Monika walked a few paces towards him and stopped. She could see the expression on his face. He nodded. It was more an affirmation than a greeting.
‘An hour ago,’ he said, ‘she was more or less conscious. Not in pain.’
‘I’m glad of that at least,’ Monika said. ‘You got the answer-phone message we’d be here?’
‘Yes.’ Max tensed as the child stepped too close to the water’s edge.
‘She won’t fall in,’ Monika said. ‘Relax. You can now.’
He shrugged. ‘There’s no point in pretending she was a likeable woman, you know that. She was stiff with pride, selfish mostly. Now she’s dead I don’t think I feel anything much.’
‘I suppose there’s a lot for you to do now.’
He nodded. ‘My mother had more bank accounts than W. C. Fields. I’ve already been warned by her solicitor that he doesn’t know the full extent of her estate. He’s optimistic, he says. He thinks it’ll take no more than ten years. That’s what passes for English legal humour.’
‘Have you thought about the funeral?’
‘That was decided weeks ago. By her. Putney Vale Cemetery. I guess it’ll be Wednesday or Thursday.’
‘Katey and I won’t come.’
‘No. Better that way.’ He paused. ‘Katey’s going to be a rich little girl now. Or in a few years anyway.’
Monika’s face was white. ‘I think I was afraid of that. It doesn’t seem fair.’
‘As far as my mother was concerned, Katey was her grandchild. She doesn’t come into the first bunch of money until she’s eighteen. It’ll work out OK.’
They walked in silence.
‘I heard about the Vietnamese girl,’ Monika said. ‘I’m sorry, Max.’ He grunted, his breath streaming into the cold air. ‘Is there nothing more you can do?’
‘No. Nothing more.’ Max shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
They walked on, following the progress of the child in the red hat along the edge of the lake as she threw handfuls of bread to the ducks that arrowed towards her across the flat water.
In New York it was colder. The wind from the East River bit at her cheeks and set her hair streaming behind her. From where she paid off the cab Nan Luc could see the wooden pier pushing into the river and the jumble of clapboard, cinder block and rusting tin under which, on the older supporting brickwork, was painted: Center for 21st Century Arts. Welcome All!
Nan pushed at the door and found herself in a wide passageway lined with perhaps fifty or sixty rusting bicycles. Mostly the wheels had gone or the spokes rotted away so that each machine stood tipped forward on its front forks. The makes were from all over the world: a BSA, a Sunbeam, a heavy early century aluminium Peugeot. Music thudded from above. A corkboard, brightly painted, carried the name Charles Mandrake and pinned to the board a glove with a worn index finger pointing into the dark end of the passageway. Threading her way through to the base of a staircase Nan Luc climbed the cement stairs to the floor above.
The music got louder. Light flashed in blue segments through the glass transom above the single door. There seemed to be no point in knocking. She pushed the door open and stood squinting into the buzzing flashes of acetylene light.
‘Yo!’ a voice called and screwing up her eyes she saw, as the flashing light stopped, a figure lifting a face shield from his eyes. The man who casually threw aside the acetylene torch and eased the shield off his head was into his early forties, his black jeans torn below the right knee, his denim shirt, sleeveless, and his grey-blond hair long and worn in bunches. His straight toothed smile in his unshaven face was friendly. He waved the face shield in welcome.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Charlie Mandrake. Girls like you don’t visit me every day any more so I guess you must be Nan Luc. Old Mr Tron tells me he owes you a favour. No offence but that could make him one hell of a lucky guy. What can I do for you, Nan Luc?’
Nan looked at the huge structure of old bicycles welded into something resembling a prehistoric animal. ‘Mr Tron didn’t tell me you were an artist.’
‘What did he say I was?’
‘Someone who could help me with a problem.’
Mandrake took her elbow. The view was across the river to the end of the La Guardia runway. ‘You want coffee, a drink…?’ She shook her head and he released her arm and went across to an open fronted cupboard where instant coffee, a milk carton and packet sugar stood beside a bottle of whisky. ‘Old Tron says you’re looking for information on old Eros numbers. Is that true?’
‘You’re familiar with them?’
Charlie smiled. ‘I know some of them are gelignite to handle.’ He poured himself a drink. ‘You’re not looking to buy? If you are it’s not my trade, darling.’
She shook her head. ‘Information, that’s all.’
‘OK.’ he said. ‘I’m making it clear, right? Mr Tron sent you over here because I once played stud in some of the early Eros numbers, but that’s when me and Eros parted company. Early days, understand? A boy, a girl and a bed. Before Stevenson started taking special orders.’
She found it difficult not to react to the sound of the name, not to ply him with questions, but she nodded calmly. ‘OK’ she said, ‘I understand. Early numbers.’
He relaxed. ‘There was nothing to it,’ he said. ‘Stevenson had the camera equipment, Vietnam had the girls and there were a few hundred crazy young deserters like me running around in Saigon trying to earn a dollar. When Steve offered us work we thought we were in paradise. When he told us what work it was we knew we were.’
‘Just good fun.’
‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘Ver’ straight. We were making them for the guys out there in the bamboo. They were one step from sex education.’
‘And then?’
‘Then the numbers started becoming heavier. Scenarist stuff, you know what that is?’ Her eyes on him, she shook her head. ‘It’s when the customer gets to write the scenario, get it? That’s when the crazies move in. That’s when the producer also starts to make big bucks. But sometimes the crazies are very crazy. They like very crazy things up there on the silver screen. You get me?’
‘Who were these customers?’
‘In Saigon, anybody. An American general, a Swedish aid administrator, a British diplomat, a Frenchman, an Australian…’
‘And Vietnamese?’
‘Sure. Ministers, police chiefs… they all paid a small fortune to write up their own private little fantasies. But it was rough, rough stuff Nan. Not long before Steve asked me would I do a snuff. You know what that is? You kill the girl under you, the girl you’re humping. Every second script was asking for it. Men are just wonderful. I said no. Definitely no. I wasn’t going to throttle any girl for some crazy to get off on.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He didn’t like it. He came on strong about them only being bar-girls, short shelf life. He was crazier than the guys who wrote the scenarios.’
She nodded, wishing she’d asked for a drink to quell her uneasy stomach.
‘I got out when he put it to me straight. Either I snuffed the next girl on camera or he’d hand me over to the MPs. I was so scared I gave myself up. Naturally I wasn’t telling anybody I’d spent my time over the wall making art movies. I served three years in Leavenworth and came back home to New York a much wiser man.’
‘And Stevenson?’
‘Never saw him again.’ He grimaced. ‘I’d like to. If only to wrap him in a blanket and drop him deep in the East River. For all those young Viet chicks…’ He stopped. ‘No offence. Somehow, you look different.’