for Lara for the taking, was the Montigny
Mikhail was nearly gagging on the stench. Who could do these sick things? Grabbing the painting, he nearly dropped it, as a voice snapped, ‘What in hell are you doing here? I wouldn’t do anything silly, sir,’ as Mikhail lunged forward to grab a knife.
Mikhail had never dreamt he’d be pleased to see a policeman. Karen, who was following Gablecross, thought Mikhail looked like a bear raiding a larder. Then she saw the walls behind him and had to clap her hands over her mouth.
‘I find vicar’s hole full of interest,’ announced Mikhail.
‘How the fuck did you get in here?’ Shoving him out of the way, Gablecross took in the contents of the table. ‘Jesus!’
‘I enter chapel to pray my vife will return,’ said Mikhail piously, ‘I just examine vork of art when wall open.’
Lying bastard, thought Gablecross.
‘Look, Sarge, here’s a parcel addressed to Tristan — in Lucy’s handwriting,’ said Karen, in excitement. ‘And there’s a wig exactly like Rozzy’s hair and one like Hermione’s. Why should anyone want to pass themselves off as Rozzy?’
They had been unable to track her down in Make Up, and she wasn’t answering her mobile.
‘She must be on the way to the party, unless the murderer’s got her too… Oh, God.’
Crouching down on the floor, Karen gathered up fragments of photographs, horribly reminiscent of Rozzy’s cut-up dress.
‘Let’s go,’ said Gablecross. ‘Put that painting down, Mr Pezcherov.’
Outside, having alerted two of the uniformed officers to keep an eye on the cache, Gablecross took the wheel and they set out for the wrap party.
No wonder he complains about my slow driving, thought Karen, as they hurtled through overgrown tree tunnels, down narrow lanes where great banks of elder and wild rose obscured any views of things coming the other way. Black trees and telegraph poles flew past the window.
Karen was being thrown from one side of the back seat to the other, as with the light on and a road map on her knees as a table, she tried to piece together the shreds of photograph.
‘It still points to Lucy,’ she said sadly, as they shot past a sign saying four miles to Rutminster.
‘Why?’ snapped Gablecross.
‘These cut-up photographs are all of Rozzy. Perhaps Lucy couldn’t stand Tristan giving Rozzy all that money for a new wrap-party dress.’
82
Lucy regained consciousness into darker nightmare. She was trapped in a chair, her wrists clamped to its arms by what felt like iron manacles padded with velvet, her ankles and knees similarly secured to the chair legs so her thighs were forced humiliatingly apart. This must be the debtor’s chair in which Rannaldini had once imprisoned Tab. The room was cold and dreadfully airless. It smelled like a slaughter-house, of blood, sweat and fear.
As her eyes grew used to the dark, she realized she was in a large steel container. She and the debtor’s chair were on a lower level in a kind of pit. Up some steps, on a higher level, stood an imposing carved armchair — like a bishop’s throne — a bed and a dressing-table pushed against the wall. From the only wall that wasn’t mirror, dully gleamed a highly sophisticated collection of whips and knives.
Then she heard hoarse, unearthly screaming. It was several seconds before she realized it was coming from herself. Shuddering with horror, she pieced together earlier events, Tristan firing her, the police arresting her, Rozzy hiding her in the priest-hole, then Rannaldini’s utterly terrifying ghost, or had it been Rannaldini himself? Thank God, Rozzy would seek help and could be trusted to give Tristan his important papers.
Then she remembered James’s cries growing more and more piteous. Someone must have tortured him. She started to cry, but as her eyes and nose streamed she had nothing on which to wipe them. Her ankle ached where she’d twisted it, her legs throbbed with nettle stings and, in the mirror opposite, her dim reflection showed her face, arms and legs cut even more to pieces from stumbling down the stony secret passage. She looked like a victim of Third World brutality.
Glancing at the whips and knives, she knew the churning fear Carlos and Elisabetta must have felt, aware that torture awaited them. The light was too faint to read her watch. She tried to pray. Rozzy wouldn’t let her down. But as the hours crawled by, and she grew colder and more dehydrated, her legs racked by agonizing cramps, hope faded.
She must have nodded off. She was woken by terror beyond imagination. Instead of her own reflection, glaring evilly back from the mirror was Rannaldini. Maybe she had died, or her mind was slowly unravelling. Then he was gone, and her blanched, bloodstained, lacerated reflection gazed back at her again.
There was a creak. Jerking her head round as far as it would go she saw a steel panel on the upper level slide back and there was Rannaldini, a monstrous black vulture, poised to swoop down and tear her apart.
‘No, no, please not.’ Her screams echoed round the chamber, then died on her lips. As the steel door clanged shut, off came the cloak, the pewter wig, the mask. Lucy breathed in a heavenly waft of Femme and wept with relief.
‘Oh, you angel, thank God.’ Then the questions poured out in a hoarse gasping rush. ‘Are the police still looking for me? Have you found James? Did you give Tristan the parcel? What a brilliant disguise! You fooled everyone.’
As Rozzy flicked on a side light, and arranged her newly washed hair, Lucy saw she was wearing a beautiful dove-grey chiffon dress and long grey gloves.
‘Please unlock this horrible chair,’ she begged. ‘What time is it? Where am I?’
‘Nearly midnight. You’re in Rannaldini’s torture chamber.’ Rozzy’s voice was strangely high and hard. ‘Quite the Grand Inquisitor’s adventure playground, isn’t it? Soundproofed like a recording studio, so no-one can hear the screams.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Little by little, terror was taking over again.
‘Rannaldini brought the pretty ones down here,’ mocked Rozzy.
‘I don’t understand.’
Both of them jumped as the telephone rang. In an instant Rozzy had grabbed her mobile, whipped a gun out of her bag, and running down the steps, rammed the muzzle against Lucy’s temple.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ she hissed.
Rigid with horror, Lucy could hear Bernard’s bray so close she could have reached out and stroked his glossy black moustache.
‘I’ve been delayed again, Bernie darling.’ Rozzy’s voice was caressing. ‘Lucy? I haven’t seen her.’ As Lucy gasped, the gun was rammed harder into her head. ‘She must have pushed off home to Cumbria. One more pressie to wrap, then I’ll be over. No, no, dearest, you’ve been drinking — at least, I hope you have. I’ll make my own way. Keep the champagne on ice.’
Flicking off her mobile, Rozzy peered at the buttons for a second before pressing one. ‘I’ll turn it off altogether,’ she said chattily. ‘We don’t want to be disturbed.’
Retracing her steps up the stairs, she placed the gun and the mobile on the dressing-table. ‘That was Bernard. The silly old fart was looking for you.’
‘You’re the murderer,’ whispered Lucy.
‘I thought you’d never guess,’ said Rozzy acidly. ‘The whole world is searching but no-one has a clue.’
‘And I gave you Tristan’s papers.’
Lucy’s chattering teeth became a terrible shaking, jolting her body like an earthquake. ‘Please let me have
