He was pulling the strings. In a very short time, his fee would be deposited into a Cayman Islands bank account, where the first half was already credited. He thought about the person who had made the deposit for him, his client Osmond Larkin, who at that moment was sitting in jail in America.
The man disgusted him; his revulsion had only grown with every meeting. His cruel eyes. His attitude that the world owed him something. His arrogant tone, always smarter than everyone else, turned Hudson’s stomach. Like anyone who thought himself clever, Osmond Larkin was also stupid. Like every cunning person, he could not keep from showing it off, and that was why he was in jail. Hudson would have loved to stand up and tell him so, and then leave the room. If he could have had his way, he would even have violated professional secrecy and told the investigators everything.
But he couldn’t do that.
Besides the risks he had already taken, that option would mean pressing the remote and turning off a TV showing a magnificent yacht cutting through the waves with a handsome man at the tiller.
No, there was nothing he could do. Despite his aversion to Larkin, he had to deal with certain unpleasant things if he was to get everything he wanted. Not everything, he said to himself, but a lot and without delay.
He walked back towards the sponsor’s cruiser. The boats were lost in the darkness. Only the larger ones had on their service lights, reflecting in the water.
He looked around. The wharf was deserted, the bars closed, their plastic chairs piled atop the outdoor tables, the umbrellas down. It seemed strange. It was summer after all, despite the late hour, and summer nights always had impromptu actors onstage. Especially summer nights on the Côte d’Azur. He remembered what Serena had told him about the serial killer. Was that why he was the only person on the pier? Maybe nobody wanted to wander around and chance running into the killer. When people are afraid, they generally seek the company of others in the illusion of protection. In that sense, Hudson was a real New Yorker. If he allowed himself to think like that, he would never leave his apartment.
He heard the engine of an approaching car and smiled. Serena had finally made it. He imagined the girl’s nipples hardening at his touch and he felt a pleasant, warm sensation and a satisfying bulge under his zipper. He would think of some excuse to get her to let him drive. An intriguing image came to him as he waited, of him driving the convertible past the pine trees along the dark haute corniche, the wind in his hair and a lovely New Zealander bent over his lap with his cock in her mouth.
He moved towards the city lights on the other side of the wharf to meet her. He did not hear the steps of the man coming up from behind, for the simple reason that they were silent.
But the arm that encircled his throat and the hand that covered his mouth were made of iron. The blade of the knife, striking him from above, was precise and lethal.
It cut his heart in two.
Hudson’s athletic body doubled in weight and suddenly fell limp in the arms of his killer, who held him effortlessly. Hudson McCormack died with the sight of the castle of Monte Carlo in his eyes, without the satisfaction of one small, final vanity. He never knew how well his white shirt set off the red of his blood.
FIFTY-THREE
From her balcony, Helena responded with a smile to her son’s wave as he walked out of the courtyard with Nathan Parker and Ryan Mosse. The gate clicked shut and the house was deserted. This was the first time in several days that they were leaving her alone and she was surprised. She could see that her father was following a plan, but she was unsure of the details. She had walked in on her father and his thug in the midst of a conversation that had stopped suddenly as she entered the room. Ever since her involvement with Frank, her presence was considered suspicious, even dangerous. The general hadn’t even considered the idea of leaving her alone with Stuart for an instant. So now that she was left at home, anguish was her only companion.
Before going out, on her father’s orders Ryan Mosse had removed all the phones and locked them in a room on the ground floor. Helena didn’t own a mobile phone. Nathan Parker spoke to her briefly in the tone he used when he would not accept ‘no’ as an answer.
‘We’re going out. You’ll stay here, alone. Need I say more?’ He interpreted her silence as an answer. ‘Good. Let me remind you of just one thing, if I have to. Frank’s life depends on you. If your son isn’t enough to bring you to reason, maybe the other one will be a deterrent for anything you want to do.’
As her father spoke to her through the door that opened on to the garden, she could see Stuart and Mosse waiting for him by the gate.
