Gently, she shook her head.
“Carys,” he chided. “You know better than to refuse me.”
“He’s dead,” she said.
“No,” the European replied flatly, “He’s up there; a few flights above us.”
“I killed him.”
What delusion was this? “Who?” he asked sharply. “Killed who?”
“Marty. He doesn’t answer. I killed him.”
“Shush . . . shush . . .” The cold fingers stroked her cheek. “Is he dead, then? So: he’s dead. That’s all that can be said.”
“. . . I did it . . .”
“No, Carys. It wasn’t you. It was something that had to be done; don’t concern yourself.”
He took her wan face in both hands. Often he had cradled her head when she was a child, proud that she was the pilgrim’s fruit. In those embraces he had nurtured the powers she had grown up with, sensing that a time might come when he would need her.
“Just open the door, Carys. Tell him you’re here, and he’ll open it for you.”
“I don’t want . . . to see him.”
“But I do. You’ll be doing me a great service. And once it’s over, there’ll be nothing to be afraid of ever again. I promise you that.”
She seemed to see some sense in this.
“The door . . .” he prompted.
“Yes.”
He loosed her face, and she turned away from him to climb the stairs.
In the deep-pile comfort of his suite, his jazz playing on the portable hi-fi he had personally lugged up six flights, Whitehead had heard nothing. He had all that he needed. Drink, books, records, strawberries. A man might sit out the Apocalypse up here and be none the worse for it. He had even brought some pictures: the early Matisse from the study, Reclining Nude, Quai St. Michel; a Miro and a Francis Bacon. The last was a mistake. It was too morbidly suggestive, with its hints of flayed flesh; he’d turned it to the wall. But the Matisse was a joy, even by candlelight. He was staring at it, never less than enchanted by its casual facility, when the knocking came.
He stood up. It was many hours-he’d lost track of time-since Strauss had been here; had he come again? Somewhat groggy with vodka, Whitehead lurched along the hall of the suite, and listened at the door.
“Papa . . .”
It was Carys. He didn’t answer her. It was suspicious, her being here.
“It’s me, Papa, it’s me. Are you there?”
Her voice was so tentative; she sounded like a child again. Was it possible Strauss had taken him at his word, and sent the girl to him, or had she simply come back of her own accord, the way Evangeline had after cross words? Yes, that was it. She’d come because, like her mother, she couldn’t help but come. He began to unlock the door, fingers awkward in anticipation.
“Papa . . .”
At last he got the best of the key and the handle and opened the door. She wasn’t there. Nobody was there: or so he thought at first. But even as he stepped back into the hall of the suite the door was thrown wide and he was flung against the wall by a youth whose hands seized him at neck and groin and pinned him flat. He dropped the vodka bottle he was carrying and threw up his hands to signify his surrender. When he’d shaken the assault from his head he looked over the youth’s shoulder and his bleary eyes came to rest on the man who had followed the youth in.
Quietly, and quite without warning, he began to cry.
They left Carys in the dressing room beside the master bedroom of the suite. It was empty but for a fitted wardrobe and a pile of curtains, which had been removed from the windows and then forgotten. She made a nest in their musty folds and lay down. A single thought circled in her head: I killed him. She had felt his resistance to her investigation; felt the tension building in him. And then, nothing.
The suite, which occupied a quarter of the top story, boasted two views. One was of the highway: a garish ribbon of headlights. The other, that let on to the east side of the hotel, was gloomier. The small dressing-room window faced this second view: a stretch of wasteland, then the fence and the city beyond it. But from her position lying on the floor, all of that was out of sight. All she could see was a skyfield, across which the blinking lights of a jet crept.