Lovers and Liars Trilogy (55 page)

She bent to read the label that explained the symbols of these past events, and heard movement behind her—a single footfall, the brush of stone against cloth.

At last. She swung around sharply and scanned the room. From the corner of her eye, in the shadows of the far entrance, she thought she saw darkness move. She turned, and it was gone. She ran across to the entrance, but the gallery beyond was empty. Massive reliefs rose up on either side of her. She stepped back, peering beyond them and dazzled by the lighting that now shone directly in her face. There was no one there. There was no one in the rooms behind her—but there were three other exits from this place. She checked each of them in turn, but each led to corridors and stairs, and if someone had been there, he was gone.

She came to a halt and looked around her with a sense of angry frustration. Why was McMullen playing these cat-and-mouse games? She was now standing at the foot of a back staircase, in a small, ill-lit lobby. From there she had a clear view back into the room where she had been when she first heard the noise. She could see the huge relief she had been studying, with its procession of warriors and priests. Just as she was about to turn away, a shadow moved across the face of the sculpture, and then a man came into sight.

He was wearing the same dark overcoat he had worn before, and he moved silently, on those soft-soled shoes described by Lise Hawthorne. Frank Romero. He stood in front of the relief, staring up at it for a moment. He touched it. He peered behind it, then bent to examine the floor in front of it. He began to move silently and stealthily around the room, examining each carving in turn, as if he were searching for something, some message left, perhaps.

Gini edged back into the shadows and toward the stairs. A hand came out of the darkness and clamped itself across her mouth. She felt a moment’s pure fear. Before she could struggle, or even think, she felt a man pulling her closer against him, so his mouth was against her ear. She could feel his breath on her face.

“Don’t scream, and don’t speak,” he said in a low, calm English voice. McMullen’s voice. “I’m going to give you a number. Call it tomorrow at noon. You understand? If you do, nod your head.” Gini nodded. “Don’t look round. Can you remember numbers?” Gini nodded again.

McMullen repeated the numbers, slowly and quietly. “You’ve got that? Call it at noon tomorrow. Use a safe phone. Noon. Not five minutes before, not five afterward. Now go up these stairs, turn right, then second left. You’ll be in the main hall. Buy some postcards, as if this were a normal visit, then leave. No, don’t look round. You’ve got that?”

He released her, and Gini did as he said. She fled silently up the stairs, reciting the number to herself. Once she was safely back in her car, she took out a notebook and pencil and wrote it down, her hand shaking. The number had an 0865 prefix. An Oxford number.

A familiar Oxford number too—at least she thought it was, but she couldn’t be certain, and she had left her address book at home in her flat.

She drove north as fast as she could, but the rain was still heavy, and street after street was gridlocked with traffic. She used every back-street rat run she knew, but even so it took her almost an hour to drive the five miles.

She parked in the square and ran down the area steps, inserted her key in the lock. The address book was on her desk, just next to the telephone. She swung the living room door open. As she closed it, something soft brushed her face.

She continued a few paces on, toward the desk. Then the terrible wrongness of the room registered. She stopped. Sickness welled in the pit of her stomach. Something soft had brushed her face as she closed the door. There was nothing there, there should be nothing there to brush against her in that way. On the back of that door was an empty hook.

She turned, looked, and cried out. She ran across to the door, but it was too late—at least an hour too late.

Whoever had killed Napoleon had made a neat job. The black stocking sent her the previous week had been used to strangle him. They had wound the nylon around his throat, throttled him, and then left him to hang from the hook by this noose. His body was already stiffening. There was blood on his mouth and nostrils. There were scratch marks on the door panels where he had scrabbled with his feet.

Gini thought:
How long did it take him to die?
She cradled his body, lifted him down, and held him close. She began to cry, and pressed him tight against her chest. His eyes were closed and her fingers fumbled to undo the stocking. She rocked him, and wept. Her fingers would not move too well, but in the end she unwound the noose. She sat down on the floor and crooned to Napoleon. She stroked his marmalade fur and tried to believe that love could resurrect. Napoleon lay inert in her arms. It cut her to the heart, the littleness of his body, in death.

