She stepped back from the door and Lorraine followed her inside. She had not bothered to conceal the gun, which lay untouched on the table.

'You see,' she said, her manner lightening, as though some oppressive third presence had left the room as soon as Lorraine had walked into it, 'if Mr Vallance comes calling, he'll find us well prepared. I've already seen a good deal of him today, as it happens.'

Lorraine raised an eyebrow quizzically. 'Did he come out here?'

'No. I received a package today from the LAPD. Videotapes of Harry's. Have you seen them?'

Lorraine nodded.

'Well, Vallance got what was coming to him. He fed all that in Harry and got bitten himself. If he walks through that door I ought to just shoot him cold,' Sonja said casually, crossing to one of the long cupboards. 'He's a destroyer.' She took out a bottle of vodka and an antique stemmed glass. She poured herself a drink.

'What were you working on?' Lorraine asked.

'Oh, nothing. What I'm always working on,' Sonja said, knocking back half of the vodka.

Lorraine sensed that she had been about to say something else, but had stopped herself. 'Well, that can't be true,' she said. 'You've produced a well-regarded body of work, haven't you?'

'A well-regarded body of work,' Sonja repeated, almost mimicking Lorraine. 'Much fucking good it does me.' She drained the rest of the glass. 'People don't live on "regard". Or on the past.' She was silent for a moment, then began to speak again, her manner now almost academically impersonal. 'What's the point of the past, do you think?'

'I don't know,' Lorraine said, 'I often wonder.'

Well, I can tell you,' Sonja went on, bitter again. 'It's to flavour the present. In some people's lives the memory of the past is constantly present, like a sweetness, but for others it's like a poison or a mould. No matter how far you think you've got away from something, it's still always there in every word you speak, everything you are. Every piece of work you do.' She gestured around her at the empty room.

'Are you talking about Harry?'

'Of course,' Sonja said, pouring herself another drink. 'All I ever do is talk about Harry.' She paused again. 'I can't seem to stop. I loved him, you know. Perhaps I didn't realize how much.'

'Until he died?' Lorraine said gently.

'Until he died.' Sonja fell silent. 'Something in me died too.' She looked up at Lorraine, her strange eyes bright and still, and Lorraine felt again the presence of something behind them, as though death itself were looking out.

The atmosphere was unbearable, and Lorraine felt she had to talk, to make some connection with the other woman. 'That's how I started drinking. Someone I loved died.'

'Your husband?' Sonja asked.

'No,' Lorraine said. 'He was my partner at work. I used to be a cop.' She felt a strange intimacy with Sonja, so that it didn't matter what she said. Lorraine began to talk about her own life, remembering her police training and how she had been taught to talk people back from the edge, to make them feel connected. She found that she wanted to tell it all, wanted someone to understand. She could not stop herself, as though a dam had been breached. But then, mid-flow, her voice suddenly tailed off. 'God knows why I'm telling you all this.'

'I'm sure he does,' Sonja said, taking another slug of vodka with a smile. 'Why don't you just spit it all out? You tell me your ghost stories, and then I'll tell you mine.' Life seemed to flow back into her with the current of sympathy, and she swung her feet up on the table with a lop-sided smile. 'We've got a while.'

A while till when? Lorraine was sure that it was no coincidence that Sonja Nathan had been ready to blow her brains out the day before she would become the legal owner of all of Harry Nathan's property. Did she want to show she didn't care about money or was it something she felt she had no right to accept? She smiled to see how Sonja's problems were distracting her from her own.

Lorraine could feel the past surging up inside her again, and she had to get up and walk around. Sonja said nothing, and it was because she didn't speak, either to encourage or discourage anything, that Lorraine's pent-up emotions were able to find release. 'Drinking became my life I refused point-blank to believe I had a problem, but I was on a downward slope.'

Lorraine put her hands over her face and started to weep. Sonja sat motionless. 'I'm sorry, I don't know what's got into me.'