‘We’ll be leaving here as soon as I finish what I have to do. We have to take your sister’s body home, although that doesn’t seem to matter much to you. When we’re back in the States, your attitude will change, you’ll see. This is just a stupid infatuation.’
When he had returned from Paris and she’d found the courage to throw her affair with Frank Ottobre in his face, Nathan Parker had gone crazy. He certainly wasn’t jealous, at least not the traditional jealousy of a father for his daughter. Nor was it the attachment of a man towards his lover since, as she had told Frank, it had been years since he had forced her to have sexual relations with him.
That seemed to be over for ever, thank God. The mere thought of his hands on her brought back a revulsion that she could still feel years later, which gave her an urgent need to wash. His attentions had stopped as soon as the baby had been born. Even earlier, when she had told him in tears that she was pregnant.
She remembered her father’s eyes when she had told him that she was going to have an abortion.
‘You’re going to do what?’ Nathan Parker had asked, incredulous, as if it were that idea and not the pregnancy that was an abomination.
‘I don’t want this child. You can’t force me to keep it.’
‘And you can’t tell me what I can and cannot do. I am the one who tells you. And you will do nothing, do you understand? N-o-t-h-i-n-g,’ he had enunciated slowly, inches from her face.
‘You will have this child.’ He had handed down his sentence.
Helena would have liked to slash open her womb and pull out what she carried inside with her own bloody hands. Her father had read her mind, which was written on her face. In any case, she had not been left alone for a single moment after that.
To justify her pregnancy and Stuart’s birth in the eyes of the world, Nathan Parker had invented that ridiculous story of the marriage. Parker was a powerful man. As long as national security was not at stake, he was permitted to do almost anything he wanted.
She often wondered why none of the people who associated with her father ever realized how deranged he was. They were important people: congressmen, senators, high-ranking officers, even presidents. Was it really possible that none of them, listening to the words of General Nathan Parker the war hero, suspected that those words came from the mouth and brain of a madman? Perhaps there was a simple explanation. Even if the Pentagon or the White House were aware of the unwholesome aspects of the general’s personality, as long as the consequences were confined to his domestic arrangements, they could be tolerated in exchange for his service to the nation.
After Stuart was born, Parker’s father became possessive of them both in a way that went well beyond his obsessive habits, his unnatural way of loving. Mother and son were not two human beings, but personal property. They were his possessions. He would have destroyed anyone who threatened this situation, which, in his totally lucid but unbalanced mind, he believed to be completely legitimate.
That is why he detested Frank. The agent was standing in his way, opposing him with a personality that was just as strong as his. Despite Frank’s past, Parker realized that his strength was not sickly, but healthy. It didn’t come from hell, it came from the world of men. It was in that guise that Frank had firmly opposed him, refusing to help Parker when the general sought him out – and striking at him when he should have stayed away.
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Above all, Frank was not afraid of him.
Nathan Parker considered Mosse’s release from jail – and the fact that FBI agent Frank Ottobre had been forced to admit he was wrong – as a personal triumph. Now, all he needed for absolute victory was to catch Arianna Parker’s killer. And Helena had no doubt that he would succeed. In any case, he would try.
Helena thought of poor Arianna. Her stepsister’s life hadn’t been much better than hers. They didn’t have the same mother. Helena hardly knew her own mother, who had died of leukemia when she was three. Treatment for the disease was not very developed at the time, and she had passed away quickly, despite the family’s wealth. All that was left of her were some photographs and a super-8 movie, a few images of the slightly awkward movements of a thin blonde woman with a gentle face, smiling into the camera. She was holding a little girl in her arms and standing next to her husband, and master, in uniform.
Nathan Parker still spoke of his wife’s death as a personal affront. If he could express his feelings about it in one word, he would say it was intolerable.
