Ivoria by Tanith Lee (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

on the door was a different one from the one she’d given me. Franks, not Price.”

“But let me see. You say your friend said the woman she thought might be this Kit, had the name Kitty Andrew. Perhaps she is inclined to change her name frequently, an interesting fact in itself. After your unfruitful visit, did the Kit or Kitty woman communicate again?”

“Yes.” Nick had hesitated. He had found he did not want to show the letter to Pond. Which was childish. So he picked it up directly, straightened it and passed it over. “I can only think she’s the one who sent me this. K.P. My first complaint, I have to say,” Nick heard himself add, and felt a fool. Why make lame excuses. All that was irrelevant.

Pond read the letter carefully, once. Nick noted Pond did not have recourse to spectacles, though surely he was over fifty. When Pond had raised his head his face was quite grim.

“What is termed a ball-breaker, sir.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps I can keep this for now? Thank you.” Pond pocketed the letter. He said again, “Ball-breaker. They come in all types and with all types of reasons. I recall my wife telling me about a girl in her class at school, about fifteen years old, who used to sleep around rather more than a little, then always pin up unfavourable descriptions of each liaison in the girls’ toilets. Also, apparently, now and then in the boys’ toilets too. However.” Pond’s grim face had abruptly set like a cake of granite. “This nasty little example of plume empoisonner suggests to me one reason why she may want to use new names now and then. But also it’s given me a more serious thought.”

Nick’s mind, he found, had wandered. He had begun to consider the Roman pin under the carpet upstairs. A nagging voiceless voice was commanding him, over and over, to tell Pond about the pin, pull up the carpet, hand it over. Empty all the rubbish bins at once.

And so his reaction was out of synch.

“I’m sorry, Mr Pond. What did you say?”

To which Pond had answered, thoughtfully, “I have an odd apprehension, Mr Lewis, you don’t know how your brother died. Am I correct?”

13

“Nick? If you’re there, please pick up. Oh, Nick, please be there.”

He stands in the kitchen doorway, looking at the midday phone. The ansa-machine is recording the message, which is in a woman’s voice Nick does not recognise.

He had been making a sandwich, and has no intention of speaking to anyone, not at the moment. But he is puzzled. The voice is musical, well-spoken, with the actor’s accent and pitch. It is not Jazz, who for a second he had thought it might be, when it said his name. Certainly not the demented Kit – although…

“Nick… OK. I can understand if you don’t want to speak to me. Or you’re maybe out. Look, you won’t believe this.” There is another gap. Then a sort of rush, a burst “I am so sorry - so fucking sorry for that stupid brainless shit letter I sent you…” The voice is crying now, sobbing, snuffling like a child’s. “Oh Christ, Nick, please call me back! I don’t deserve it, but I’m going off my head. I am off my head. Please - Nick - forgive me and call me - I won’t - I won’t call you any more unless I - I don’t want - make it worse…”

He knows.

This time he does not only surprise himself, he astonishes himself, because he seems to be possessed by a demon which throws him bodily down the two steps and forward to the phone - grabbing it, holding it - “Serena - Reenie - don’t hang up – Serena…” She has not hung up. She is still there, just sobbing along the line. “Ssh,” he says, “it’s all right.” He feels old, weirdly grown up. He waits while she cries, as Pond had waited for him. “Ssh,” he says softly now and then.

“Are you there?” she whispers.

“Yes, I’m still here.” In the kitchen the shadow of a bird passes, reflected through a cold-lit window. The shadow looks quite real for a moment. “It’s all right,” Nick says again.

About four Pond calls Nick, just as the main window becomes opaque and dark blue. Pond suggests they meet in half an hour at Nick’s local. Nick is ready to go out. He agrees.

Some of the regulars in the pub know him, as he had often eaten lunch there until recently.

“Long time no see.”

“I’ve been away.”

“Good trip?”

“Crap, unfortunately.”

“Never mind. You’re back now.”

He gets a lager, and goes over to Pond, who is already seated near the back on a fake oak pew, with a half of bitter.

Pond accepts the envelope with the preliminary cheque. He had been strict about its being a cheque, not cash. (“I may not always like the governmental power, Mr Lewis, but I never try to cheat the obdurate if petty laws of the land.”)

He tells Nick two things swiftly, one of which Pond had already intimated over the phone. Number 14, the flat from which the drawer-man had claimed to issue, has been vacated. It now stands empty, as a call to the appropriate estate agent had verified. The occupants ‘seemingly’ had removed themselves the day after the break-in. They had comprised a man and the woman in whose name the flat had been retained - although she had fallen into mortgage arrears. This woman too had had to go into hospital, with what Pond’s initial source, whoever that was, said had seemed to be appendicitis. “Perhaps that then is the end of it. They would appear to have their hands full. I can give you the name of the estate agents if you want to check out the empty flat yourself. Or of course I can, on your behalf.”

Pond had also, yesterday, recommended a specialist firm of locksmiths “not to be found in the Yellow Pages.” Nick confirms he