Lovers and Liars Trilogy (2 page)

“On all those going abroad?”

“Yes.” There was a pleasant laugh. “Odd, isn’t it? All my closest friends seem to be Capricorns….”

Susannah made a face at her computer. She began flashing up details of flights and courier runs. Watching figures and times, she began to run down the remaining queries: address of sender, addresses of recipients, preferred method of billing. The voice interrupted.

“Oh, that can all be dealt with when I bring the parcels in.”

“Fine. But will you want to pay by check or credit card? I can take the details now—”

“Cash,” the voice interrupted, suddenly firm. “I’ll pay in cash. When I come in.”

Cash settlement was very unusual; it was at this point that Susannah’s doubts really began. She said, “Fine. If I could just take a name and contact number…”

“I have to go now,” said the voice. “Thank you
so
much. You’ve been tremendously helpful.”

Then, without further clarification, this odd woman hung up the phone.

Susannah was left feeling irritated. She suspected she had heard the last of this transaction. She did not expect the woman caller to materialize. She did not expect ever to set eyes on these four parcels. A time-waster, she decided. But she was wrong.

At eleven
A.M.
precisely, the lobby doors swung back, and one of the most beautiful women Susannah had ever seen walked into the reception area. Susannah was at once certain that she must be a model, although she did not recognize her. She managed not to stare, but so exquisite was this woman, so perfect and so costly every detail of her dress, Susannah was transfixed. She was, later, able to furnish an exact description—as perhaps had been the intention all along.

The woman was at least five feet ten inches tall, and enviably slender. Her hair, cut short, was that compendium of gold and silver achieved only when nature has been aided by an expensive hairdresser. She needed, and wore, no makeup. Her skin was tanned, her eyes sapphire blue, her teeth perfect, and her smile warm. Around her wrist, just visible, was a gold Cartier tank watch on a green crocodile strap, which Susannah at once coveted. She was wearing the most beautiful fur coat Susannah had ever seen in her life, a coat that made Susannah revise all her pious beliefs about protecting small furry animals: this coat, full length and luxuriant, was sable.

Beneath the coat the woman wore Chanel head to foot. On this point Susannah was later adamant It was a suit of soft beige tweed, featured in the very issue of
Vogue
now on her desk. Susannah could point to the page on which it was modeled, and she could explain that all the accessories were identical too, from the classic impractical two-tone sling-back Chanel shoes to the double strand of real matched pearls. There they were around this amazing woman’s throat—and there they were on the page of the magazine, with a caption detailing their source (Bulgari) and their cost (a quarter million).

Under her arm the woman carried four small parcels of identical size and shape, packed in an identical way, but of varying weight. The handover was swift. The details were logged on Susannah’s computer and could later be recalled. This was the information they gave:

Name and address of sender:

Mrs. J. A. Hamilton

132 Eaton Place

London SW1

Telephone—071.750.0007

Names and addresses of recipients:

1) M. Pascal Lamartine

Atelier 5

13, rue du Bac

Paris 56742

2) Mr. Johnny Appleyard

Apt. 15, 31 Gramercy Park

New York, NY 10003

3) Signor James McMullen

6, Palazzo Ossorio

Calle Streta

Campiello Albrizzi

Venice 2361

4) Ms. Genevieve Hunter

Flat 1, 56 Gibson Square

London Nl

The total delivery charge was £175.50. The required notes were peeled from a brand-new Vuitton wallet; the fifty-pence piece was taken from a brand-new Vuitton change purse. With polite, low-voiced thanks, the sender left the ICD office ten minutes after she arrived.

Later, when it emerged that this transaction was not all it seemed—one of the recipients was already dead, and none of the recipients had birthdays in January—Susannah was not surprised. There had been, she said, a number of odd inconsistencies.

In the first place, the woman in the sable coat had claimed to be Mrs. J. A. Hamilton but she had worn no wedding ring. In the second, she claimed to be the person who had telephoned earlier, and this was patently absurd. The woman on the telephone had been English, very English indeed; the beauty in the sable coat had been American.

“Which was strange,” Susannah said, frowning. She turned away from her two questioners to look out of her window, her gaze resting on its view of City towers and spires.

