Lovers and Liars Trilogy

  Giovanni’s eyes scanned the palazzo’s sagging facade. Its lowest story had been abandoned long ago; the cracked ochre of its stucco was stained a seaweedy green. The palazzo’s windows—dark, closed, and unwelcoming—were twisted out of true by subsidence. Half its shutters were missing, and its graceful balconies and tall pilastered entrance gates were in a ruinous condition. The entire building looked unsafe.

  Giovanni glanced down at his package. McMullen: a foreigner—English? Irish? American? In his experience, most foreigners avoided places such as this. McMullen must be eccentric, someone who found decay picturesque. Giovanni had no patience with such indulgences. He clambered ashore and made for the palazzo’s courtyard. As he entered it, he heard a scuttle of movement but did not glimpse the rat.

  There was no sign of a concierge or porter, no sign of any inhabitants, come to that. All the windows overlooking this interior courtyard had their shutters clamped.

  In the corner was a wide flight of stone stairs. Apartment Six, this McMullen’s apartment, would be on the top floor. A peeling painted arrow directed him up. Giovanni neither heard nor saw anyone on his ascent. Dead leaves rustled in the corners of stairs; the doors he passed looked long closed up. He began to think he must be in the wrong place—but no, this was the Palazzo Ossorio, and here, on the top floor, was a door clearly numbered six.

  Giovanni peered at the door. The landing was ill lit; he could see no bell, no knocker. He hammered against the thick door panels, listened, then hammered again. No footsteps; no response.

  There was a note, faded and fly-spotted, pinned to the door. Giovanni’s English was sufficient: If I’m out, try later, it read.

  An English name on the parcel, an English note on the door—it was the right place. Giovanni hammered a third time. He called a few hellos through the panels. Then he drew back, wrinkling his nose in distaste. This place was not only dirty and decaying, it stank.

  A musty and ammoniac smell, as if people used the stairway as a urinal—but beyond that scent, something even more unpleasant, like rotting meat. Giovanni felt a sense of irritation.

  He heard a mewing sound. Glancing down, he saw a thin ginger cat sidling along the walls, inching its way warily toward him. It looked half starved. Giovanni bent toward it. The cat arched its back, bared its teeth, and spat.

  Giovanni aimed a clumsy kick in its direction, which missed. He considered the package, and the note on the door. It was strictly against ICD rules to leave a parcel unsigned for. On the other hand, no one was likely to steal it from here. McMullen’s receipt signature could always be forged; no one ever checked¼Giovanni hesitated. He was tempted. It was past noon now, he was hungry, and he’d already wasted a whole morning. Coming to a decision, he bent, rested the package against the door, and left: the hell with this.

  Later that afternoon he got anxious: He’d been lazy, he’d broken the rules. He needed this job, and now he’d put it at risk. He debated with his wife what to do; at her urging he returned later that evening to the Palazzo Ossorio.

  His wife accompanied him. The plan was, they’d just check that the parcel was safely received, then they’d go for an evening stroll, stop for a glass of wine in a café someplace.

  Just as before, the building was deserted. There was still no reply from McMullen’s apartment. The parcel, though, had disappeared, and beside the door there was now a saucer of milk for the cat. Presumably the package had been received. But Giovanni still felt uneasy. He hammered several times on the door, then pressed his ear against it. He listened, and stiffened. He was certain he could hear someone inside; there were slow, rustling movements behind the door, then the creak of a floorboard. Someone was there, moving about. The light was failing. His wife plucked his sleeve. She gave a shiver, and glanced over her shoulder.

  “Let’s go, Giovanni,” she whispered. “Let’s leave. It’s creepy here.”

  Giovanni raised his finger to his lips. “Listen,” he said in a low voice. “There’s someone in there. I can hear them…. If he’s in there, why doesn’t he answer the door?”

  “I can’t hear anything. It’s just the wind.” His wife, too, had pressed her ear to the door. Now she recoiled sharply. “Giovanni, what’s that horrible smell?”

  “Drains, I guess. It certainly stinks. Worse than this morning.”

  He drew back with a puzzled frown. He hammered one last time on the door. Silence this time, complete silence.

