Home Before Dark (40 page)

'Nope.’
'You don’t even live in Brooklyn?’
She shook her head. 'Manhattan. I work a boring job
answering phones in an office in Flafbush. My mom lives
near there.’
'Why did you lie about those things?’
'Why do you think? I didn’t want you to find me.’
I thought for a moment and said, 'If you hadn’t called
me this morning I wouldn’t have come looking for you. I’d
given up.’
'You sure about that, mister?’
'Well, I don’t really know. Now that I’m with you it’s impossible
for me to imagine . . . Jelly, you have to take some
responsibility for this.’
She laughed. 'Let’s just say we were drawn together.’
Another of those shivers ran through me. When I looked
at her I could hardly avoid having certain thoughts – the
chemistry was there and bubbling over – but I felt inhibited
by her modesty, her seriousness. She had already said nothing
was going to happen and I believed she meant it.
And yet she was the one who kept bringing up the subject
'We were meant to find each other,’ I said.
Campbell Armour put down the phone, and listened.
He could hear movement upstairs which suggested the old
lady had woken from her nap. As soon as she came down, he’d thank her for her hospitality, ask her to get Ed to contact him if he happened to show up later – then he was out of
here.
He picked up the receiver and dialled his client’s cell again. The concierge at the Hotel Carlyle had told him that Mr
Lister was out for the evening – he had tickets for the theatre, he believed – which would explain why he hadn’t been able to reach him on his cell. It was still switched off. He left
another message.
Closing his laptop, Campbell went through to the kitchen.
He tossed his empty soda cans in the garbage and began
jotting down the number of a local taxi company on the
refrigerator door, when a hot blast of salsa cascaded into the room from the floor above. It didn’t sound like Mrs Fielding’s kind of music.
He walked to the end of the kitchen. Beyond the breakfast nook a short passage led through an archway to the back door. On his left there were two internal doors. The first opened directly onto the garage – he glimpsed a station-wagon covered in a tarp and an empty space for another car with a dusty tennis ball dangling on a string to act as a parking guide. He remembered Mrs Fielding mentioning that she let the maid, Jesusita, have the use of her runabout.
The second door revealed a narrow wooden staircase. He hit the light switch. The music got louder as he went up. He guessed Charlie Cruz or Tito Puente.
At the top of the stairs, Campbell paused, one hand on the banister, and called out, hello. The door facing him was cracked a couple of inches. He could just see the foot of a single bed, the room in darkness.
A smooth male voice glided in over the music, startling
him for a second before he realised it was a commercial. He
called out again, this time in Spanish; then, knocking at the
door, pushed it back.
Campbell put on the light and walked over to the bedside
table. The radio-alarm clock, tuned to
WPAT
AMOR
, a 24*
hour Latin station, showed the time as 07.30. He touched
the snooze bar and the nerve-racking din ceased, the red
display numerals stopped blinking. It made him wonder about
Jesusita.
Apart from the unmade bed, the small hotel-like room was
tidy enough. A black-velvet painting of the Virgin Mary in a
jungle setting above the bed was the only wall decoration.
There were a few personal effects: stuffed animals, a miniature
licence plate with
JESUSITA
engraved over the New Jersey,
Garden State logo, make-up and toiletries on the vanity and
in the bathroom. Oddly, no photographs. He’d have expected
some of her family in Guatemala or wherever – maybe one
of Carlos. A maid’s white housecoat, white pantyhose and
slip were folded and laid out on a chair, white shoes
underneath.
He looked through her modest pile of CDs. Campbel
wasn’t sure what he was doing here now. He tugged open
the louvred doors to the closet and got a whiff of gardenia
masking stale sweat. There was a spare housecoat hanging
on the rack, some laundered blouses and a pair of jeans, a heap of dirty clothes in a corner showed Jesusita in a less
appealing light.
The rest of the hanging space was taken up by a collection
of old suits and dresses in zippered dust bags, probably belonging to Mr and Mrs Fielding. He parted them and
noticed on the floor at the back of the closet, half buried
under a down comforter, a black rucksack. Campbell felt his
gut tighten.

