Lovers and Liars Trilogy (83 page)

She caught hold of the last large section of board remaining and hauled on it with all her strength. Suddenly it buckled and broke off in her hands. She half fell, almost toppled to the floor, then steadied herself. The window was now clear, surrounded by a jagged edge of broken board. She grasped the catch, levered, pushed—and nothing happened. It was fastened, she saw, in three places, with security bolts.

She climbed down. Her legs and arms were shaking from her exertions. She could smash the glass, but the window—narrow and upright with two panes of glass separated by one horizontal bar—needed to be broken open completely. The actual panes were too small to squeeze through. She would have to break the glass in both panes and smash out the bar between them. Then, at last, she could climb out.

The gas was burning alarmingly low now. She turned it up a fraction. It sputtered and hissed.
I must be quick,
she thought,
I must be quick.

She carried a chair from the living room and smashed at the glass with all her strength. One pane broke, the other cracked. She hauled herself up onto the counter and began to hammer at the glass, half sobbing, breathing hard with the effort. She wrapped the dish cloth around her hand and began to snap off the jagged shards of glass piece by piece. She hammered the chair against the dividing bar, then rammed at it with her shoulder as hard as she could. It gave a little, but still held. She went on, fighting with the bar, fighting with the shards of glass. Her arms were trembling with the effort, and her hands were cut and bleeding. She mopped at the blood, which was making her hands slippery, and saw that her watch face was smashed. The watch hands were jammed, unmoving. She held the watch face close to her face and peered at it in the semi-darkness. Hours had passed—far more time had gone by than she’d realized. According to her watch, it was now half past eleven—but how long ago had the watch stopped?

She gave a moan of anger and frustration. It could be Sunday now. She must get out of this place. She threw herself with her full weight against the dividing bar, and at last it splintered, then snapped. The sense of freedom was intoxicating. She drew in a deep breath of icy air. Leave the heater, leave the gas, but bring the photographs, she thought, and began to struggle through the broken window. She pulled her thick coat around her, but it caught on the jagged glass. She felt glass catch at her hair and cut her face. Then, awkwardly, painfully, she was free. She dropped down the few feet onto the flagstones of the yard, and almost collapsed.

Her whole body ached with strain; her legs were unsteady, but she could feel a rush of exhilaration now, pumping through her body. Her car was close, very close, just ahead of her through the trees and down the slope. She ran across the yard and into the undergrowth, peering ahead of her for the track.

She ran down it, slipping and sliding. Twice she tripped and fell full-length. She heaved herself up, ran on, and reached the clearing. Then she stopped, staring around her wildly. She could feel blood running down her face; she could taste blood on her lips. It hurt her to breathe. She staggered forward a few more steps, peering into the darkness under the trees, unable to accept the obvious. She ran this way and that; she ran a little farther down the track, then turned back, breathing hard. Moonlight and shadows moved around her.

The car was not there. The car had been taken.

It was Sunday now, it must be Sunday, and it was a good three miles to the nearest road. An hour, she thought; it takes an hour to walk three miles at an ordinary pace. Then she turned, and half running, half stumbling, began to make her way down the track.

She saw the lights, and heard the noise, when she was only halfway down the track. It was coming from her left, from the valley below to her left, from the direction of John Hawthorne’s house. She could not see the house from here, halfway down the hill, surrounded by pine trees, but she could hear cars, men’s voices.

She could glimpse lights moving beyond the trees. She hesitated, then plunged off the path to her left, making for the voices, making for the lights. She ducked under branches, and felt brambles catch at her clothes. She shielded her face from the brambles, tripped on tree roots, and ran on. She came out on the slope of the hill, at the edge of the woods, and stopped.

Open fields lay between her and Hawthorne’s house. That house was as bright as a hallucination. The road in front of it, the gates, the drive, the house itself, were all floodlit. The buildings stood out in an unearthly greenish halogen glow, staining the sky above. And there were people—so many people. She could see police cars, and other cars slewed across the road below, parked in the driveway; she could see three, no four, long black vehicles drawn up in front of the house itself. She could see men too, moving along the road, and across the lawns on either side of the drive. She stared, and gave a low cry of panic and fear. Something had happened; something was happening. Could McMullen already have made some attempt on Hawthorne’s life? Was Hawthorne here, in Oxfordshire, tonight? If so, was he alive, or dead?