  “Please, let’s go, Giovanni. Please.”

  “Okay. Okay. God, it’s cold. You’re shivering. We’ll go….”

  They walked around the corner to a small café in the square, and drank a glass of red wine apiece. Giovanni tried asking the café owner a few questions—whether he knew this Signor McMullen, whether the Palazzo Ossorio was occupied—but he got nowhere. The café owner, a taciturn man, shrugged. That place? One mad old grandmother, he thought, with around fifty stray cats. No one else. It would fall down into the canal any day now, through sheer neglect….

  Whether the café owner knew it or not, this information was incorrect. As Giovanni and his wife passed the palazzo one last time on their way home, Giovanni looked up. The window of Apartment Six was on the top floor, in the corner of the building. All the windows in the palazzo were dark, except that one.

  Giovanni stood, looking up at it; no, he was not mistaken, and he had been right earlier too. Someone was in that apartment then and was there now. The shutters were closed, but between them he could see a band of faint light.

  Chapter 4

  GENEVIEVE HUNTER

  GENEVIEVE HUNTER LIVED IN the basement apartment of a tall, terraced, early Victorian house overlooking one of Islington’s prettiest squares. When the ICD courier arrived, it was shortly after nine in the morning, and she was already resigned to the fact that she would be late for the office. She was upstairs in the rooms occupied by her elderly neighbor when she heard the knocking from the basement area below. Opening the window, she leaned out and saw a uniformed man below, cradling a package and a clipboard.

  “Hold on, I’ll be right down,” she called. The man looked up at her, shivered, stamped his feet, and nodded.

  Genevieve closed the window and carefully locked it. She looked around the meager bedroom in which her upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Henshaw, had spent five years of widowhood and nearly forty years of married life. Linoleum covered the floor; the only furniture was a massive wardrobe and a massive, equally ancient bed. The only heating was provided by a gas fire. Genevieve checked the gas was off, then shouldered Mrs. Henshaw’s two large suitcases and made for the stairs.

  Her neighbor, who was one of the few remaining residents from the days when this area was run-down, and who could still remember what Islington had been like before it was discovered and gentrified, was due to spend ten days with her married daughter in Devon. She was sixty-eight now, and not used to traveling. She had packed enough clothes, judging by the weight of these valises, for a stay of two months.

  Gini smiled to herself, and maneuvered the suitcases down the narrow stairs. When Gini had first purchased her basement apartment, with its central heating, its modern kitchen and bathroom, Mrs. Henshaw had regarded her with some suspicion and alarm: a tall, thin American girl, unmarried, working for a London newspaper. “I like to keep myself to myself,” Mrs. Henshaw had said, eyeing her around the crack of her front door when Genevieve came up to introduce herself. Then, gradually, this suspicion had worn off. Mrs. Henshaw discovered that the young American kept a cat—a magnificent marmalade cat called Napoleon—and Mrs. Henshaw was very fond of cats. This forged the first bond. Then Mrs. Henshaw found to her surprise that this eager, boyishly dressed young woman who seemed to work such long hours could always spare the time to pick up groceries for her when her arthritis was bad, and was even prepared, over a cup of strong tea, to listen to Mrs. Henshaw’s memories, to look through her old, faded photograph albums, to hear the stories of hard times past, and the six children Mrs. Henshaw had
brought up in this place. Mrs. Henshaw, resigned to being chivied and dismissed as an elderly bore, lonely since her children had married and moved away, responded to this. “That Genevieve—she’s like a daughter to me,” she would now claim in Mr. Patel’s grocery store.

  As Gini made her way down the stairs, she found Mrs. Henshaw waiting anxiously in the hall below. She was wearing zip-up furry boots, three cardigans, an overcoat, a new woolly scarf Genevieve had bought her, and her best hat. She was trembling with nerves. As Genevieve descended, she was checking the contents of her handbag for the third time, and muttering to herself. Tickets, spectacles, hanky, purse, pension book, keys: Genevieve put down the suitcases and put an arm gently around her shoulders. It was hard, she thought, to make the simplest trip when you were old and poor, and alone and not used to traveling farther than a few streets. The important thing was not to rush her neighbor, or to show the least sign of impatience.

