supported him, and had walked out into the world without shame, a free woman.
‘But I didn’t have the courage to follow her example. I kept my feelings secret, and the more successful I became, the more I shrank from the idea of going public. I had a young man come to work for me once, a brilliant draughts-man, sensitive designer. He had much the same problem as me, and one day, it being the liberated eighties, he came to work in a frock. The others goggled, then pretended not to notice. They smirked and sniggered behind his back, of course, but he stuck to his guns. He seemed quite self-possessed when he saw the faces of the trade reps and building inspectors and clients turn red when he walked into a room. Then the day came when he had to go out onto a building site. The men had heard about him, and they weren’t so polite. That night he hanged himself.’
Kathy’s back was stiff from crouching forward to catch Luz’s words; she straightened, stretched, and wondered how long this pitiful story was going to last. ‘I don’t see how this accounts for murdering your wife,’ she said.
‘It’s important you understand the background. I was trapped in a situation I couldn’t change, and I hated myself for it. I began to detest Charles Verge. I despised him for his paranoia and egomania. I didn’t want to be him. So I invented this other person who I wanted to be: Luz Diaz, the Spanish artist. It turned out to be the most satisfying design project I’d ever done; I created her life story, constructed her career, fabricated catalogues for her brilliant exhibitions long ago. It gave me a secret thrill to mention her to people: “Oh, and I bumped into that Spanish painter the other day in New York. You know, Luz Diaz, who did that big abstract in our flat. She was very sad, her mother died recently, so we had a drink together at the Hyatt and she cheered up a little.” It was a harmless fantasy, I thought, except that it became addictive. More and more I yearned to be Luz. And after my marriage to Gail collapsed I finally rented Luz an apartment in Barcelona and began to act her part, living her life for whole days at a time.
‘Then, about two years ago, I met Dr Lizancos at a lunch in Barcelona. He had been a boyhood friend of my father, and one of the other people at the table mentioned to me that he was an expert in reconstructive surgery- cosmetic, but also, more discreetly, transsexual surgery.
After the lunch I asked Dr Lizancos if I could have an appointment with him. That was how I began to believe that I might turn Luz Diaz into a reality.
‘I was married to Miki by that stage, of course, and the hope that my new wife might cure me of my obsession had not materialised. I decided to go ahead with Dr Lizancos’s program of drugs in preparation for future surgery. I envisaged that I would retire from the practice and disappear to Spain, to live Luz Diaz’s life, with Miki as my companion. It was a tremendous burden, this secret, especially when the drugs began to take effect. My sex drive diminished, I lost weight, and the whole shape and texture of my body began to alter. Miki began to make comments about how I had changed. Finally I told her everything, about Luz Diaz and Dr Lizancos, about my plans.
‘I expected her to be shocked, of course, but I hadn’t anticipated the full force of her reaction. She was contemptuous. She thought my lifelong dilemma was utterly absurd; she regarded my fantasy about Luz Diaz as disgusting; she said my plans were impossible, that I could no more become a woman through surgery than she could become a mermaid.
‘It took me some time to realise that, not only would Miki never join me in my new life, but that she would do everything she could to ridicule and destroy it. I imagined her regaling our London friends with tales about her ludicrous ex-husband, doing interviews for newspapers and TV shows, writing her memoirs, My Life with the Freak, turning me into a national and international joke. And I also saw her destroying my reputation as an architect, taking over the practice, taking credit for my work, and especially for Marchdale.
‘When I realised all that, I began to see that another plan would be necessary to achieve my flight from Charles Verge. I made her promise to say nothing until I was ready to make an announcement to my family and closest friends, and meanwhile I began to arrange the destruction not only of Miki, but of the Verge Practice, when I finally departed.’
It occurred to Kathy that he might have changed his sex and his appearance, but the self-absorption, the egomania, were unchanged. ‘How did Sandy Clarke deserve to be your victim too?’
Luz waved a dismissive hand. ‘Sandy was a mediocre talent who made an extraordinarily good living from riding on my coat-tails for twenty-five years. He was also screwing my wife. It was time for payback. I knew that if Miki died in suspicious circumstances and I disappeared, I would be blamed. I had to provide an alternative explanation both for the murder and for the money funnelled out of the practice to fund my new life. But what the bloody hell were the police playing at? I left the ground thick with clues, and the bumbling plod missed them all. Didn’t they find Sandy’s glasses in the bedroom, his pen in the bed, for God’s sake?’
‘Sandy removed those when he discovered the body.’
‘Oh.’ Luz looked annoyed. ‘What about the bed linen? Miki boasted to me that morning when I got back from the States that Sandy had slept in her damn bed. Didn’t he leave any traces?’
‘She’d already changed and washed the sheets,’ Kathy said, but didn’t mention the pillowcase that had had such ramifications.
‘Well, what about his driving glove? I took that from his car when he picked me up at the airport that morning, and left it in my car at the beach. Didn’t you trace that back to him?’
‘It had never been worn. It was assumed to be yours.’
‘And the missing money? Didn’t the accountants pick that up?’
‘Only now.’
‘Hell.’ Luz shook her head. ‘I didn’t imagine it would be so difficult. I didn’t intend for Sandy to die, not until I found out what he did to Charlotte. Perhaps I should have stuck to designing buildings, not murders. But I’ve always believed that any design problem, no matter how intractable, has a solution, if one only has the imagination and nerve.’ She caught Kathy looking at her, the question in her eyes, and am I next? Luz turned away, and in that equivocation Kathy thought she saw the fate in store for her.
‘You’d better bed down here, while I work out what to do now,’ Luz said. ‘There’s blankets and linen in the drawers over there.’
‘If you threaten the children, Stewart and Miranda, Brock will never rest until he’s taken care of you.’
‘Of course we shan’t touch them. That was a rather clumsy initiative of George’s. He was concerned that your boss was going to persist and needed warning off. I promise you, there’s nothing to be concerned about in that area.’
Kathy nodded. ‘And the same goes for me. I’ve got an important meeting first thing tomorrow, and if I don’t show up all hell will break loose.’
It sounded feeble even as she said it, and she saw that Luz was unimpressed.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll work things out.’ She got up to call George in, but Kathy stopped her, wanting to keep her talking.
‘I’d like to know what Lizancos did to you, exactly.’
‘Everything he could think of. I was the last opportunity for an old man to display his talent, his last masterpiece. He thinks of himself as an artist too, you see, his medium being flesh and bone, and once he’d begun I didn’t have much say in the matter.’
Kathy remembered the first time she’d seen Luz in this house, and the rubber gloves. ‘Your fingerprints?’
‘Yes, he had a go at those too. It was something he’d always wanted to try, he said, to transplant toe pads to fingertips. I’m still having trouble with them. He’d have transplanted my whole hands if I’d let him-they’re too large, of course. The most difficult thing has been something he couldn’t alter, my voice. I took voice lessons in Barcelona, but I’ve been terrified that some rhythms of speech, some characteristic sounds, would be there for Charlotte or Madelaine to pick up. But they didn’t.’ Luz smiled, proud of herself.
‘And in the end, did it work? Are you a woman?’
The smile faltered, then was forced back. ‘Of course. I told you, I always have been.’
Kathy wasn’t convinced. It was a rehearsed answer, she felt, a response to Miki’s challenge that what he was attempting to do was impossible.
Luz went to the door and spoke to George, who came in and checked the windows, taking keys from the security locks. ‘Triple glazed, toughened glass,’ he told Kathy.
‘Sleep well,’ Luz said, and she and George left. Kathy heard the lock click, then made a hurried inspection of
