“The Corpse Flower” – a novel by Georgina Tremayne – Copyright © 2011

PROLOGUE

Esfahan, Iran

Rahim Hemmati continued to stare at his CCTV monitor long after it had faded to black. He lifted a hand, again and again tracing the memory of the woman in the tomb onto the screen.

The dark screen was a striking contrast to the whiteness of the woman’s skin. But her flesh had looked too white to him, so white that it seemed sick, anaemic, lifeless.

Her breathing was still audible. It piped through to the speakers he had mounted on the wall. The tip of his finger rested on a switch, and he toyed with the switch for a long time, much longer than he knew. Then he turned it from 4 to 0, cutting off her air supply.

The enormity of his actions crashed down upon him. He clung to the monitor. His shoulders sagged, he rolled his head and the bones in his neck cracked. He laid his cheek against the screen; the cold glass felt dead.

A wail, sharp and insistent, started from along the corridor in the other wing of the house; he flinched.

For a fraction longer, he listened to the stranger’s breathing, then he switched off the speakers and pushed the woman from his mind, leaving all thought of her alone in her tomb as he left his room.

Hemmati reached the end of the corridor and entered the section of the house where his wife now lived. A handful of metal panels, installed between the window panes, reflected the sunlight at this time of day and the perfumed air in her room had transformed from fragrant to stifling.

Bird of Paradise stood tall in a large wooden barrel. Cacti were placed at random in orange, blue and white ceramic containers.  Three potted rose bushes wilted in the heat next to a long cement trough filled with poppies. The poppies were coming into bloom; their dark red flowers dispersed like a blood spatter.

In contrast to their vibrancy, his wife’s withered left arm hung at her side. She struggled to pull herself to her feet with the help of a harness that hung from the ceiling. Her face was streaked with tears and she murmured a string of indistinguishable sounds as her head twisted forward at a right angle. He tried to smile at her but failed, as always. This woman bore no resemblance to the friend and lover she had been just three years before.

He remembered a time when she hadn’t given a second thought to the admiring glances that followed her whenever she walked down the street. Now he saw how distraught she became when people averted their eyes from her wheelchair. And although the thick metal brace that supported her skull was covered by material, it might as well have been exposed for all the world to see. It was a constant reminder, pressing on her cranium, that her existence barely clung to the edge of the living.

He lifted her up, gently cleaned her face and helped her along the corridor to the bathroom. With each step her whimpers grew softer, while the roar locked tight inside of him grew louder.

 

ONE

New York City, USA. Eight days earlier.

Grace sat on a wooden bench at the side of the gym and massaged her left knee.  Although the swelling had gone down, the bruise remained a dark purple in its centre. Only the edges had faded to yellow.

“Great kneecaps,” Jerome said, and sat down next to her, too close.

His high cheekbones appeared more prominent against the flatness of his brow; his nose, a classic Roman profile, disguised his Scottish roots, and his chin jutted out, just enough.  Strong, trustworthy features designed for a career in politics or a job as a used car salesman.

His hair was a different story though. It appeared to be in the middle of a fight, like a decent suit now in tatters and a shirt only half tucked in, pulled in different directions, impervious to combs or gel. And his eyebrows supported the brawl, the hairs standing at odd angles like two groups of excitable drunks. The picture as a whole attracted both sexes.

“Do you fancy dinner tonight?” He asked.

“No thanks,” Grace said, adjusting the support bandage wrapped around her left thigh.

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t want dinner.”  She edged away and scanned the gym. No one was looking at them.

“I do,” he said. “I’ve got to eat.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked her out, yet each time he asked her it needled her a little more than the time before. Or maybe it was the dread of a conversation that she was nowhere near ready to have. Not with anyone. She was still too raw from her loss, a loss that time had not healed. It hadn’t even come close.

He was waiting for her to speak but she gave him nothing to work with, so he tried a different angle.

“Your skin’s so white, like new snow, you know, before it gets covered in dirt. And your hair’s great too. Millions of copper spirals.”

“Thanks. You make me feel so special.”

“It’s -”

She cut him off.  “I’m being ironic.” Her tone implored him to leave her alone.

He only heard its sharp edge and his face fell.

“Hey,” she said, more softly this time. “You’re a friend. And I’m really grateful you were there the other night when those morons jumped me.” She touched the lump, still tender, on the side of her head. “So thanks for asking, but please stop now.” She checked her watch. “Come on. The guys are waiting for you to start and we have to be downtown in less than two hours.”