  “Mrs. H.,” she said, “that is one incredible hat. You look great.”

  Mrs. Henshaw flushed pink. The flurry and anxiety diminished a fraction. She peered at her reflection in the small hall mirror, and then smiled.

  “It’s my best. I last wore it for my Doreen’s youngest’s christening, and that’s eight years back. My Doreen always did like it, so I thought….”

  From the basement below came the sound of renewed knocking; the noise put Mrs. Henshaw into a new panic at once. “Oh, Gini love—all that banging, I can’t think straight. Did I put the gas off? What about the milk? I forgot to cancel the milk….”

  Genevieve edged to the front door, opened it, called down again to the delivery man in the area below, and then began the complicated process of persuading Mrs. Henshaw out of her house. She tried not to think of how late this was making her for the News office, and tried to keep up a soothing refrain. Yes, the gas was off, she had checked in every room; yes, the milk delivery was canceled, and all the windows were shut and locked. Yes, Mrs. Henshaw’s daughter would meet her at the station at the other end, and at this end the cab driver would help her onto the train, even carry her suitcases on for her. It was all fixed.

  Genevieve helped Mrs. Henshaw down the front steps to the street. Her neighbor had a new plastic hip, but her pace was still unsteady and slow. When her attention was diverted, Genevieve gave the cab driver a hefty tip.

  “You’ll see her onto the train? You’ll take care of her bags? Oh, and please don’t hurry her. It gets her in a state….”

  The young cab driver looked her up and down and grinned.

  “Your gran is it, love?”

  “No. Just a friend. But she’s not used to traveling. She doesn’t go out much.”

  “Don’t you worry. I’ll see she’s all right.” He bent his head into the cab and grinned at Mrs. Henshaw. “All comfortable? Right, you sit back now and relax. By the way, I like the hat.”

  “It’s my best.” Mrs. Henshaw quivered, and Genevieve felt a surge of pity for her. She leaned into the cab and planted a kiss on her whiskery cheek. A squeeze of her hand, another check through the purse to make sure the tickets were there, and Mrs. Henshaw was off. Genevieve stood, watching her disappear into the distance. She lifted her face to the damp gray air as the cab rounded the corner. She sighed and turned back to the basement steps.

  The uniformed courier was now mounting them. In his hand he was carrying a neat package. Gini saw that it was tied with string and sealed with red wax.

  The courier looked this Genevieve Hunter up and down. When she had opened the window above and called down to him, he had at first taken her for a young man. Now, on closer inspection, he could see some of the reasons for that mistake. She was tall and slender, and dressed in a mannish way: black trousers, black turtleneck sweater, flat boots. Her long, fair hair was tucked back beneath a battered khaki baseball cap, and she wore an odd, military-style trench coat that reached to mid-calf and was adorned with innumerable flaps and pockets and epaulettes. Now that he could see her properly, however, there was no mistaking her sex: this young woman had a grave, clear-eyed, and rather beautiful face.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting,” Genevieve said. She signed for the package, and was about to stuff it, unopened, into her bag, when she stopped and looked at it more closely. She might be in a hurry to reach the News office, but this parcel was unusual, to say the least.

  “How strange,” she said. “Can you believe it? Look…” She held the package out to the courier. “Someone’s stenciled the address.”

  She shook the package as the courier bent forward to inspect it. There was a small rattling noise. Genevieve frowned, and the courier shook his head.

  “Maybe it’s meant to be a surprise,” he said in an encouraging tone. “So you can’t recognize the handwriting, won’t know who sent it until you open it up. Boyfriend, maybe?” He gave her a shrewd glance. “A surprise present from the boyfriend, something like that?”

  Genevieve smiled. There was no boyfriend at the moment, and the last possible candidate for that title had left to edit an Australian newspaper a month back. Genevieve did not miss him greatly, and he was, in any case, not the kind of man to send surprise gifts. She felt a momentary unease, gave the package another tentative shake. The courier, who seemed as curious as she was, produced a pocket knife.

