‘Diaries?’ she repeats.
Lönnrot nods. ‘Diaries, journals, jottings. Moleskine notebooks written in green ink. Marginalia in a copy of Catcher in the Rye. Joseph Stalin, you know, was a frantic marginalist. His annotated Nechaev is historically revealing and shamefully ignored by scholars. Yes, her diaries. Her thoughts. Those writings which, taken together, might show the compass of her mind. Do you know where they are?’
‘Do you?’
‘I should very much like to. And you should very much wish to bring them to me.’
‘Why would I do that?’
Wide dark eyes look directly at her in innocent concern. ‘Oh, because they are dangerous, dear Inspector. Dangerous in the extreme to everything you—Mm. Well, leave us say they are dangerous, and that is all. But I can make that danger go away. I’m something of a fan, you see. The Cartier Smash and Grab arrests. Wonderful work. Shame about the Waxman, of course, but art is defined by its flaws.’ Lönnrot pauses. Long fingers reach out, adjust a picture frame on the mantle: a crude wooden square housing an image of a studiously attractive woman in twentieth-century glasses, standing proudly before a huge stack of something that might be multiperf computer printout.
‘Do you know,’ Lönnrot murmurs, ‘for simply years, I believed devoutly that she also played the Wicked Witch? And now here she is in this house, looking at me from her frame. Or am I looking at her from mine?’
I can see my mind on the screen.
‘Dangerous how?’ Neith asks.
The disturbing smoothness of Lönnrot’s brow puckers, and the Inspector realises this is what passes for a frown. ‘I am not sure. I was going to say “to everything you love”. Forgive my imprecision. To be exact might precipitate the very crisis that I most wish to avoid, before I understand its resolution – so: let us settle instead upon “dangerous” and have done. One wouldn’t want to be maudlin: it’s graceless. I notice you did not answer my question.’
‘No,’ she agrees, ‘I didn’t.’
Lönnrot nods dry acknowledgement at this deflection. The Inspector brushes her hand across her face, takes a manual photograph with her glasses: Lönnrot, and the wood-framed image. This person, this object, these fingerprints. This location. This moment. A chain of evidence connecting the unrecorded outlaw space with the world where things are properly documented. It had not occurred to her how unsettling it would be to encounter someone beyond the gaze of the Witness. It’s like being in free fall: the cardinal directions are missing.
The white smile broadens. ‘Really, you are too splendid,’ Lönnrot says. ‘Should I turn and give you my better side?’ Instead, the long body folds into a high-backed mahogany chair, pale fingers draped over the faces of Dionysus carved at the ends of the arms.
Neith shrugs, and sits opposite, across a matching table. ‘What do you know about Diana Hunter?’
‘She was clear-eyed and undeluded. She was a deep thinker, not least upon her own mistakes. She was a contrarian. Even in death, as the saying goes, her head sings upon the waters. She was private and she was old. I’m very concerned that she may prove problematic. On the other hand, she may be a friend I haven’t met yet. Although one so often feels that way about authors whose work one admires. Do you like to read, Inspector?’
‘No. Was it you who denounced her?’
‘I love to read. Most especially, I love low criminal romances. The human condition is most accurately chronicled in pulp, I think. The ugly and ordinary lusts, the contradictory drives, are all ignored by more self-consciously poetic writers striving to peel away the dross to reveal the inner person who of course exists only as the sum of the dross. For example, I have considered the form of assassination in literature very closely. In essence, I believe, the assassin is your counterpart – the murder detective in reverse. You are brought into contact with a crime only when it is already committed, as you are today. By examination of the body; of the person now dead; of their environment and habits; and of all of the physical evidence and the more or less obvious motives, you reveal the face of the killer and bring down justice. Crime, investigation, consequence. The assassin, by contrast, is contracted to the kill. The consequence is already agreed to be payment and death. The assassin then spends time learning the environment and habits of the target, and – already knowing intimately the layout of the organs in the body, the effects of toxins and punctures, crushings and suffocations – strikes, and departs. Contract, preparation, crime. The death stands as a mirror or a fulcrum between killer and investigator, but they are in essence engaged upon the same journey, their mutual roles contingent entirely upon the direction of travel. If time flows one way, the detective removes the knife from the corpse. If the other, it is she who brings the knife to the inert victim and performs the stabbing as an act of bloody resurrection which must subsequently be made good by the assassin in a violent and secret ambush from which the target walks away completely healthy. Tell me honestly, do you agree?’
The Inspector lets her quiet announce that Lönnrot owes her an answer.
The elegant neck bends in acknowledgement. ‘Very well: no, I did not denounce her. That is perhaps what you would do, but it is contrary to my mode. Have you yet come across the Fire Judges?’
‘If you’re going to ask me to a concert, I hope you handle rejection well.’