Helena had grown up by herself, in the care of a series of governesses who had been replaced with growing frequency as she got older. She had been just a child and hadn’t realized that the women left of their own accord, despite the excellent salary. As soon as they’d breathed the air of that house and discovered what sort of man General Parker really was, they would close the door behind them with a sigh of relief.
Then, without warning, Nathan Parker had come back from a long tour of duty in Europe, something involving NATO, with a new wife, Hanneke, as a souvenir. Hanneke was German, a brunette with a statuesque body and eyes like chips of ice. The general had treated the whole affair in his usual hasty manner. He had introduced Helena to the woman with the smooth, pale skin. A perfect stranger, her new mother. And that’s the way Hanneke remained, not a mother but a perfect stranger.
Arianna was born soon after.
Engrossed in his flourishing career, Parker had left Hanneke to care for the house, which she did with the same icy coldness that seemed to flow through her veins. Their relationship was strictly formal. Helena was never allowed to see her sister as a child. Arianna was another stranger who shared the same house, not a companion who could help her grow up and whom she could help in return. There were governesses, nannies, teachers and private tutors for that.
And when Helena turned into a beautiful adolescent, there was the boy, Andrés. He was the son of Bryan Jeffereau, the landscaper who supervised care of the park around their mansion. In the summer, during school vacations, Andrés worked with the men to ‘gain experience’, as his father had proudly told Nathan Parker. The general was in agreement and often called Andrés a ‘good boy’.
Andrés himself was shy and sneaked furtive glances at Helena from under his baseball cap as he dragged lopped-off branches to the pickup truck to be towed away. Helena had noticed his awkwardness; his embarrassed looks and smiles. She had accepted them without giving anything in exchange, but inside she was aflame. Andrés was not exactly handsome. There were lots of boys like him, not good-looking but not bad-looking either, with manners that suddenly turned clumsy when she was present.
Andrés was the only boy Helena knew. He was her first crush. Andrés smiled at her, blushing, and she smiled back, blushing too. And that was it. One day, Andrés had found the courage to leave her a note hidden in the leaves of a magnolia tree, tied to a branch with green plastic-coated wire. She had found it and stuck it in the pocket of her jodhpurs. Later, in bed, she had taken out the paper and read it, her heart racing.
Now, so many years later, she could not remember the exact words of Andrés Jeffereau’s declaration of love, just the warmth she had felt at the sight of his shaky handwriting. They were the innocuous words of a seventeen-year-old boy with a teenage crush on the girl he saw as the princess of the manor.
Hanneke, her stepmother, who certainly did not live by the rules she set, had walked in suddenly without knocking. Helena had hidden the note under her blanket a little too quickly.
‘Give it to me.’ Her stepmother had come over to the bed and held out her hand.
‘But I . . .’
Hanneke raised her eyebrows, a cold stare directed at her stepdaughter. Helena’s cheeks had turned red.
‘Helena Parker, I just gave you an order.’
She had pulled out the note and given it to her. Hanneke had read it without the slightest change of expression. Then she had folded it and put it in the pocket of her sweater set. ‘All right, I think this should remain our little secret. We wouldn’t want to cause your father any grief.’
That had been her only remark. Helena had felt an enormous sense of relief and did not realize that the woman was lying, simply because she enjoyed manipulating people’s emotions.
She had seen Andrés the next day. They were alone in the stables where Helena went every day to care for Mister Marlin, her horse. The boy was either there by chance or because he had managed to find an excuse, knowing that she would come by. He had approached her with his face bright red with excitement and confusion. Helena had never noticed the freckles on his cheeks before.
‘Did you read my note?’
It was the first time they had spoken.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘What did you think?’
She hadn’t known what to answer.
‘It . . . it was lovely.’
Suddenly, plucking up his courage, Andrés had bent over and kissed her cheek.
Helena had turned around and felt like dying. Her father was standing there, framed by the stable door, watching them.