  “Here.” He handed it to her with a smile. “You never know these days, love—it could be a bad idea, carrying that around. Maybe you ought to open it up.”

  Genevieve did so. Carefully, she cut the string and removed the brown wrapping paper. Inside, there was a plain cardboard box. Inside the box there were sheaves of new tissue paper. Inside this was a pair of handcuffs. They were made of heavy steel. A small key was inserted in their lock.

  Genevieve drew them out with a cry of surprise. The sense of unease deepened. She felt around inside the tissue, but the handcuffs came with no accompanying message or note. Her mouth tightened in anger, and her cheeks flushed. “Great: No note.” She looked at the courier, who was shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m getting a pretty strong message all the same. What kind of a creep would send me this?”

  She frowned down at the handcuffs, trying to think of candidates: Who might find such an anonymous gift appealing? Who might want to play this kind of sick joke?

  She could think of no one. She had enemies as well as friends at her newspaper office, of course, and there were people she had alienated as a result of past articles, certainly. But she could think of no one who would retaliate in this particular underhanded way. With an angry shrug she began to fold up the wrapping paper.

  “Chuck them away, love—I would,” the courier said on a defensive note. He gestured to a trash can up the street.

  “No way.” She set her lips. “I need them. I’m going to find out who sent me this.”

  She began to push the handcuffs, into her bag. The courier hesitated.

  “I could make a few inquiries if you like,” he began. “At my office. They were sent from our City branch—I know that much. I could call in there after work, ask around….”

  Genevieve gave him a grateful smile. “Would you? I’d check myself, but I’m tied up all day.” She handed him her card. “Those are my numbers—work and home. I should be back here around six. Will you call me if you discover anything? I’d be very grateful.”

  The courier promised he would do so; he said that his name was George, and he would call her at home, without fail, after six. He then left for his next delivery, and Genevieve stood for a while on the sidewalk, watching his van disappear. It was cold and beginning to rain. She turned up the collar of her coat and gave a small shiver. Handcuffs. Did that mean that she had an unknown enemy? Or was this anonymous package meant to convey something else?

  She walked across to her car. The rush-hour traffic was heavy, and delayed her further still, but she drove the whole way to her newspaper’s docklands office unaware of the passing time, considering her anonymous present. Halfway there, she finally made the obvio
us deduction: The sender of these handcuffs was likely to be male—and at that her residual sense of sick unease increased.

  PART TWO

  AN INVESTIGATION

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS TYPICAL OF his ex-wife, Pascal thought, turning into the barren suburban street, to elect to live here, in Paris and yet not in Paris, in surroundings that could scarcely be less French. His former wife, born with a gift for languages, fluent in French, German, and Italian, remained English to the core. She retained a thin-lipped disdain for foreigners, an unshakable belief in their inferiority. “Paris?” Helen had said at the time of the divorce. “Live in Paris? Are you insane? I stay in France only on sufferance, for Marianne’s sake. I’ve already found the perfect house. It’s on the outskirts. It costs five million francs. We can build it into the settlement. I hope you’re not going to quibble, Pascal. It’s cheap at the price.”

  The five-million-franc house lay ahead of him now, just up the street. It was what Helen called an “executive” house. It had seven bedrooms, all expensively furnished, and five of them unused. It had seven bathrooms, a kitchen like an operating theater, a four-car garage, and a view of desolate immaculate turf. It was a house that could have been built in any expensive suburb in the world. Pascal had seen others just like it, equally vulgar, in Brussels, London, Bonn, Detroit. Its bricks were an aggressive scarlet. He had loathed it on sight.

  That morning there was a change in the routine. Normally, by tacit agreement, Pascal and Helen never met. At the end of a visitation weekend, Pascal would pull up outside the house. Helen, watching from the picture windows, would rush to the doorway and hold out her arms. Marianne would run inside, the door would close, and Pascal would drive off.

  This morning was to be different, it seemed. Helen was waiting in the driveway, looking thin, elegant, and irritable. She kissed Marianne in a perfunctory way, and the child ran inside. Pascal wound down the window of his car.