She stroked his fur and touched the beauties of his whiskers and his feet. After a long time, the wildness calmed and the tears stopped. She sat there and made herself a final promise: No one would stop her now, not after this.

She was still sitting there, holding Napoleon, when Pascal’s taxicab drew up in the street. She did not hear the cab’s engine, or his footsteps on the sidewalk. She heard and saw nothing until he was in the room with her. Then she heard his closeness, and looked up. She saw his face change as he took in the stocking discarded on the floor and the bundle in her arms. He was angrier then than she had ever seen him, and she had a brief groping sensation of how formidable, in anger, he might be. Whoever made an enemy of Pascal made a mistake. Then his face became gentle, an extraordinary tenderness lit in his eyes. With a few low words, he bent, and gathered her close.

He said, “My darling, don’t cry. We’ll find them, I promise you, whoever did this.”

T
HEY BURIED NAPOLEON IN
the small garden behind the house. The earth was soft from the rain, and the task easy enough. They worked in silence, side by side, and when it was over, Pascal said close to her ear, “Not here. Not here. Pack some clothes and come with me. We have three days left. It’s time to disappear.”

The journey was long and circuitous, though the distance traveled was short. They went first to a small hotel in St. James’s, where Pascal was known and a double room had been booked. Pascal said the manager, an old contact of his, would ensure the room appeared to be occupied. Telephone calls would be made, and food sent up.

“Our ghosts will occupy this room,” he said. “But we’ll be somewhere else. For a day, maybe two, this will help. Then, if necessary, we try something else.”

They moved on, traveling by tube, bus, and taxi, setting off in one direction, then doubling back. When Pascal was satisfied they were not followed, he led them to their destination. It proved to be a small cottage in Hampstead, near the summit of the heath. It was situated in a maze of narrow, cobbled alleyways inaccessible by car. It had three entrances. Pascal’s motorbike was already parked in a shed to its rear.

“I came here earlier and checked it,” he said. “It’s anonymous. It isn’t overlooked at front or back, and it has a number of other advantages, Gini. Look.”

He led her inside, and Gini went from room to room with mounting astonishment. The house was well furnished and equipped. The bed was made up. There was several days’ food in the refrigerator. The day’s newspapers were neatly stacked in its small sitting room. All the windows had thick wooden interior shutters. The exterior doors were reinforced with steel plates.

“Pascal,” she said. “Who lives here? What is this place?”

“It’s a safe house—and no one lives here as such. It belongs to a contact of mine. Once upon a time, she owned the most celebrated brothel in France. Then there was a little misunderstanding about tax. She retired to London, and invested the remains of her fortune in property. She’s over seventy now. An extraordinary woman. She lets this place to former clients of hers, people who need somewhere secure and private—and clean in the electronic sense.”

“Are there many such people?”

“Oh, yes. We can talk here, Gini. It has antielectronic surveillance equipment, and it’s regularly swept. It may not be one hundred percent secure, nowhere is, but it’s ninety-nine percent.”

He drew her toward him and took her hand. Her face was white, and still tear-stained. There were little bits of twig and leaves in her hair; her hands were still muddy. He kissed her brow gently.

“Now, listen, Gini,” he said. “Go upstairs. Unpack. Have a bath. No—do as I say. It will make you feel better. While you do that, I’ll make us something to eat. Then, later, when you feel stronger—we’ll go over all this, piece by piece. We’re close now, darling. I can feel it, I can sense it, it’s starting to make sense.”

Gini drew back from him; she looked up at his face. “You know you said you asked Jenkins to take me off the story. Why?”

Pascal smiled. “I didn’t know he’d already done so, obviously not.” His eyes met hers. “I don’t want anyone to know what we’re up to, Gini; not even him. I don’t trust him completely, I don’t trust anyone. Apart from you, of course.”

“But you didn’t mean what you said to him—Pascal, you promise me that?”

“No, I didn’t mean it.” He hesitated. “I’m afraid for you, yes. I’ll protect us any way I can. I won’t let what happened to Lorna Munro happen to you—” He broke off. Gini’s expression had become fixed. He told her, then, exactly what had happened, and how swiftly it had happened.

Gini gave a low cry. “We killed her, Pascal. We did that. We as good as wrote her death certificate.”

