LITMIR.BIZ

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he likes me. I’ve made it as clear as I dare that I’m into him. I mean, how could I not be? It’s not just the money, and the chances he’s giving me, but he’s got the kind of eyes you want to drown in, if only he’ll let you dive in. Metallic one minute, melting the next. And his mouth. What would it be like at kissing, I wonder? You can never tell if he’s going to swear or smile. What’s with the grim, distant mystique?’

      ‘He’s deep, not distant,’ Crystal murmured. ‘But attractive, sure. If vampirical millionaires are your thing!’

      I giggled. ‘So what’s the craic? We’re lone souls who collided. And yet …’ I made a throat-cutting gesture ‘… he’s let me go so far with him and then – zip. Nada.’

      ‘You didn’t collide. He picked you.’

      ‘That’s what he says.’ I bent my fingers into hooks and waggled them like a witch casting spells over a cauldron. ‘But how could he know I’d be hanging round this very square on Halloween night? He’d only just moved in here himself!’

      She lifted one thin shoulder. ‘I sometimes think he has a sixth sense.’

      ‘I don’t believe in all that. He’s just a voyeur, same as me. A spy. And now he’s got me where he wants me, in his house, under his roof. I’m contracted to stay here until the exhibition is sold out. I’m contracted to, you know, please him whenever he asks. So why doesn’t he ask? Why doesn’t he take advantage?’

      ‘He won’t bare his soul until everything is absolutely right in his own mind.’

      ‘Who’s talking about his soul? I’m talking carnal knowledge here. Christ! Life’s too short to be a perfectionist!’ I snatched a pot of gloss, smeared it carefully over my lips. ‘So is there something wrong with him?’

      Crystal raised her thin eyebrows. She looked just like a wooden matryoshka doll, with seven diminishing Crystal clones trapped inside.

      ‘As opposed to something wrong with you, you mean?’

      ‘All in working order, as he well knows!’ I glared at her, but it had no effect on her etched expression. ‘Is he … how can I put this? Is he impotent? I know he’s responsive to stimulae, but can he get it up? Did this ex-wife torment him to such a degree that he can’t perform any more? Is that why he won’t come on to me?’

      ‘It’s not my place to say.’

      ‘That sounds horribly like a yes. I need to know, Crystal. You were part of the ménage here. I’m guessing it was no-holds-barred in the Levi household once upon a time.’

      She shook her head and concentrated again on fussing with the curls at the ends of my hair. ‘I assure you, young lady. Nothing wrong with him at all. Not physically. He’s all red-blooded male.’

      ‘I’m going to have to take your word on that. Mentally, then?’

      ‘Nothing wrong with him up there, either. He’s an intelligent, perceptive, savvy man who made some terrible choices. Sacrifices, too. You’re right about one thing. That woman knocked the stuffing out of him. And when he ordered her to leave she lashed out in the worst way possible. Took the one person he loved in the world.’

      ‘His little brother, you mean? How did that happen?’

      The blackbird eyes glimmered over the top of my head.

      ‘Not little, exactly. He was about your age by then. But she seduced him and brainwashed him. I’m certain of it. The original cougar, red in tooth and claw.’ Her thin red lips opened slightly, then snapped shut again like a letter box. ‘But that’s forbidden territory. Gustav’s Achilles heel. The day he tells you about that saga is the day you’ll know he’s letting you right in, Serena.’

      ‘He’s not dead, is he? The brother? Just tell me that much.’

      ‘No, no. Alive and kicking somewhere on this earth, but I suppose you could say he’s dead to Gustav.’

      She was holding the hairbrush like a weapon and I had another graphic vision of her bringing it down on a soft, bare bottom. My soft bare bottom.

      ‘Be very careful with him, Serena. You’re the first, the only woman who has got this close since – for more than five years. Apart from me, but I don’t count.’

      ‘You do count, Crystal.’ I leaned nearer the mirror to paint on some mascara, but kept my eyes on her. ‘I’ve seen the video. Don’t go all poker-faced. Gustav showed me the photos and movies in the house in Baker Street. I saw you being spanked by some dominatrix figure. You know my work. My scenes from a Venetian convent. So you know we’re on a similar wavelength. I daren’t ask Gustav, but who’s the person in the fetish leather going at you with the whip?’

      ‘I guess it’s no secret. It would be easy enough to google the material if you really wanted.’ The brush paused in my hair, then snagged on a tangle. ‘It’s Margot. His ex-wife. That was her sideline.’

      ‘Some sideline! What was her mainline?’

      ‘She ran a couple of boutiques. One in Switzerland and later she opened one in Marylebone.’

      ‘What sort of boutiques?’

      ‘Fashion. And then she branched out into accessories.’

      We caught each other’s eyes in the mirror. Hers were two black slits above her thin red mouth. Mine were huge with questions.

      ‘Accessories. Right. Like handcuffs? Catwoman muzzles? Whips?’ My hands flew up to my mouth. ‘So how on earth did you get involved, Crystal? Were you friends?’

      She picked up a vicious-looking comb and worried at a knot of hair until it unravelled.

      ‘She placed an advert, about a year before the end of their marriage. Discreet demo model for the private shows she staged to encourage her more timid celebrity customers. Gustav was refusing to be part of the underground business by then, although he oversaw the filming of the installation. Then the dreadful showdown occurred and she, and the brother, were gone.’

      Down in the street we heard the melodic honk of the car horn.

      Crystal’s eyes glittered in the bright morning light flooding in from the three arched windows. The brush resumed its work and jerked my head backwards.

      ‘Margot hasn’t left the building, though, has she? She’s still up here, getting in the way.’ I tapped my head. ‘I need to know what I’m up against.’

      Tangle sorted, Crystal brushed so briskly that it hurt.

      ‘You’re up against a spectre, nothing more. But everything about her was toxic. They were a toxic mix. At first her, ah, hobby was only indulged when she was at the house in Lugano. But then her buyers and clients became international and started clamouring for more access, and so their home in Baker Street became the club. The punters loved the illusion of the respectable old English town house being the facade for all that debauchery, and that’s why it was the obvious place to keep the collection even after they both moved out.’

      I shook my head in disbelief. My hair swished like silk. ‘No wonder it felt like a mausoleum.’

      ‘It went to her head. She was the queen bee in that house. She paraded her obsession in front of him, cajoling and threatening him if he didn’t join in. It got out of control. Mind games and bullying.’

      ‘I don’t understand why he would preserve it as an exhibition if it made him so unhappy?’

      Crystal bent her head in agreement. ‘I agree. I’ve tried to persuade him to sell it or just destroy it. But it’s an investment. It still makes huge amounts of money. He’s an entrepreneur, remember. Sees potential in the darkest of corners. Maybe he’s holding it to use against her one day. But it’s poisoning him, just like she did. Women like that are very devious about the ways they wound and men are too proud to fight back.’

      ‘I know

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