He had come down on the boy in a fury and slapped him so violently that his mouth and nose started to bleed. Then, he had lifted him up off the ground and hurled him like a twig against Mister Marlin’s stall. The horse had backed off with a whinny of fright. Andrés’s nose was dripping blood on to his shirt. Parker had grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up.
‘Come with me, you little bastard.’
He had dragged Andrés to the house and thrown him at Bryan Jeffereau’s feet like an empty sack. His father had stood there with his mouth open and a pair of gardening clippers in his hand.
‘Take your sex maniac son and leave my house immediately. And be grateful that you’re getting away so easily without being charged with attempted rape.’
There was no answer to Nathan Parker’s fury and Jeffereau knew him too well to try. In silence, he had taken his son, his men and his equipment and left for good. Helena never saw Andrés Jeffereau again.
Nathan Parker’s attentions to her had started not long afterwards.
Helena crossed the bedroom that looked out on to the balcony. The bed was cut in two by a ray of light and she noticed that the half bathed in sunlight was the side that Frank had slept on. Frank – the only person in the world to whom she had had the courage to confess her shame.
She left the room and went downstairs.
The happy memory of those few moments spent with Frank were not enough to erase her other memories, long past but still vivid enough to wound her as if it had all happened yesterday.
The world was full of Nathan Parkers. Helena knew it. And she was equally sure that the world was full of women like her, poor frightened girls who cried tears of humiliation and disgust on sheets covered with blood and the very semen that had conceived them.
Her hatred knew no bounds. Hatred of her father and of herself for not being able to rebel when she still could have. Now she had Stuart, the son she loved as much as she hated her father. The son she once would have paid any price to have lost and whom she now refused to lose at any price. But who was he? As hard as she tried, she could find no alibi for her weakness in the face of her father’s violence.
She sometimes wondered if the same sick love that existed in the mind of Nathan Parker also existed like a cancer in her own. Did she continue to submit to the torture because she was his daughter
, with the same blood and the same perversion running through her veins? She had asked herself that question time and time again. Strangely enough, there was only one thing that kept her from going insane: the knowledge that she had never found pleasure in what she had been forced to endure, only pain and self-disgust.
Hanneke must have suspected something but Helena never knew for sure. What had happened afterwards was probably just the result of the fire she kept hidden beneath her glacial, formal exterior, a fire that no one had ever noticed, perhaps not even Hanneke herself. In a banal, undramatic manner, simply leaving a letter that Helena had only learned of years later, Hanneke had run off with the family’s riding master, abandoning her husband and daughters. She had taken with her a very large amount of money, the icing on the cake.
The only thing that Nathan Parker had cared about in the whole affair was the discretion with which it was handled. Hanneke had probably been some kind of high-class whore, but she wasn’t stupid. If she had publicly humiliated her husband, the consequences would have been devastating. The man would have followed her to the ends of the earth to get his revenge.
The letter, which Helena had never read, had probably offered an exchange for what the woman knew or suspected about her husband’s behaviour with his daughter. Her freedom and silence in exchange for the very same freedom and silence. The pact had been tacitly accepted. Meanwhile, lawyers for both sides had arranged a hasty divorce to set things straight.
And, as they say, no one was hurt.
Certainly not Nathan Parker, whose lack of interest in his wife had become absolute, like his power over Helena. Certainly not Hanneke, who could now enjoy her money and riding masters wherever she felt like it.
Helena and Arianna, hostages of fate, had been left to pay the consequences of mistakes they had not made. As soon as she was of age, Arianna had left home. After roaming around for a while, she had ended up living in Boston. Her fights with her father had escalated as she grew older. On the one hand, Helena was terrified that the same thing would happen to Arianna that had happened to her. Sometimes she examined Arianna’s face when their father spoke to her, to see whether or not the fear appeared in her eyes. On the other hand, and she cursed herself for the thought, she prayed that it would happen so that she would no longer hear her father’s step as he approached her bedroom in the middle of the night, or feel his hand raising the sheets and the weight of his body in her bed, or . . .