It sounded right in her head, the irreverent gumshoe swatting down mystical pomposity. It’s very much in the nature of their encounter, but Lönnrot takes exception. Thin lips twitch in offended virtue. Hairless lips. A woman? Or a man who pays great attention to his shaving mirror? Electrolysis? Alopecia? The dark spikes could be a wig. They could be implanted. She wants to touch them and find out – professionally: the idea of sexual contact with Lönnrot feels transgressive, not grotesque or unpleasant but utterly foreign, like making love to a bookcase. Uncanny valley: the place where simulation is too close to reality to be comfortable, but too far away to be mistakable. She wonders if the whole face is prosthetic, and what might be underneath.
Lönnrot looks past her and addresses the air, as if from a pulpit. Evidently imaginary parishioners, whatever their unknown shortcomings, are preferable to investigators who make coarse jokes. ‘The Fire Judges, in medieval tradition, are the five men and women living on earth whose task is to reveal – literally to de-crypt – the mysterious choices of God. To unhide and demystify the divine. Like Orpheus or Prometheus, they are the gateway to the heavenly city, the spinal conduit between the mundane world and the divine one. Together, they are the place where the shadow on the wall may for an instant touch the hand of the person casting it. Or perhaps it is the other way around. Perhaps the assassin is sacred and the detective is profane.’ Another censorious glower. ‘So much depends on your angle of view.’
Having no idea what to say to this, and worried that discussions of religion in the broader context of murder and its underlying significance tend to the direction of dangerous madness, the Inspector waits a calming moment, then reopens negotiations.
‘But you don’t know Hunter.’
The white frown relents. ‘Now that I look at her house, I’m not sure anyone really does. Would you like a drink?’
Lönnrot, indeed, has poured a drink during that brief huff: a whisky without water or ice. The long fingers wrap around it, enjoying the cut glass as they did the carving on the chair. Finding a chip and stroking it. The languorous eyes meet hers, repeating the question. A private eye would say yes; an officer of the Witness should say ‘not on duty’.
Neith says: ‘Hunter’s going to be angry if we drink all her Scotch.’ A better attempt at Chandler dialogue, that odd flirtatious mixture of bravado and complicity. She wonders if Lönnrot will remind her that the dead don’t care about Scotch.
Instead, simply: ‘I thought so.’ The bottle slides towards her across polished wood.
The Inspector pours herself a decent measure. She doesn’t have to swallow any of it. It’s a prop, just as it is for Lönnrot.
She holds it up, inhales. Lönnrot looks happy again, that approving quirk that never gets past the cheeks. ‘As to my mode – you understand what I mean by the expression? Yes, I thought so. Very well: you are concerned that I am your nemesis in this matter. In fact, I am not a villain. I believe that in the end, you and I will find ourselves on the same side.’
‘The same side of what?’
‘The case, of course. Perhaps everything else, as well.’
‘Your interest being?’
‘In everything?’
‘In the case.’
‘Oh, well. There is a group of people with whom I was recently commissioned to conduct some business. It is a personal matter – a debt to be repaid.’
‘They call themselves the Fire Judges?’
‘Alas, in that connection you were quite right. The Fire Judges play an hour set at the Duke of Denver by the river on odd nights. New wave classical fusion. I feel you would enjoy it. No, I’m looking for someone quite different.’ She wonders whether that means yes. Since you were so unconscionably rude, the thin smile tells her, you can fish for it.
‘And when you do find them, these people?’
‘Client privilege, I’m afraid. Let us say that while on the one hand I have the greatest respect for their work, I am concerned as to its aim. Directionality, once more. Their disposition must determine my response.’ Fire Judges. Normally she would gloss the word in her glasses, compare secondary meanings with context. Not in Hunter’s Faraday cage. Later. She imagines herself sitting at her desk, running the search, so that she will remember to do it.
The whisky smells wonderful. She drinks. Foolish. But if Lönnrot has poisoned her, it’s the most otiose criminal assault she can imagine.
‘Was Diana Hunter one of those people?’
‘That is more complicated. I believe that ultimately – and given that she’s dead, that rather overused expression has acquired its true significance – ultimately she was not.’
‘But connected to them.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And connected to you.’
‘Simply everyone is connected these days, don’t you find? Even someone like Ms Hunter. Inspector, I am worried for you. I find myself torn. I fear this case may take you to places where you will not be safe.’
‘How chivalrous.’
‘Call it professional courtesy.’
‘Because you’re a detective.’
‘Or an artful dodger? Forgive me. I am just like you. Or, I suppose, not quite. You are explicit in the society in which you live. I am rather implied.’ Long fingers stroke the cigarette. ‘Where there is a detective, there is a magnifying glass. Where there is a musician, there must also be a lyre.’
For a moment, she hears ‘liar’.
‘So who are you working for?’
A sigh – directed, she thinks, at her doggedly linear curiosity.
‘At a certain point, Inspector, you are going to ask yourself a certain question. It is a long question. Not a question that can be answered or indeed asked in so many words. It is expressed in stages, because the answer to each section opens the door to the next. The truth is rotational: it is a pattern of responses arranged around a core. You are a woman traversing the skins of an onion. As one uncovers one answer, it vanishes away to reveal another. All are true, and each contains within it a claim on the origins of the next, until the whole is visible at one time and is revealed to be quite different from what was suggested by the individual parts. “I have touched the elephant, and it is something like a tree.” Yes? You’ve heard that before, I’m sure. But it begins very simply.’