He remembered his client’s story of how Sam Metcalf
became convinced she was being followed through Europe
and had tried to photograph her elusive shadow. Campbell
hadn’t seen the results himself. They’d been wiped off the
victim’s webpage before he got the chance, but the common
identifier in three of the shots according to Ed Lister had
been a black rucksack.
He reached in and lifted the bag out by its straps; it was
a Berghaus day pack, half full, heavier than he’d expected.
He owned a similar pack himself, only made by Tekbag
USA
, with a special padded compartment for a laptop. He
checked the side-flap first. The cushion-lined pouch
contained a cell-phone charger cord and, tucked inside the
flap, a name tag.

DAVID
MALLET
, PO
BOX
117,
RAPIDS
CITY
,
SOUTH
DAKOTA
.

Campbell frowned. If the rucksack belonged to Sam’s
murderer, the name and address were probably false, but the
choice of’Mallet’ was interesting. It was one of the placeholder
names in the 'Alice and Bob’ dramatis personae – archetypal
characters used instead of letters of the alphabet in cryptographic
protocols and computer security for the sake of clarity.
More commonly known as Mallory, the 'malicious active
attacker’, Mallet could modify messages and substitute his
own, which made securing a system against him the ultimate
challenge.
There was no way that a hacker like Ward could have taken
the name as an alias and been unaware of its significance. It
was the kind of in-joke he seemed to enjoy. But if the rucksack
belonged to him, then what was it doing here in the maid’s
closet at La Rochelle? Campbell withdrew the little card from
its Perspex window. On the other side was the address of Ed

Lister’s office in Paris.
He was filled suddenly with a deep uncertainty, close to

panic.
It had already occurred to him that the online conversations
he’d read between his client and 'Jelly’ might not be safe. It
would have been simple for Ward to alter them to make it
look as if Ed was stalking the girl. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t stalking her, or that she was in any less danger.
He sat back on his haunches and thought. Rapids City,
South Dakota . . . Mount Rushmore. A teasing Hitchcock
reference from Ward perhaps? The movie North by Northwest hinged on a case of mistaken identity, a man wrongly
suspected, framed for something he didn’t do. Or did it just
seem that way?
He didn’t know who or what the hell he was looking for,
He felt afraid now, not just for the girl, but for himself. As
he loosened the drawstring that secured the neck of the rucksack,
Campbell’s cell phone vibrated against his hip.
Kira said, 'Listen, I’m sorry I hung up on you before.’
'Heyyy!’ He laughed out loud with relief, the warmth of
her voice close to his ear flooding over him. 'I was just about
to call you.’
'Where are you? Please say the airport.’
He cleared his throat. 'Dish, you’re not going to believe
this . . .’

The lights of a car coming down the hill off the highway
flickered across the window. He watched to see if it would
turn up the driveway, but the beams swung south away from
La Rochelle.
It reminded Campbell that he hadn’t ordered the taxi
They’d been chatting for twenty minutes, mostly discussing
the case. Kira had told him quietly they’d talk about the
money when he got home. Still trying to justify his following the trail out here to Gilmans Landing instead of calling the
cops – she wasn’t really buying it – he started going through the contents of the rucksack.
It contained little of interest. Light blue check cotton shirt, change of underwear, socks, an old pair of Adidas trainers, size ten; there were two books – a paperback of Thoreau’s Walden and a cloth-bound copy of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard. Inside the flyleaf of the novel was the ex libris
of Greenside, Ed Lister’s home in Wiltshire.
He’d asked Kira for a psychological perspective, talking motives now. She was explaining to him how fantasies of revenge sometimes conceal a darker truth, when Campbell interrupted her and said, hold on. Reaching the bottom of the rucksack, he pulled out an oblong box wrapped in a carrier bag from Bowery Kitchen Supplies, a professional cookware store on West Sixteenth Street. His eye skimmed the manufacturer’s description on the label.
'Forged from a single blank of high carbon steel, the 11”
cambered blade echoes the moon’s shape in the midpoint of its
cycle . . .’
He felt the flat white box grow heavy in his hands. He tore it open. Inside was a new single-edge mezzaluna still in its protective plastic sleeve.
'Jesus,’ he breathed. 'Oh Jesus.’
It was an exact replica of the weapon used to kill June Seaton.
'What’s wrong?’
He didn’t answer. In the distance, he heard a truck shift gears.
'What is it . . . Campbell?’ 'Nothing, honey.’
“Then why did you say that?’ Kira said, 'Campbell, I know you. I have a really bad feeling about this. Please . . .’
'Relax, Dish.’ He laughed as he shut the lid. 'Tell me about your day,’ he said, though he felt a different sense of urgency
now.
With his cell clamped between his cheek and shoulder, he
swept the boxed mezzaluna and everything else into the rucksack,
buckled the main flaps, then threw it in the back of the
closet and closed the doors.
He took some comfort in the knife still being here. At least
it hadn’t been put to use yet. Whoever bought it was clearly
planning to do more than chop up herbs.
He turned out the light and started down the stairs. He
was about halfway, still talking to his wife, when he heard
the front door slam.
'Honey, I have to go now. Kiss Amy for me. I love you.’
'Why are you whispering?’
He cut Kira off, flipped his cell shut and stood, listening.
Another door banged, the rustle of shopping bags, a man’s
voice floating up from below.
'Grandma, I’m home.’ He wasn’t sure whether or not to
feel relieved.
Then he heard the clip of confident footsteps returning to
the front of the house, followed by low muffled conversation
Campbell imagined the old lady telling Ed Lister she’d had
a visitor. He thought of slipping out the back door.
In the kitchen hallway, tiptoeing towards the exit, he remembered
that he’d left his laptop and sportsbag in the front
parlour.
'Campbell?’
He froze, then turned slowly around.
The figure standing under the arch, smiling at him as if
they knew each other, wasn’t anyone he’d seen before. He’d
caught the look of surprise in the stranger’s eyes, but it was
quickly masked. A young open face, friendly and pleasant
'Not leaving without saying hello?’