'Same thing that's got into me,' Sonja said simply, swinging her legs down. She walked over to Lorraine and touched her shoulder lightly. Lorraine knew that the touch had been something Sonja felt she ought to do rather than an instinctive response: she was not a caring woman. 'Except my drug is my work. Was my work. I won't do any more now.'

'I'm sure that's not true,' Lorraine said, wiping her eyes. 'All artists get blocked from time to time.'

'Art!' Sonja said. 'It's all just fucking pain and damage. Harry damaged me. I didn't know how much.'

Until he died, Lorraine mentally filled in.

'He made me like himself dirty, commercial, tacky,' she went on, describing a mirror image of the process Vallance had attributed to her, and Lorraine wondered what she was talking about: no one could call her own austere and disturbing work commercial, but it was clear that Sonja's standards were not those of other people. 'He made me feel things, do things, I never wanted to feel or do, filled me up with bitterness and hate. I did my best to . . . exorcize them. But I didn't succeed. They possessed me, diminished me.' She was talking slowly and deliberately. 'They caused me to lose my work. Which he gave me too. Which is myself.'

What the hell did she mean? She was raving, everything she said was a riddle.

'But you said you were working here tonight?' Lorraine said.

'On myself,' Sonja said, and the peculiar resonance was back in her voice.

'With a gun?' Lorraine asked.

'Smoothest tool of all,' Sonja said, still not looking at Lorraine, and a smile spread across her face, as though she was looking at an unseen watcher. Then she turned. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'I sound like Raymond Vallance. I think about death a lot. Liquor makes me maudlin. But you can stop babysitting now.' She poured herself more vodka and gave Lorraine a meaningful look. 'I'll never die drunk in case people say I didn't have the guts to do it sober.'

'I used to think that,' Lorraine said, 'that I should have died. My husband left me too, you know.' She knew somehow that, despite what Sonja had just said, she had to keep talking.

'Did you get divorced?' Sonja asked.

'Yes, I did, and he got custody of the children. Rightly so I wasn't capable of looking after myself, never mind the kids.' She lit a cigarette, no longer feeling like weeping, no longer feeling anything except the awful, cold guilt that she would carry to her grave.

'Everyone who loves has a right to be loved, Lorraine,' Sonja said. 'Whatever happened in your past can't change that.'

The sigh was long and deep, and Sonja noticed that Lorraine's hand was shaking as she flicked the ash from her cigarette. 'You want to bet?'

'Try me,' Sonja said softly.

'OK. I was on duty, a few months after my partner had died. I had been drinking heavily. We'd been called out to what they thought was going to be a drug bust to act as backup because they said the kids were tooled up. There were four kids and they split up and ran. One ran past my patrol car, so I got out, chased him and cornered him in an alley. I gave him three warnings to stop or I would shoot. He didn't stop, and I fired all six rounds. I couldn't stop squeezing the trigger, even when he went down.'

She let the smoke drift from her pursed lips, then turned to look at Sonja. 'He wasn't armed. It was a Walkman he had in his hand, and he had earphones in so he couldn't hear me. He was just a kid, and I killed him because I was drunk. If I'd been sober I would have fired a body shot.'

'That's hard to live with,' Sonja said quietly. She seemed to be watching Lorraine with particular intensity.

Lorraine stiffened as she heard a sound outside. 'Do you hear something?' she asked.

'Yes, I do,' Sonja said evenly as she picked up the gun and cocked it. God, Lorraine thought, gooseflesh breaking out all over her body: she had meant what she had said about Vallance. Now they could both hear someone's footsteps right outside the door, which still stood an inch ajar. Sonja turned round slowly, noiselessly, until the gun was aimed chest high at the door panels. After a moment they heard a knock.

'Who is it?' Sonja said. Her voice was sweet and pure as a bell, as though a longed-for visitor had finally called, and Lorraine saw the beatific calm of the central figure of her wood of women appear on her face.