‘How?’
‘You will say: “Did they murder her?”’
‘That’s what I’m investigating.’
‘No, no. At present you are merely investigating your own investigation. You are looking for the right puzzle, the thing out of place: the bed bolted to the floor, the stolen goose, the bearded lepidopterist.’
‘All right. In that case: “they” who?’
Lönnrot’s head twists left, then right, then back again a little too slowly. That was a shake of the head, the Inspector realises, done by someone who doesn’t know how. ‘What would you do if you discovered, in the course of your inquiries, that the world was coming to an end? Would you still investigate the case? Or run naked through the streets and celebrate the last hours of your fleeting existence in an explosion of carnal excesses? Do you think one has more value than the other?’
‘The world is not about to end.’
‘Honestly, who can really say?’
Neith does not respond, and after a moment Lönnrot carries on. ‘Oh, very well: “they”. The eternal “they” of the detective. The enemy. Peculators and poisoners. Steganography is all around you. You will go down where all the ladders start, and from that underworld you believe you will retrieve the truth of Diana Hunter, but you will find only ghosts and apparitions. If you bring them back with you into the waking world and do not test their reality too strictly, you will be promoted and you will move on to your next case. If you turn and question them, they will fade away into darkness and you will be lost upon your road. The journey is not guaranteed to end well. It is not guaranteed to end at all. Perhaps you will catch the killer. Or a killer. Perhaps there was no Hunter, no world until yesterday, and tomorrow there’ll be nothing once again. Forgive me: I mean only that you may wish to step away from the chase.’
The Inspector shrugs, not without regret. It is, she knows, past time. ‘You’re forgiven. But you’re also under arrest. You have the right to representation and to appeal your detention to a random sample of your peers. At this time I am advising you of my intention to apply for a warrant to investigate your involvement through direct interrogation of your memory and sense impressions. You do not have to say anything, but frank verbal disclosure of the full extent of your involvement may be preferable to you and is acceptable so long as the immediate security needs can be addressed.’
A perfectly raised eyebrow, charcoal on marble, and that infuriating calm smile. ‘Shall we trade one last question, in the spirit of investigative collegiality? It’s what Bogart would do.’
She feels the tug of Lönnrot’s gambit, and surprises herself. ‘One question.’
‘I realise, I have two. Will you be so much a sinner as to be a double-dealer?’
‘One.’
A sigh. ‘Well, then: how long ago do you think Diana Hunter’s interrogation started?’
She answers without hesitation. ‘Interrogation cases are always closed in twelve to eighteen hours. People just don’t have more than that in their heads.’ Knowing, as she says it, that if that was the answer then Lönnrot would not have asked.
Lönnrot nods. ‘Indeed so.’
She considers. ‘Tell me about the diaries.’
‘A collection of notes, perhaps for novels she never wrote. Ephemera and identity. A sense of who she was and how she came to be here. They are of value to me, but much less so to you. A collector’s trivia, you know.’
The Inspector shakes her head. ‘I thought we were playing straight.’
‘Yes, well. The mark always does.’
Lönnrot stands and extends both hands as if for cuffs, but then closes the distance between them with an unearthly speed. She reaches for the taser, but a stinging palm lands on her shoulder and compresses the nerve, and then the other slaps down on her head, fingers actually curving around her skull. An instant later she is flying at a wall. She recognises a print from the Dogs Playing Poker series by Coolidge, supposedly ubiquitous, but she realises this is the first time she has actually ever seen one, and then she hits. Hunter’s house is of distressingly solid construction. In a more modern dwelling she might cave in a plasterboard wall, but not here. She slides down the wall and lands badly, and a huge shape, comically thuggish, blocks her view of the room. A fist clips her mouth, and when she slumps and curls into a ball she feels boots, measured and powerful, striking her legs
and torso.
It hurts, but she will not die. She knows that already. Nothing in her is breaking. This, too, is a message.
‘It’s traditional to beat down the shamus in the first chapter,’ Lönnrot says with exaggerated distaste, ‘but I can’t help feeling there must have been an easier way.’
More boots, and finally one clips the back of her skull, yielding a kind of rest.
*
With a storm rumbling on the horizon, the Inspector sits on a park bench feeding pigeons. This is not something she ever does. She considers pigeons to be a sort of aerial rat: feeding them is profoundly antisocial.
On the bench next to her is another woman, and though Neith cannot see her face she instinctively suspects it is Diana Hunter. It does not trouble her to be sharing a bench with a dead person. Somewhere very far away from the cold, damp trees and the smell of traffic and wet leaves, the thunder of the beating reminds her that this is a dream, and no need for a scrap of poetry or a tennis ball.
She gets up and peers, but her inability to see the other woman’s face persists as she moves around the bench, so she puts her curiosity away again and they feed the birds together. Lönnrot was wrong, she thinks. It’s not the assassin the detective is paired with, but the victim, whose death is a kind of notice of debt served upon those who could not keep her alive.