Time to Kill (29 page)

‘You were totally exposed. You'd told her you were a Russian spy and that her violent husband was spying, was an informant, for Russia too. Didn't you think then she might turn you both in and get rid of both of you?'

‘No,' said Slater at once.

‘Why not? After the shitty life you've told me she'd had, before marrying Jack, it would have been the easiest way of getting out of the shit she suddenly found herself in again.'

‘I just told you I didn't think she'd turn me in.'

‘Was that the way a Russian spymaster was supposed to think?'

‘Nothing I did or thought was supposed to be the way a Russian spymaster was supposed to do or think. And I never regarded myself as that anyway.'

‘What did you regard yourself to be?'

A question he'd always avoided, Slater acknowledged; Hillary Nelson was as good as Dr Mills had described her to be, although Slater wasn't sure in which direction she was taking the conversation. ‘At the time we're talking about I regarded myself as an impending traitor.'

‘But you still didn't feel any guilt?'

‘No.'

‘How would you have thought of yourself if you hadn't met, become involved with, Ann?'

Slater shrugged. ‘How can I answer that? I
was
involved with Ann. It was the only way I could think.'

‘Were you disillusioned with what you did?'

It was another unsettling question, Slater recognized. ‘I think I was, yes.'

‘So Ann was an excuse?'

‘No!' denied Slater, loudly. ‘You're twisting this and I can't see the point of what we've discussed so far. Ann was never the excuse for anything. I'd fallen in love with her and made the choice, between her and going back.'

‘What would you have done if she'd said no? Defected anyway or gone back to Moscow?'

‘I wouldn't have defected,' said Slater, without hesitation.

‘Why not? You've already told me you were disillusioned with what you were doing and had no reason to go back to Russia.'

‘I wouldn't have been accepted as a defector unless I told the CIA and the FBI everything. Which would have still got Mason the sentence he received. And caused God knows what harm to Ann, however bad her life already was.'

‘But she said yes, that she would leave Jack and marry you?'

The swerve in the discussion almost off-balanced him. ‘Yes.'

‘Did you warn her what the upheaval would be like?'

‘I didn't know what the upheaval would be like myself. I told her it wouldn't be easy, the trial particularly.'

‘How bad was it?'

Slater's hesitation this time was longer than any of his hesitations before. ‘It's funny, now I come to think back upon it. I don't recall it as being bad at all. We were kind of caught up in things that happened but which we were separate from. We were physically separated for a long time, as well – didn't see or speak to each other. I didn't like that because I didn't know what was happening to Ann. How she was standing up to it all. They told me she was being looked after, protected, but I didn't know—'

‘Did you ever think you'd made a mistake?' broke in Hillary Nelson.

‘Yes,' admitted Slater, caught by her prescience. ‘At one stage I refused to co-operate until I talked to her. Knew for myself, from her, that she was OK.'

‘And she was?'

‘She was managing. She was committed by then, like I was.'

‘What about that time, that moment? Did you have any regrets then, any second thoughts?'

‘I wished – hoped – that it wouldn't be too much for her.'

‘What about you? Wasn't it too much for you?'

‘I was trained. Ann wasn't.'

‘Was it too much for her?'

‘I didn't think so, not then.'

‘I don't understand what you've just told me.'

‘I thought Ann had come through it OK, even that we had the perfect life. Now I know how brave she's really been, all these years. She's been frightened, all the time, without my knowing it. Terrified, for all those years, that Jack would find us.'

‘What do you think? Do you think he's found you? Is stalking you and that he killed David?'

Slater didn't answer, slumped with his head on his chest as she had been when he had first recounted their story.

‘Daniel?' she prompted.

‘He can't have found us.'

‘Ann told me you installed a lot of extra security when you first heard Jack was being released ahead of when you both expected. That you even went into Washington to speak to the man who wrote the warning letter?'

Slater nodded. ‘It was a hell of a surprise … a shock, I guess. Over the years his release had gone out of my mind …' Slater paused once more. ‘My mind, certainly. I now know it had never gone out of Ann's mind, not for a moment. Then we were suddenly confronted by it. And yes, I guess you could say I panicked, before I thought properly about it. I hoped Ann would be reassured, by all the extra stuff I installed.'

‘Weren't you reassured?'

‘By the time it was all done I'd calmed down – knew it was unnecessary.'

‘Do you still think that?'

‘Yes.' Did he? Slater asked himself.

‘What about what happened to David?'

‘It's got to be a coincidence. A terrible, dreadful coincidence from which neither of us is ever going properly to recover. I just hope that we can stay together, that it doesn't destroy us. David was our life – without him I'm not sure what life we've got left.'

‘A lot of people suffer the sort of tragedy you and Ann have suffered.'

‘Not against our sort of background.' Had she been as forthright, as brutal, with Ann? Ann hadn't seemed upset when they'd swopped rooms.

‘True,' the psychiatrist conceded.

‘Is Ann going to be all right?'

‘Do you think you are going to be all right?'

Slater looked curiously at her across the desk. ‘I didn't think we were here to talk about me.'

‘We're here to talk about everything and everyone,' said Hillary Nelson. ‘And I think we've done enough of both for one day. Ann's told me she can come back again tomorrow. Can you?'

‘If it will help.'

‘I wouldn't have suggested it, if I hadn't thought it would help.'

‘What's today achieved?' demanded Slater.

‘I needed to decide whether you're both telling the truth,' declared the woman. ‘I think you both are.'

‘You mean you believe Ann
did
see Jack Mason!'

‘I haven't yet got that far with Ann.'

‘I was trained to lie,' reminded Slater, not knowing why he said it.

‘I was trained to spot lies. And liars.'

