In the shadows of her bedroom they found each other, not seeing anything else, not caring.
There hadn’t been many women in his life, and all of them had mattered. But not like this. Maggie Flavier sought something in him he’d never been asked for before, in ways that were utterly new to him.
He lost count of the times they struggled with each other in the half darkness on a bed so gigantic he couldn’t hear it creak, however physical their efforts. There would never be a time, he thought, when he could forget these moments, the sight of her sighing beneath him. The gentle curves of her legs with their moist dark triangle at the apex, the dark corona of the areola of her breast as she arched above him, straining with a gentle insistence, seeking to prolong the sweetness between them.
Eventually Costa rolled to one side, closed his eyes, threw back his head against the deep pillow, and laughed.
She was on her elbow at his side when he looked again, poking at him with a long fingernail. “So it’s funny, is it?”
“No. It’s ridiculous.”
“I like the ridiculous. I feel at home there. So will you, one day.” She rolled over and looked at the bedside clock. “It’s nearly ten. What do we do now?” She ran a finger down his navel to his thigh. “Chess?”
“I haven’t played chess in years …” he began to say.
The phone rang from somewhere.
His jacket was strewn on the floor with all his other clothes. He struggled to find it.
“Oh God,” she groaned. “You really are a cop, aren’t you? I suppose I should be glad this didn’t happen ten minutes ago.”
“Or ten minutes before. Or ten minutes before that.”
Costa picked up the phone, sat down on the bed, and said, without thinking, “Pronto.”
“What?” asked a young, uncertain voice on the other end. “Who is this?”
“I’m sorry. My name is Nic Costa. I’m Italian. I wasn’t …” He glanced at Maggie, who sat upright with her arms folded, watching him with an expression of mock anger. At least he thought it was mock. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Please start, Mr. Costa. I need your help.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Tom Black and someone wants to kill me. Be at the viewing platform above Fort Point. Eleven, on the dot. Be alone and for God’s sake tell no one or I’m as good as dead.”
The call ended abruptly. Costa hit redial. The number was withheld.
“Who was it?” Maggie asked.
“He said he was Tom Black. Wants to meet me. The viewing platform above Fort Point.”
He’d glimpsed the old brick fortress when they’d been sightseeing. The building was half hidden beneath the city footings of the Golden Gate Bridge, like some ancient toy castle discarded by a lost race of giants. It was there that Scottie had fished the supposedly suicidal Madeleine Elster out of San Francisco Bay. The spot seemed so remote and shut off by the great red iron structure above, he’d no idea how it could be reached.