“Don’t.” He drew her close. “Gini, I thought that at first. But it isn’t true. It wasn’t hard to trace her. Anyone could have done so. They could have killed her anytime they liked. Don’t you see, Gini, they waited until she had spoken to me, until I could actually witness her death. It was another of their warnings, like Napoleon, like Venice. So”—his face hardened—“we pay attention to those warnings. We’re much more careful from now on. We stay together at all times. But we don’t give up—either of us, no matter what Jenkins believes, or anyone else. We work
together
on this, and we
succeed.
” He paused, his expression now both sad and determined. “What you said to me in Venice—you remember? Believe me: I heard what you said.”

When Gini came downstairs, she felt stronger and refreshed. A delicious smell of cooking emanated from the kitchen. She found that Pascal had set the table there, and she was touched by what she saw: two places, laid in the French manner, two lighted candles, a checked cloth, and a small plant in the center, removed from one of the rooms upstairs. Deep purple African violets. The candles were a little askew. Pascal gave this arrangement a proud look. He made a great play of opening oven doors and checking temperatures. He flourished dishcloths a lot. Gini suppressed a smile. She knew perfectly well that Pascal could not cook. From the oven he produced what turned out to be a very good boeuf Bourguignon, which, as they both knew, had come ready-cooked.

“Extraordinary,” he said with a smile as they ate. “It’s much easier than I realized, this cooking. You open the oven, put the thing in, and
voilà
.”

“It’s a little bit more complicated, Pascal, if you’re starting from scratch.”

“It is?” He regarded her with great seriousness. “Could you make this?”

“From scratch? Yes, I could. It’s not that difficult. …”

“Excellent. I have a few French prejudices. It’s nice if a woman can cook.”

“And if she can’t?”

“No problem. If I love her enough. If I love her very much, I take lessons myself. Or we eat in a different restaurant every night. Or order in pizza. Or starve. So long as I’m with her, it won’t matter in the least.” He rose to his feet. “So, now I shall make us coffee. Then we can talk. Begin at the beginning, Gini.”

And so Gini recounted to him, one by one, all the events of the past two days. She told him about Frank Romero, and the buttons on his jacket; about her meeting with Lise, and the things Mary had said; about the strange postcard signed “Jacob” from McMullen, and about the circumstances of that long and frightening Monday night.

Pascal listened intently and quietly, smoking a cigarette. When she came to the question of the telephone call, of that whispering obscene male voice, his face paled with anger. “You have that recording you made? Get it now.”

She left the room while he listened to it. When she returned, she had never seen him so coldly furious, she thought at first—and then she remembered; there had been another occasion, one other occasion: He had looked like this during that brief final interview with her and her father in the Hotel Ledoyen in Beirut. There was the same mixture of contained loathing and contempt in his eyes, and the same fury in his voice.

“Who is that man?” He slammed his hand down on the table. “Who is it? Is it Hawthorne? I can’t tell—can you recognize the voice?”

“No, I can’t. I don’t think it’s Hawthorne. I’m not sure….”

“You should never have discussed that telephone sex story with him—never. What were you thinking of!
Why
did you do that?”

“Pascal, he asked me what I was working on. I couldn’t say
him,
could I? I had to think fast. I just blurted it out. Then I thought it could be useful. To see how he’d react…”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He gave a gesture of despair, then controlled the anger. “Never mind, never mind. It’s too late to undo it. If it isn’t Hawthorne, then who is it? Romero? Could it be him?”

“I don’t
know,
Pascal. But I’m sure Romero is involved. He was on leave the weekend we went to Venice. He could have been there. I’m sure the buttons on his blazer were identical to the one you found. He’s worked for the Hawthorne family for years. He served under Hawthorne in Vietnam and—what’s the matter, Pascal?”

“Nothing. Wait. I’ll explain later.” His face took on an odd and closed expression. “Go on. Tell me what happened yesterday—up to and including the dinner for Hawthorne.”

Gini gave him her account of that day, of her conversation with McMullen’s former tutor, Dr. Anthony Knowles, of her discoveries at the escort agency, Jason Stein’s remarks, the presence of S. S. Hawthorne at the dinner, and his son’s speech.