'It's me, Sonja,' a voice called. A man stepped into view. Arthur.

'Jesus,' he said in surprise, finding himself looking down the barrel of a gun. 'What the hell's going on here?'

'I'm sorry, Arthur,' Sonja said, lowering the gun. 'I'm afraid Mrs Page got me rattled. Apparently Raymond's been in town making threats.'

'Not to me he hasn't,' Arthur said. 'I saw him a couple of hours ago and he was sweetness and light. We're all old friends now.'

Lorraine saw him scan the room as he spoke, and although his voice did not alter, she knew that he knew exactly why Sonja was holding the gun.

'I thought you were lying down,' he said. 'I was worried about you.'

'You're so sweet,' she said, and Lorraine saw the flicker of pain in Arthur's eyes at the lack of interest in her voice. He loved her, Lorraine could see. 'I'll go and lie down now.' She walked out into the night.

'Can we offer you a nightcap, Mrs Page?' Arthur asked as they followed Sonja out of the building. 'I guess Sonja's lucky you showed up, if Vallance is roaming around out there.' She knew what he meant: if she hadn't showed up Sonja would have been dead.

'No, no, thank you,' she said quietly. 'I'll just call a cab.'

They walked out into the darkness. Lorraine could feel the urgency with which Arthur moved to catch up Sonja, to try to take her hand, knowing that he felt the same instinct she herself had experienced earlier to try to hold on to the woman. But Sonja slid away, graceful and aloof, and walked on alone.

CHAPTER 15.

WHEN LORRAINE woke next morning, she was surprised to see that it was already almost nine. She had lain awake for some time after she had got back to the hotel, half expecting some call from either Arthur or Sonja, but apparently nothing had happened. She dressed and called the airline to book herself a flight to LA. All they could offer her at such short notice was a seat on an early-evening departure, so she decided to spend the afternoon in New York. She packed the few things she had brought with her and set off downstairs.

'Good morning, Carina.' She smiled at the pretty blonde girl on the desk, whose name she now knew from the plate standing in front of her.

'Good morning, Mrs Page,' said the receptionist. 'The papers are here if you'd like one to take in with you.' Lorraine picked up a New York Times and scanned the headlines.

'There never seems to be anything but gloom and doom in the city, does there?' she said, putting the paper down. 'I think I'll just enjoy the peace here for another day.'

That surely should have elicited any news of either a shooting or a suicide in the locality, Lorraine thought, but Carina simply smiled again. 'Good idea,' she said. 'Save your strength for LA.'

Lorraine walked into the room where breakfast was served, and found Raymond Vallance, sitting at a table with his large lady companion. He was now wearing a tweed suit and a battered pair of brogues, and was sitting ramrod straight in the dining chair, cracking the pages of his newspaper like whipcord, wearing an expression he clearly considered aloof and patrician. He seemed almost to have absorbed a new personality, aristocratic, European from the costume, or perhaps, Lorraine thought, this was his heterosexual persona.

She walked towards their table. 'Good morning, Mr Vallance,' she said brightly. 'How're things at Fox today?'

Vallance glared at her.

'Oh, Raymond,' his companion cried, 'is this one of your Hollywood friends?'

'Mrs Page and I have met in Los Angeles,' Vallance said curtly.

'We have a lot of friends in common,' Lorraine went on smoothly. 'I saw Sonja last night, for example.'

'Oh, really?' Vallance said. 'I must try to see her today.' He looked at Lorraine with eyes like stones.

'Who is that, pumpkin?' asked the lady innocently. 'I wish you'd introduce me to more of your friends.'

'The former wife of . . . a close friend,' Vallance said. 'It's a condolence call. I'm afraid it wouldn't be appropriate for you to attend.'

'Apparently Sonja gets the whole of the estate now,' Lorraine went on, observing Vallance closely. 'The consequence of the tax-saving clause, the lawyers tell me. The other two wives died within a survivorship period and the gifts to them never took effect. It expired last night, it seems.'

