My breath catches in my throat. I step backwards, shocked, almost dropping the gun. The disguise will need a few more touches before it’s perfect. His features are incredibly similar to his mother’s, but there’s still something masculine about his face minus make-up and lipstick, earrings and eyelashes. And he needs to add coloured contacts. Yet even at this halfway stage, the figure is unmistakable.
‘Andeanna,’ I groan.
Gregory Menderes raises an eyebrow, purses his lips and says in her voice, ‘The one and only.’ He grins sexily. ‘A kiss for old times’ sake, Ed?’
I can’t answer. I can only stare at the face of the man who is the woman I fell in love with and killed for, and wait for the furies of insanity to sweep down from the tormented heavens and take me.
Greygo sits at the dressing table, working on his face. I watch Andeanna swim into being in the mirror, and I’m amazed by the transformation. It isn’t just the look. As he progresses, he becomes a woman — the way he moves his hands and arches his neck, the frame of his shoulders, the subtle sway of his hips as he leans forwards and backwards on the chair, the way he crosses his legs. Even knowing who it really is, I have to forcibly remind myself that this isn’t Andeanna — a he, not a she, a cruel conspirator to be executed, not a restored lover to be adored.
‘It was a set-up from the start, wasn’t it?’ I mutter.
‘Of course,’ he answers in Andeanna’s voice.
‘Not like that,’ I snap. ‘Use your own voice.’
‘This is my voice, darling,’ he answers without changing key.
‘Stop it,’ I warn him, ‘or so help me . . . ’
He sighs like Andeanna did when talking about her life with the Turk. ‘You don’t understand, Ed. When I’m dressed like this, when I have this body and face, I am my mother. I can’t alter my voice to suit you. If you want me to speak as Greygo, I’ll have to shed these clothes. Do you want me to do that?’
‘No.’ It’s difficult facing him in this guise, but if he took it off, I’d spend the rest of the conversation wanting him to put it back on. I don’t think I’d be able to believe he’s Andeanna – my Andeanna – without seeing him as her all the time. ‘One question before we start. Did you arrange the murder of your father to get your hands on his money?’
Andeanna shakes her . . . No. I must think of him as he really is. Greygo shakes his head.
‘Nothing that venal,’ he says. ‘I’m surprised you had to ask.’
‘Just wanted to make sure.’ Sitting on the bed, I rest the gun in my lap and nod for him to begin.
‘I assume you know the full story, how my mother discovered my father in flagrante delicto and lost her head?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That saves us a lot of time. Let’s cut to my beginning. Love for my mother took precedence over all others. That included love for my father and you.’
‘For me!’ I snort.
He smiles but doesn’t press the point. ‘My mother always knew that I was . . . shall we say special?’
‘Let’s say bent as a boomerang,’ I correct him.
He shrugs. ‘I was never overly bothered about sex, so it’s a moot point. I wasn’t afraid of what I was, but I was conscious of my father and how the truth would hurt him. It was hard enough telling him I was intent on becoming an actor, but if I’d told him I was gay . . . I think he could have forced himself to accept me, but it would have stung him to his core. I didn’t want to bring more misery into his life, not after what had happened with my mother, so I’ve been mostly celibate. I even had a few flings with women, to make it look as if I was a hot-blooded hetero. Anyway, my sexual orientation isn’t the issue here.’
‘Isn’t it?’
He shakes his head. ‘What my mother saw in me as a child wasn’t a craving for cock – pardon me for being so crude – but a desire to be feminine. I loved dressing up, trying on beautiful clothes and undergarments. I wanted to be part of that world of glamour and disguise. Sex had nothing to do with it.
‘She knew I used to sneak into her room and raid her wardrobe. In fact, sometimes I’d find clothes that were too small for her, which I’m sure she bought with me in mind. My father, on the other hand, knew nothing about it until he discovered me dressed in one of her outfits when I was nine years old. He thrashed me to within an inch of my life.’ Greygo’s face softens. ‘I never blamed him. It’s how people of his generation thought. Hell, it’s how many of our generation think.’