Jack Mason's re-encounter with the Lexington Park rental manager was, predictably, a virtual repeat of their first meeting and as they toured the second property – the location and remoteness of which Mason had already checked out after driving direct from Dulles airport – he decided that his first visit had been a very necessary orientational rehearsal. Prompted by that thought Mason took the cottage for a full month, knowing he could quit sooner, as he had before, if he got lucky with Slater and Ann. Objectively though, as he had been after running their son down, Mason accepted it would be a miracle if he got lucky a second time; he might need much longer, even having to break away to set up some sort of stalling situation with Peter Chambers, which would be an irritating but necessary interruption.

As he had before, Mason shopped after completing all the formalities with the realtor, deciding as he packed his groceries and wine away that he actually preferred this new place to that which he had rented before. Everything was in a much better, newer condition and the shoreline longer which would enable him to resume his now too long neglected fitness regime. He tried it out that late afternoon and calculated that by running its full length, during which he isolated only one other cottage and that too far away for anyone in it to be able to properly see or later identify him, and then back again, he'd covered at least two miles. His legs and shoulders ached, reminding him how out of shape he'd become since his release from White Deer. Before making dinner Mason carried out his daily computer trawl through all his emplaced sites and found nothing new, ate early, and slept a full uninterrupted, dreamless nine hours' sleep to fully recover, in one session, from the effect of the overnight red eye from California. At no time, since leaving the West Coast, had Mason once thought of Beverley Littlejohn.

From his initial surveillance Mason knew how heavily protected both 2832 Hill Avenue SE and Ann's Main Street gallery were by CCTV, which logically dictated there would be matching internal alarms and precautions that precluded both from a direct, burglary-disguised approach; even if he evolved a way to override or sabotage their operating electricity source they would automatically revert to battery supply. If he had been supervising an authorized CIA assassination there would have been contaminating poisons or explosives, in both of which he had been schooled after his recall to Washington from his Moscow entrapment. Sabotaging their separate cars, both of which he already knew, was far more feasible when Ann's was parked behind the gallery and Slater's in the communal car park at the rear of the shared high rise in which he had his office, but again Mason had no access to technical resources in order to absolutely guarantee their deaths, nor a way to ensure that their killing would be simultaneous. He had not completely discarded the idea of killing just Slater – who after all had been directly responsible for his arrest and imprisonment – and leaving Ann bereft of both husband and son to sink back into gin-sodden despair. But at this stage of initial planning his intention remained to kill her, too, wipe the slate clean and move on. Mason had learned the unimaginative title of Slater's company – Slater's Securities – from the local newspaper's coverage of David's hit and run and looked upon that as another possible focus, although again limiting his target to just Slater alone. What other locations were there where he could get them both together and hit them both together? Mason demanded of himself, in impatient irritation.

David's grave!

Frustration at once turned to a warmth of satisfaction at the obvious, fulfilling, beckoning answer. Where else would grieving parents go together to mourn but to the grave of their tragically killed son; the grave easy to locate at the church named in the
Frederick News-Post
coverage, the grave at which Slater and Ann had been photographed together, supporting each other together, consoling each other together! Mason sniggered. Where they could be killed together. Bleed together.

‘What did she say?' demanded Ann, as Slater started the car.

‘She asked a lot of questions, about guilt and whether I hadn't been frightened that you'd turn me in when I told you who I really was.'

‘I thought about it.'

Slater looked sharply across the car. ‘I never knew that! You never told me!'

‘It never came up.'

‘Why didn't you?' It was an automatic, unthinking question. Slater was confused, unable to believe Ann had never told him.

Ann shrugged. ‘I don't know. I guess at first I thought it was my duty but then I changed my mind.'

‘Even though you loved me!'

‘I don't think I was sure then that I did. I'm glad now that I didn't.'

Slater drove on for several minutes in bewildered silence. ‘So am I,' he said, finally. ‘She asked if I felt any guilt. And if I was worried about how you'd get through it all.'

‘Were you? Worried, I mean?'

It was as if they were strangers, thought Slater. ‘Yes. I thought it might have been too much for you.'

‘My recollection was that it didn't seem real … didn't seem to be happening. Are you coming tomorrow?'

‘Of course!' said Slater, further surprised. ‘How could you think I wouldn't!'

Ann shrugged again, as if it weren't important. ‘I don't know.'

Surely this odd conversation, her strange almost unnatural calmness, was proof that Ann had a problem? He'd have to remember as much of it as possible to tell Hillary Nelson tomorrow. ‘Are you glad we're seeing her?'

‘I will be, if you believe that Jack has found us. And start doing something about it. Did she tell you she wants to hypnotize me?'

‘No!'

‘She does. I said I was quite happy for her to do so. What do you think?'

‘I think she should have told me. That we should have talked about it.'

‘That's what we are doing, right now. So what do you think?'

‘I meant Hillary and I should have talked about it.'

‘You haven't told me what you think!' she demanded.

‘I want to know why she wants to do it.'

‘What are you frightened of?'

‘I'm not frightened of anything! I just don't want her playing tricks with you.'

‘There's no need to shout. And I don't think she's playing tricks with me.'

‘I wasn't shouting,' denied Slater.

‘I want to stop on the way home.'

‘All right,' agreed Slater, without needing to be told where.

‘And thank you.'

‘What for?'

‘Checking in the mirrors as much as you've been doing, while we're driving. Looking for him'

‘I always check the mirrors when I'm driving.'

‘Thank you,' she said again.

Twenty-Three

T
he routine was the same as the previous day: Ann invited to begin the session by Hillary Nelson, but before his wife could enter the psychiatrist's room Slater said, ‘You didn't tell me you wanted to hypnotize Ann today?'

‘It was a question for Ann.
To
Ann.'

‘Without involving me?'