'So I suppose you and Sonja had a little celebration?' Vallance said nastily. 'Burned one of those effigies of Harry she keeps turning out, perhaps? What'll she do for art now, poor dear?'

'Well, I wouldn't say we were celebrating,' Lorraine said circumspectly.

'I really must try to call on her later,' Vallance said. 'Take my last look before she kills herself or goes up in smoke. Harry's estate doesn't seem to bring his ex-wives much luck, does it? You'll be glad to get well clear of it, I'm sure.'

Was she imagining it, or was Vallance looking at her as if he expected her to take some other meaning from his words? A coded boast about the deaths of Cindy and Kendall? A threat to Sonja or even to herself?

'I'm still working for Harry's lawyer, actually,' she said. 'So I'll be involved for a while.'

Well,' Vallance said, 'see you around.' He raised his newspaper again and Lorraine realized she was dismissed.

She sat down at another table and ordered breakfast, wondering whether she should bother to call Sonja and say that Vallance was still hanging around, then decided not to she was retained to investigate the art fraud, not as minder to Harry Nathan's ex-wife, and besides, Sonja had Arthur to do that for her. Poor Arthur.

Half an hour later she was ready to check out. There was no one at the desk, so she decided to walk to the bookstore again for something to read on the bus. She was barely out of the door when she heard a car engine revving. She looked across the street to see the Blazer being wrenched backwards and forwards as the driver tried inexpertly to manoeuvre it into a parking space. Eventually, Arthur opened the door and got out, leaving the vehicle parked at an angle: it was immediately apparent that he was drunk.

Lorraine hurried across the street. 'Arthur!' she called. 'Are you OK? Did something happen?'

Arthur looked at her, his face drawn with strain, but blurred and slackened with drink too. 'Well,' he said, making an effort to talk coherently, 'not really. Nothing new.'

'Is Sonja OK?'

'She's the same as she always is.' The man's bleakness made Lorraine decide she could spare half an hour to try to sober him up.

'Give me the keys and I'll move the jeep,' she said, 'and then why don't we get a cup of coffee in the hotel? I haven't checked out yet.'

'Sure,' Arthur agreed spiritlessly. Lorraine reparked the jeep and they crossed back to the Maidstone Arms. Vallance and his companion had gone, Lorraine noticed, as they walked into the dining room, though breakfast was still being served. She ordered a pot of black coffee and a quart bottle of mineral water.

'So,' she said, when the waiter had left them, 'what happened?'

'Oh, nothing, I guess,' Arthur said, with a grimace. He took a swallow of the coffee, and seemed undisposed to say any more.

'Come on, Arthur,' Lorraine said. 'Call me nave, but I don't have you down for someone who gets pie-eyed by ten thirty a.m. as a matter of routine. What did you do, stay up all night?'

'Pretty much,' he said.

'Celebrating Sonja's inheritance?' Lorraine probed: she had a feeling that this would hit a sore spot.

'Christ!' Arthur swore at her. 'When the fuck is she going to be free of that man? She was in a bad enough state while he was still alive, but now that he's dead she's worse.' He took another mouthful of coffee, his hands shaking.

'Drink some water,' she said quietly. 'It's better for you than that stuff.' She poured a glass for him, but Arthur did not move. 'Arthur,' she said gently, 'I could see Sonja was pretty close to the edge last night. I know you care about her but it won't do her any good if you let her drag you over too.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'She would have gone over if you hadn't been there last night. I knew that stuff about waiting with a gun for Vallance was a lot of bullshit.'

'He didn't show up, then?' Lorraine asked.

'No. I don't think he has the balls to do much of anything, though he has an ugly mouth.' He picked up the glass of water and drank. 'I didn't know she had a gun in the house,' he went on. 'She wouldn't give it to me.' He caught Lorraine's eye, and she got the message that he regarded the situation as serious.

'Did you have a fight?' she asked.