“Why strange?” The first of her questioners prompted her.

“Because the discrepancy was unnecessary,” Susannah replied. “It was as if she knew—”

“Knew what?” The second questioner asked.

“Knew that I’d be asked about the transaction,” said Susannah. “Don’t you see? That amazing coat, those clothes. Two different women claiming to be one and the same. Whoever she was, she wanted to make sure that I remembered. …” She paused. Her two questioners exchanged glances.

“Why would she want to do that?” Susannah asked.

T
HE PACKAGE WAS DELIVERED
shortly after nine. Pascal Lamartine, running late for his meeting, signed for it, shook it, and put it down on the breakfast table. No urgency: he would open it later. Meanwhile, he was trying to do several things simultaneously—make coffee, pack, check his camera cases, and, most difficult of all, persuade his daughter, Marianne, to eat her breakfast egg.

Packages, to Pascal, came in two categories. If they were flat, they contained photographs and might be urgent; if they were not, then they were usually something unimportant, promotional materials sent out by a PR firm. His daughter, Marianne, aged seven, saw things differently. To her, parcels signified Christmas or birthdays; they signified pleasure. When Pascal had completed his packing, and made the coffee, he returned to the table to find Marianne had the parcel in her hand. The egg—unappetizing, Pascal had to admit, but then, he could not cook the simplest things—was being ignored.

Marianne examined the parcel. She fingered its string. She fixed her father with an expectant gaze.

“A present,” she said. “Look, Papa. Someone’s sent you a present. You should open it at once.”

Pascal smiled. He concentrated on the task of mixing a perfect café au lait, Marianne-style. The drink had to be milky and sweet. It had to be served in the traditional French way, in the green pottery bowl his mother had given Marianne, a bowl she adored, which had an orange china rooster perched on its rim. The bowl then had to be positioned on the table so the rooster faced Marianne. His daughter had a passion for finnicky detail that sometimes worried him. Pascal feared that it might be a by-product of his bitter divorce. He stirred in three sugar lumps, and passed the bowl across to her. He looked at it sadly. The bowl, three years old, slightly chipped, was a relic: His mother had been dead almost a year.

“I’m afraid it won’t be a present, darling,” he said, sitting down. “No one sends me presents anymore. No doubt it’s because I’m so very very old. …” He hunched his shoulders as he said this, and stooped his tall frame. He pulled a long, melancholy face, and attempted to convey extreme decrepitude. Marianne laughed.

“How old are you?” she said, still fingering the parcel.

“Thirty-five.” Pascal resisted the temptation briefly, then lit a cigarette. He sighed. “Thirty-six this spring. Ancient!”

Marianne assessed this. There was a tiny flicker in the eyes, a pursing of the lips. To her, Pascal realized, thirty-five must indeed sound very old. My father, Methuselah. He gave a small shrug: Some shadow passed at the back of his mind. To Marianne, age was a fact without corollaries or consequences. She was still too young to associate aging with sickness or with death.

“The egg’s a failure, isn’t it?” He smiled. “Don’t struggle with it. Eat the
tartine
instead.”

Marianne gave him a grateful look and took a bite of the crisp bread with its coating of strawberry jam. Jam at once adhered itself to chin, hand, tablecloth. Pascal reached across tenderly and transferred a morsel from her chin to the tip of her nose. Marianne giggled. She munched with a contented expression, then slid the parcel across to him.

“It might be a present,” she said seriously. “A nice present. You never know. Open it, Papa, please. Before we go.”

Pascal glanced at his watch. He had one hour in which to deliver Marianne back to her mother in the suburbs, brave the rush-hour traffic back into the center of Paris, get to a meeting with his editor at
Paris Jour,
and hand over the new batch of photographs. If he was not delayed, he could easily make it to De Gaulle Airport for the noon flight to London. He hesitated. They should have left his apartment ten minutes before. …

On the other hand, Marianne’s expensive and pathetic suitcase, the suitcase he had bought her himself, was already packed. The menagerie of teddy bears and rabbits, and the sad stuffed kangaroo without which she could not sleep, were all ready and waiting in the hall. He hated to disappoint her, and he could see the expectation in her eyes.