64

'What would you say if I told you I lied about sleeping with

my ex?’
'I don’t know. I mean, for Christ’s sake, Jelly, I took you
at your word.’
'Well . . . that was kinda the point.’
'Yes, but why would you lie about something like that?’
She smiled slowly, as if she was amused by my innocence.
She had a deliciously sly, sweet-tempered smile that was hard
to resist.
'About sleeping with Guy?’
'Guy is your old lover? You never mentioned his name.’
'Guy Mallory.’
'Okay, so you didn’t sleep with Guy. Did you come close?
I mean, was there a situation where you could have done, but didn’t?’
'I told him I was in love with someone else.’
I felt a thud in my chest. 'Someone else. I see . . .’
'Yes.’
'I’m just taking this in.’
'It isn’t the only thing I lied to you about.’
'No, I think I realise that now.’
'You feeling okay?’
'I don’t know.’
'Let me ask you something.’
'Can it wait?’
She shook her head. 'No. It’s the reason I’m here, Ed. I couldn’t let you go away not knowing how you make
me feel. You really meant those crazy things you wrote?’
'What are you talking about?’
She lowered her eyes. 'Your last e-mail. You said if we didn’t
meet, it would be like a denial of the reason the two of us
were put on this earth . . . but that, no matter what, you
would never stop loving me.’
A little surprised because, as I remembered, my last e-mail
had been an emotional but rather terse affair, I said, 'I meant
every word.’
There was really nothing else I could say. I could hardly
tell her that I had reason to suspect Ward must have intercepted
and edited what I’d written.
'Still feel the same? Now that you’ve had a chance to
inspect the merchandise?’
'I wish we were alone right now.’
'Well, so do I.’
She put an elbow on the table and leaned her cheek on
her hand, her head tilted to one side as she looked in my
eyes. Hers, aslant, darkly melting, shone with that open-heart
radiance we all hope to see at least once in our lives. I wanted
to kiss her.
“This is it, isn’t it.. . Jelly?’ I could barely get the words out.
'Yes it is.’
There was a silence that I imagined the whole restaurant
must have heard because it seemed for a moment the room
had grown quiet too.
'Can’t you say something . . . tell a joke or something?’
'I think we should go now. I need to go home.’
'No wait, I am just. . . trying to adjust to the new reality
… I mean, I knew this all along. I knew you felt the same
way.’
“I lied about Guy to put you off, mister,’ she said in a low
sure voice. 'Because you were . . . the whole situation was
getting out of hand. I just felt I had to end things.’
'And look what’s happened.’
I smiled and reached for her hand again across the table.
'Yeah,’ she said, drawing her hand away, 'but that doesn’t
make a wrong right. Nothing’s changed here. You’re still
married. You still have a family, Ed. As far as I’m concerned that makes you unavailable.’
'Circumstances change.’
Her eyes filled with tears. 'No they fucking don’t.’
'I can’t let you go,’ I said.