She began to run then, faster and faster, struggling for breath, across the plowed fields, making for the road below. But the fields were wet and muddy from weeks of rain, and the mud sucked and pulled at her feet. She took a more indirect route, keeping close to the hedge, where the ground was firmer. Down through one field, then a second. She could see the road ahead now, and the entrance gates to Hawthorne’s home. She staggered, slipped, and increased her pace.

The men in the roadway heard her approach. She was dimly aware of them turning, looking up, beginning to move toward her. She heard a voice say something sharply, and heard the sound of running footsteps, but all she could think of was the field gate straight ahead of her, the road, the entrance, and the drive beyond that.

She pushed the gate open, and half fell into the roadway, gasping for breath. The light was now dazzling; three, no four, five dark figures were in front of her. She stared at them, and they stared at her. One of them, she realized, the one to her right, was wearing an ordinary police uniform. She began to turn to him to speak, but a man not in uniform, a man in a dark suit, moved quickly between them. “My people will deal with this,” he said curtly to the policeman. He took her arm and looked down at her face. He was very tall, heavily built, crew-cut.

“Ms. Hunter, ma’am?” He was still staring at her. “It is Ms. Hunter, yes?”

Gini looked up at him. The air gusted; the road dipped and swayed. Then she recognized him. He had an alert, an intelligent face. It was the security man who had been at Mary’s party, Malone. His grip on her arm tightened as she swayed. She thought the police officer to her right said something, but Malone cut him off.

“Get a car,” he said to one of the dark-suited men next to him. She saw the man move away fast, and the others bunch around her. Then the car was there, and Malone was helping her into it He slid into the backseat beside her, and before his door was closed, the car was already moving off. Through the entrance gates, into the drive of Hawthorne’s house.

Gini began to speak, and with a quick gesture Malone cut her off.

“Not here, ma’am,” he said quietly and firmly. “It’s all right. Wait. Let’s just get you into the house.”

P
ASCAL HAD LOST ALL
sense of time. It could have been one in the morning, or two, or twelve-thirty when he shot back the bolts and slammed out of the St. John’s Wood house. He stood outside in the street, breathing in the cold night air, staring up unseeingly at the night sky. In the gothic house in the cul-de-sac beyond, John Hawthorne and his wife remained. Pascal no longer cared what they did to each other behind closed shutters; he no longer cared whether they remained there five minutes or the rest of the night. Disgust washed through him, with Hawthorne, with Lise, but above all with himself.

His immediate instinct, as Hawthorne closed the shutters with that small tight smile of derision, had been to smash his own cameras, to lay waste to that aspect of his life. Never again, Pascal said to himself, never again will I allow myself to do this.

If Hawthorne had intended to teach him a lesson, he had succeeded, he thought. He crossed furiously to his rented car, began to unlock it, then stopped.

Never had he felt more like a voyeur. He felt tainted, sickened by his own actions that evening, by his own actions these last three years of his life. He slammed his fist against the bodywork of the car, and felt pain shoot through his hand and arm, punishing himself for what he had done, for continuing to take pictures tonight, even in those few short minutes when he had still believed the woman with Hawthorne was Gini. Even then he had continued—how could he have done that?

This is what I have become, this is what I have allowed myself to become, he thought, and his mind went black with self-disgust, and self-hate.

He had cut his hand. He drew in a deep breath to steady himself, then another, and this time the icy air steadied him. He lifted his hand and looked at his watch. It was past one. He stared at the watch face. Past one, and Gini was not back.

He began, then, on a frantic and crazy pursuit. He drove to an almost deserted Paddington Station, and ran along the platforms, questioning porters, ticket clerks, any passerby who would stop. The last Oxford train had arrived, on time, more than an hour before. Pascal could not let go of the conviction that Gini must have been on that train. He started searching the station.