Greygo smirks at me. ‘What about you, Ed? We never discussed it before. Where do you stand on the homosexual issue?’
‘Live and let live,’ I grunt. ‘I’ve no problem with gays. But I’ve no interest in them either.’
‘That’s a shame,’ he murmurs, pouting playfully.
I stare at those lips. I think about all the times I’ve kissed them. The hardcore hetero in me wants me to recoil, to maybe bash them to shreds, to make him pay for what he did. But in truth, I’m not bothered. I should be, but I’m not. I loved Andeanna so much that I don’t think I would have cared if she’d turned out to be a tranny, not if everything else had been on the level. I could have lived with that. It was an adjustment I would have been happy to make. For her.
‘That was the only time he hit me,’ Greygo continues. ‘After that, I went underground, with the help of my mother. She took me under her wing and let me dress up when he wasn’t around. She taught me how to apply make-up and wear the clothes, but also how to remove all traces of my alter ego when I left her room. Through her, I learnt the importance of separating one’s identities.
‘She was so brave,’ he says softly. ‘My father would have beaten her terribly if he’d found out. It was the one time in her life that she betrayed him, and she did it for my sake.’
‘Not the only time,’ I contradict him. ‘There was her affair, too.’
He chuckles. ‘With Axel Nelke? Surely you know better by now. I don’t know where Andrew got the idea that she was having an affair. Bond played along with the lie for reasons of his own. So did I. But you must have come to understand how devoted and loyal she was. She could never have betrayed my father.’
To my surprise, I realize he doesn’t know about her fling with Gardiner. A spiteful part of me wants to immediately shatter his illusions, but that would mean a detour, and I don’t want to waste time. I came here to learn, not enlighten.
‘I was devastated when she died,’ he continues, eyes cloudy. ‘It wasn’t just my mother I’d lost, but my teacher, confidante and friend. She wasn’t only a huge part of my regular life, but all of my secret life.’
I start to say how hard it must have been, sympathizing with him out of habit, then stop and frown. ‘But she isn’t dead.’
‘I know that now,’ he says, ‘but I didn’t then. At the time I thought, along with the rest of the world, that she’d perished in a car crash. I mourned for many years before I discovered she was still alive.’
‘How did you find out?’ I ask, then silently warn myself to be careful — he almost has me feeling sorry for him. I have to remember what he’s done. Save the pity for myself.
‘I’d known for a long time that something wasn’t right with my father, the way he responded when my mother’s name was mentioned, the guarded looks he shared with Bond. I began to eavesdrop on conversations and search through his files when he was away, to no avail.
‘The breakthrough came when I was arrested.’ He laughs. ‘I used to visit tranny bars and clubs — for the fashion, not casual sex. I was at a private party when it was raided. Since I was underage, I was taken into custody. I had to phone someone but I didn’t dare call my father, so I rang Bond. I knew my mother had relied on him and hoped that I could too. He bailed me out and took me back to his place.
‘Bond said nothing about what I’d been up to — he didn’t want to know. He mixed a drink for me, let me have a bath, lent me some of his clothes. Then he was summoned away on business. My snooping instincts got the better
of me. I found letters from St Michael’s Psychiatric Hospital referring to a patient by the name of Deleena Emerson. I got straight on the line to her doctor and demanded to know the truth. I threatened to expose him if he refused to cooperate.
‘I was appalled,’ Greygo mumbles. ‘My father loved her. I couldn’t understand how he could have done that to her. I didn’t know about Christina Whiteoak at the time, and could think of no reason why he . . . ’
Greygo can’t bring himself to say ‘ruined her life’ or ‘destroyed her’. It’s the first true indication I’ve seen that Gregory Menderes really did love his father.
‘Did you go see her?’ I ask.
‘Of course. I fled, hailed the first cab I found and offered the driver as much as he wanted to drive me to Darlington. When I got there . . . ’ He stops, lips thinning.
‘It’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘You can skip this bit. I’ve seen her. I can imagine.’