“Very well,” he said. “Let’s see what I have here.” He drew the parcel toward him. Now that he examined it more closely, it did look interesting—and unusual too, not the kind of package sent out by PRs. Brown paper, new, enclosing some kind of box. Light in weight. A neat parcel about six inches square. The string binding had been knotted at intervals, the knots sealed with red wax. He had not seen, let alone received, such a parcel in years. His name and address, he saw, had been printed by hand in capitals with precise care. He looked more closely, and then realized that the precision could be explained—a stencil had been used.

He was careful to betray no reaction, but thinking back afterward, he realized he had moved too quickly, scraping back his chair. Perhaps he paled—there must have been some hint of his feelings, and Marianne picked up on it. She had an only child’s thin-skinned sensitivity to nuance, a sixth sense for trouble that had been honed by years of parental arguments behind closed doors. Now, as he casually picked up the parcel and began to move away, her face clouded. She looked at him uncertainly.

“Papa, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, darling. Nothing.” He kept his voice level. “I’ve just realized the time, that’s all. Run and get your coat, will you?”

She sat for a moment, watching him. She watched him leave the cigarette burning in the ashtray. She watched him carry the parcel through into the kitchen and place it on the stainless steel countertop. She watched him start to run the water in the sink. Then, suddenly obedient, she climbed down from her chair.

When he next looked around, she had fetched her coat and returned to the kitchen. She stood in the center of the large room, watching him, the light from the tall windows striking her hair. On her face was an expression Pascal had not seen for months, an expression he had promised himself he would never provoke again once the divorce was over: a pinched expression of confusion and guilt. Leaving the package, Pascal returned to her. He kissed the top of her head, put his arm around her, and began to steer her gently toward the front door. She stopped just inside it and looked up at him, her face pink with anxiety.

“Something’s wrong,” she said again. “Papa, what did I do?”

The question cut Pascal to the heart. He wondered if this was the fate of all children of divorced parents—to go through life blaming themselves for their parents’ failings.

“Nothing, darling,” he replied, catching her against him.

“I told you—we’re terribly late, and I just realized how late, that’s all. Listen, Marianne …” He opened the doorway onto the landing and edged her gently outside. “I’ll open that stupid package later, when I get back from London. And if it’s anything exciting, I’ll phone and tell you, I promise. On with the coat, that’s it. What have we here? One bear, one rabbit, one kangaroo—now, I have an idea. You run downstairs and wait for me there, will you do that? Wait right by the door, don’t go outside, and I’ll be down in a second. Papa just has to find a few papers, his airline ticket. …”

It was working. Marianne’s face had cleared. “Can I say hello to Madame Lavalle, like I did last time?”

Pascal smiled. He silently blessed an amiable concierge, who was devoted to his daughter. “Of course, darling. Introduce her to the animals, I bet she’d like that.”

Marianne nodded, and ran to the staircase. Pascal listened to the clatter of her shoes as she descended, the sound of a door opening, then Madame Lavalle’s voice.

“My goodness, and what have we here today? A rabbit. A bear and—Mon Dieu, what can this be? I never saw such an animal!”

“It’s a kangaroo,
madame.
” Marianne’s high voice floated up the stairwell. “And you see, look, she can keep her baby very close, safe in this little pouch. …”

Pascal closed the door. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He walked back into the kitchen and stood looking at that neat old-fashioned parcel, foursquare on the counter, the knots neatly sealed. It was five years since he had covered the PLO story, six since he had been in Northern Ireland. His work now might be very different, but the wariness, once necessarily acute, still remained.

Reaching across, he rested his hand on the parcel lightly. He ran his fingers across the surface of the paper, feeling for ridges, for the telltale presence of wire.

He could detect nothing. He turned the package so the edges of the wrapping paper faced him. The overlap was unsealed but taut. He hesitated, then picked up his sharpest kitchen knife. He prised the seals loose first. He cut the string in four places and eased it off.

Nothing. He was already beginning to feel foolish, to see his suspicions as exaggerated. Yet why a stenciled address? He looked at the stains of developing fluid on his fingernails. He frowned at the parcel, and thought of the photographs packed in his briefcase, awaiting delivery.