Then he saw this endeavor for the foolish thing it was. He drove back to the St. John’s Wood house at a crazy speed and burst through the door. His cameras were still there. His empty coffee cup was still there. But Gini was not. He saw, but did not care, that the gothic house opposite was empty. The shutters in that rear room were open once more. The house was in darkness.

He ran back down the stairs, leaving all his cameras and equipment where they were. He could not bear to touch them or look at them. He stood in the hall, breathing fast. The lights here were still non-operational. The telephone was still dead.

A new mad conviction gripped him then. Gini must have returned. She must be in London, but she had gone to the Hampstead cottage, or perhaps to her Islington flat. He scrawled an incoherent message, left it in a prominent place, and drove at high speed, first to Hampstead, then to Islington, then back to Hampstead again. It was evident that Gini had not been to Islington: There was a pile of mail for her on the doormat. The message light of her answering machine had been blinking, but when Pascal, with shaking hands, played the tape back, he heard only his own voice, and the two incoherent desperate messages he had left earlier. As he discovered in Hampstead also. He stood there, torn with indecision. In which of these three places should he wait? It was now three in the morning. He stared out at the darkness across the heath. He had just, for some stupid, hopeless reason, replayed the answering machine here too. He had already, crazily, replayed it twice.

Staring into the darkness, he listened to the mockery of his own useless and loving message, his own former voice.

“Is John Hawthorne safe?” Gini asked. She had asked Malone this question twice before, once in the car, once in the hall of this house; neither time had she been answered. They were now in a small sitting room off the main hall. Malone was standing in the doorway. Beyond him she could hear activity, voices, footsteps. Malone was watching her, she saw, and he had that security man’s expression, that closed expression on his face. He glanced over his shoulder as someone passed, and said something inaudible.

Gini took a step forward. “I asked you a question,” she said sharply. “Is the ambassador safe?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is he here? Is he here in Oxfordshire?” She saw him hesitate, and for a moment thought he was not going to reply; then he changed his mind.

“No, ma’am. The ambassador is in London tonight. He’s in London all weekend.”

Gini swung away from him. She stared around the room. It was comfortably furnished. There was a chair, a desk, bookshelves. There was no telephone.

“I have to have a phone,” she said. “I have to use a phone.”

“Ma’am. I’ve sent for some coffee. You’re”—he hesitated—“I think you should just sit down, ma’am.”

“There isn’t time. I have to use a phone. There’s people I need to speak to urgently.” She gave an agitated gesture and tried to push past him.

Malone took her arm firmly. “I’m sorry, ma’am. As you can see”—he paused—“there’s a security alert. We have a few problems here, right now, and…”

Gini stared at him. “You know, don’t you?” she burst out. “You know McMullen’s not dead. How do you know? Has he been seen? Is that who they’re looking for out there? Well, they won’t find him here—not if John Hawthorne’s in London—”

She broke off. Malone, moving with that surprising swiftness she remembered, drew her back firmly into the room. He closed the door.

“Ma’am?”

“I’m not saying anything.” Gini backed away from him furiously. “I’m not saying anything to you, or to anyone else.” She hesitated. “The ambassador. I’ll speak to him. I want to speak to him. Look, if you’ll just get me a telephone. Please. It could be important—I know he’ll take the call. If you tell him it’s me…”

Malone gave her a long, considering look. He said quietly, “If you’ll wait right here, ma’am. I’ll be back.”

As he left the room, another dark-suited American spoke to him briefly in a low voice. Malone looked back at her over his shoulder. He disappeared into the hall. The other man nodded politely in her direction. He left the door open and stood, blocking it. He turned his back.

Gini gave a sigh. She was still trembling, she realized, from head to foot. She turned away, and as she did so, passed a mirror hanging on the wall to her left. For an instant she thought there was someone else in this room, some strange woman—and then she saw that this strange woman was herself. She turned back to the glass and stared at her own reflection. No wonder that Malone had seemed taken aback. Her face was cut and streaked with blood; her coat was ripped; her face, hands, and sleeves were covered in mud. Her hair was in wild disorder, stuck with leaves and bits of twig. Beneath the blood, and the mud, a strange white face looked back at her.