He nods gratefully. ‘Cutting a long story short, I sat down with Bond when I got back and forced the story out of him. I couldn’t approach my father. I never did. To the very end he assumed that I thought she was dead.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to hate somebody, but who? Not Bond — he was only following orders. Not the staff at St Michael’s — they were strangers who had been bullied or bribed. There was only one person I could truly hate, and that was the one person I could never bring myself to despise — my father.’
‘Explain how you couldn’t hate him,’ I interject.
Greygo shrugs. ‘I loved him.’
‘But he stole your mother from you. He wiped her mind and locked her away in a madhouse.’
‘I know, but that aside . . . ’ He laughs sickly. ‘What I mean is, I knew I should hate him, I knew I had to hate him, but I couldn’t make myself. I wanted him to pay for what he’d done, but I could no more attack him than I could cut out my own heart then sew it back in again. I couldn’t hate or harm him, Ed. But Andeanna Menderes could.’
Greygo rises from his chair at the dressing table and turns. He looks so feminine that for a moment I truly forget who he is and almost race across to clutch Andeanna and kiss her and tell her how much I’ve missed her. I catch myself in time, but only just.
‘This isn’t a mere disguise,’ Greygo says, taking several steps towards me. ‘I’m not just pretending to be a woman. When I transform, I transform completely. When I was with you as Andeanna, I didn’t know where I ended and my mother began. I wasn’t playing. I was Andeanna Menderes.’
‘Are you pleading innocence?’ I sneer. ‘Copping some fucked-up schizophrenic plea? It wasn’t me, it was my mummy. Is that what you’re trying to pull?’
‘No,’ he sighs. ‘I planned the seduction and the assassination. I was behind it all, and self-aware every step of the way. But when I was immersed in the part, it was total immersion. It went beyond role-playing. Look at me. Listen to me.’ He touches his throat and strokes it sensuously. ‘I have to speak like this when I become her. I have no voice of my own right now. If my life depended on it, I couldn’t do Greygo’s voice or any of the others.’
I stare at him blankly. ‘What others?’
He looks surprised. ‘I thought you knew.’
I think furiously and it hits me. ‘Etienne Anders. You were the mystic.’
‘Naturally. How else could she have replicated the voice? Etienne was my weakest creation. You would have seen through her if you hadn’t been so preoccupied. I never really got under her skin. I threw on a lot of make-up and clothes, but I never felt like a true medium.’
I grin grudgingly as I think back. He’s right — I should have seen it. The forced joviality, the heavy make-up, the pitch-perfect voice when she summoned Andeanna, the facial similarities. Last night, when I was putting it all together, I assumed that the mystic was a paid cohort, but of course it was much safer for the master actor to simply assume another disguise and play the part himself.
I frown as I think back to what Greygo said — others, plural. ‘Who else were you?’ I ask, running through all the faces I’ve encountered recently, searching for any that might have been Greygo in drag.
‘Only one more,’ he says, his smile slipping.
‘Who?’
He hesitates. ‘It’s not relevant.’
‘Tell me,’ I growl.
‘You won’t like it. I had to get close to you, to know what made you tick, to keep tabs on you.’
I don’t know what he’s getting at. Who could he have been? One of the staff at the Royal Munster? I think of Fred Lloyd and smile at the absurdity. I flash on more faces, as many as I can recall, but none matches. ‘I give up,’ I mutter.
‘You really want to know?’ I glare at him archly. ‘OK,’ he says, removing his wig and lowering his head. He rolls his shoulders and spreads his legs, instantly becoming more masculine, even in the dress and make-up. When he looks up again, he’s smiling, and there’s something hauntingly familiar in that smile.
In spite of the feeling that I should recognize him, I can’t place him until he speaks in a light northern brogue. ‘Have a good trip up north, Ed? Should have taken me along. We could have gone to the footie. You haven’t seen the beautiful game played properly till you’ve seen it in the Stadium of Light.’
Regardless of the face, I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s the voice of the one true friend I’ve made since Belinda tricked me all those years ago, the one person apart from Andeanna who I let into my life.
Joe.