She joined the other students at the practice mats where Jerome led the warm-up routine. She threw herself into the training as though her life depended on it. An hour later, she was coated in sweat and her muscles screamed for mercy but she ignored them and kept on going, pushing her emotional pain away with the physical battering her body was taking. She finished the session with a back kick that neared perfection and only sank onto the mat when she had nothing left to give.

 

Grace avoided crowds and the constraints of the subway. The thought of being packed into a train’s metal casing left her in a cold sweat. She took taxis or buses around Manhattan, but it was five in the afternoon when the taxi shifts changed, when nothing was for hire, and Jerome’s motorcycle was the surest way to cut through the gridlock.

He parked his Harley-Davidson outside a building in Gramercy and they took off their crash helmets.  Frigid gusts of wind mixed with snow flurries swept in from New York Harbour and stung Grace’s face. She rubbed her cheeks. Blood rushed back into them as she pressed the intercom toapartment #8.  There was no audible response but a thick steel door opened to their left and into a passageway. At the end, another door led directly into a moderate-sized room.

Suspended from the ceiling in the centre of the room was a light-bulb without a lightshade. Two brick-red sofas flanked a glass table. The smell of coffee came from a small open kitchen on the right; Jerome’s nostrils twitched.

“This is Lee,” Grace said, gesturing to the man approaching.

Lee offered his hand to Jerome and said, “Care for some coffee?”

“Jerome MacFadden.” He replied, shaking his hand. “Yeah, I’ll have a cup.”

Jerome followed Grace to the sofas, calling over his shoulder, “Have we met before? You look familiar.”

“No,” Lee said. “But you’re not the first person to say that.”  He brought over the percolator and two white porcelain mugs, putting them down on the glass table. He cut to the chase. “Grace likes your background. Strong experience with Special Ops in the Middle East.”

Jerome raised his eyebrows and stuck out his lower lip. “You get to the point, don’t you?” Lee didn’t answer, so Jerome asked, “And do you like my background too?”

“I like your work inYemen,AfghanistanandIran.”

“I only did two days inYemen.”

“We know.” Lee poured two cups of coffee and pushed them towards Grace and Jerome.

“You’re not having one?” Jerome asked.

“No.” He leaned back in his seat. “We want to hire someone with your type of experience; for a one-off contract.”

“To do what?”

“To find a missing person.”

“Why can’t you use the police?”

“Too sensitive.”

“What country?” Jerome asked, stirring in sugar.

“Does it matter?”

“It might. Are you paying in cash?”

Lee left the question unanswered.

Jerome waited a little, and then shrugged. He took a sip from the mug and smacked his lips. “Where’d you say you got the coffee?”

“I didn’t. Can we negotiate terms?”

“Give me a great big bundle of cash and I won’t really care about the rest.”

“Good.” Lee said, standing, and handed Grace a fat sealed envelope.  “Grace will sort out your contract.” He walked towards the door. “I have some business to finish out of town.”

“Can I just – ” Jerome began.

Lee cut him off. “See you at the airport tomorrow.”

Jerome registered that the door had opened and closed again, and that Lee was no longer there. His mouth hung open.

“What happened?  Where’s he gone? I haven’t even finished my coffee. Did I get the job? What is the job?”

“We’ve just hired you to help us find a missing person.” Grace said. “Lee had to leave. Some other business. And we’re flying to Singapore tomorrow.”

“Singapore? Fair enough. Singapore’s alright with me.” He looked around the apartment. “Does he live here full time?”

“When he’s in town.”

“The place looks a bit on the sparse side. Where’s the TV? Photos? Books? Where’s his personal stuff?” He wiped a finger across the top of the table. “Where’s the dust? What is he, some sort of minimalist? A really clean one?”

“He’s Lee.” She opened the envelope and flicked at the corners of the stack of hundred dollar bills before handing the contents to Jerome. “Here’s the first of twenty equal payments. That should help bypass your green card problems.”

He snorted and counted the contents. “Do you fancy some dinner now?”  He asked, optimistically.

She wanted to refuse but her stomach growled and they still had to discuss the job. “I suppose we all have to eat sometime.”

Huddled together, their breath frosting, they raced the few blocks to the Union Square Café, Jerome catching her before she hit the pavement when she slipped on a patch of black ice.