In an instant, the rest of the mystery clicks into place. Joe was the one I turned to when I ran into trouble with Andeanna. He was a sympathetic audience, always there for me, except when Andeanna was around. Greygo was both my lover and my best friend. What one couldn’t find out about me, the other could. As shocked as I am, I have to admire the genius behind it. Gregory Menderes is in a different class. I’ve known some sly bastards in my time, but Greygo puts them all in the shade. He played me with contemptuous ease. His only mistake was to not finish me off after I’d killed his father. I wonder how he botched such a vital part of the plan. Were there others he wanted me to kill while I was at it?
‘I spent months dressing up as her, slipping further into the disguise.’
The words come suddenly out of the silence. Looking up, I see that Greygo is wiping away the make-up. He’s still wearing the dress but is speaking as himself now, not as Andeanna or Joe. I must have blanked out for a while, but he hasn’t seized the chance to turn on me.
‘I’d never tried so hard to become someone else. It had to be perfect if it was going to work. I went on holidays and masqueraded as my mother the whole time, sleeping as her, eating as her, flirting as her. I took men back to my room and made love to them, testing the bounds of my disguise. I made mistakes to begin with, but eventually I learnt to mask every last masculine trace. I discovered how to make a man love me but never know me, how to be and not just be like. Then I was ready.’
He licks his lips. Small dabs of lipstick cling to them like faded bloodstains. ‘You weren’t the first,’ he says sheepishly. ‘There were two others before you, a couple of your fellow assassins. I approached them as I approached you, tried to make them fall in love with me. It didn’t work. I could attract them, but I –’
‘Wait,’ I interrupt. ‘I don’t get it. Why not just hire someone to kill him?’
‘I tried, several times, wheedled names out of Bond and my father, approached a variety of contacts openly and offered them a fortune to accept the hit. They wouldn’t bite. In the guise of my mother, I had to be a woman with no history — they all thought that she was dead, so I had to use my Deleena Emerson alias. The trouble was, no assassin would take on a target like the Turk when their would-be employer was a nobody who couldn’t offer them protection from the Turk’s men when they came gunning for revenge. As Greygo I might have been able to convince one of them, but I couldn’t authorize a hit as myself. It had to be as my mother. So I decided to creat
e a scene.’
‘A scene,’ I grunt. ‘That’s it. You staged a film noir plot. A scheming femme fatale seduces a capable but gullible patsy, spins him a tale of woe involving life with her abusive husband, and . . . ’ I nod at the cunning of it.
‘That’s how it was,’ Greygo agrees. ‘Only it didn’t work to begin with. I wasn’t able to believe in the scene. I could calmly plot in the safety of my room, but out in the real world I had to become one with the story. I needed to be as convinced by the piece as those I sucked in. I couldn’t do that with the first two assassins. I was beginning to think I could never do it with anyone. Then you fell into my life.’
He crosses the room and kneels in front of me. Extends his hands and cups my face. If he dropped his fingers, he could wrench the gun from me and fire before I had a chance to react. But he doesn’t.
‘If it’s any comfort, I really am a fan of your books. I read Nights of Fear and Summer’s Shades before I learnt your true identity.’
I blink. ‘Do you really think this is the right time to be praising my work?’
He giggles. ‘It’s relevant, because that’s how it started. I found myself discussing your books with a friend of my father’s at a party one night. That friend was Carter Phell.’
‘Carter,’ I groan. I should have known my old mentor would come back to haunt me. The past is never truly dead and buried.
‘To Phell’s credit, he changed the subject,’ Greygo continues. ‘It was only later, after he’d had a few drinks, that he tracked me down and asked if I knew who you used to be. He wanted to share his juicy titbit with the one person he’d met who’d actually read Ed Sieveking’s books. He didn’t do it to drop you in the shit — he knew I wasn’t part of my father’s seedier affairs, that I wouldn’t try to exploit the information. In his own strange way, he was proud of you and wanted me to know how far you’d come.
‘I’d researched the other assassins as best I could, but there’s only so much you can unearth about men who operate as hired killers. You can’t get close to them. Writers are different. They welcome questions and love to share. It’s much easier to get to know a writer, to learn about him, to consume.’