Lovers and Liars Trilogy

  “It’s very hard for him, obviously,” she began. “He’s trying to balance the things that matter most to him. Even in Sarajevo he thought about Marianne all the time. He wrote constantly, he telephoned. When he gets back, he—”

  “That wasn’t really what I meant, as I think you know,” Helen said. “I wasn’t thinking of Marianne. I was thinking of you.”

  Gini lowered her gaze. “We don’t have children,” she said in a quiet voice. “So it’s different for me.”

  “Of course.” Helen looked at her, her expression doubtful. “Anyway, it’s not my business. I don’t want to interfere. Do you know when he’s coming back from Sarajevo?”

  “No, not exactly. The situation changes every day. But soon. In a couple of weeks, probably.”

  “Well, he’ll be back for Marianne’s birthday in January. That we can count upon,” Helen said, a slight edge in her voice. “There’s a fixed date anyway.”

  “He’ll be home before that,” Gini said quickly. “He’ll come back for Christmas, I know.”

  Helen said nothing. Looking at her face, Gini could tell she doubted the accuracy of that prediction—and of course, as it turned out, Helen was proved right. Pascal had not returned for Christmas. Indeed, his ex-wife knew him well.

  “I’ll get the bill.” Helen had turned to wave at the waiter. “No. My treat. I insist. I’ll hope to see you again soon. Perhaps in Paris, for Marianne’s birthday? I’d like you to meet Ralph. I always think that these things are much simpler if they’re handled openly. There’s no reason why we can’t all be friends now.” She hesitated, and then to Gini’s great surprise reached across the table and pressed her hand.

  “I like you, Gini. I didn’t expect to, but I do. I hope you know—Pascal deserves some happiness in his life. God knows he never found it with me. When I last saw him—he did seem so altered, so much better in every way. No bitterness, no anger—I could see how good you’ve been for him, and I was glad. It’s just—”

  “What?”

  “My dear, you don’t look terribly well, you know.”

  “I’m fine. I picked up some bug in Sarajevo. I’m fine now.”

  “Good.” Helen smiled. “Well, tell Pascal to take care of you. Don’t let him get too obsessive—after all, you are supposed to be living together now! Crack the whip a little, Gini, the next time he calls. It may not have worked in my case, but I’m sure it would in yours.” She rose. “I must go. I’m catching the four o’clock Paris flight. Ralph is meeting me, so I mustn’t miss it.” She gave Gini a tiny conspiratorial glance. “I have a plane to catch now.”

  Gini returned to her apartment. She could not like Helen, and she was unsure if she could trust her, but she had heard very genuine feeling break through her pointed words. For an hour, two hours, Gini paced up and down. The telephone did not ring. Eventually, giving in to temptation, she went into the bathroom and used the pregnancy testing kit she had purchased earlier that day. It was simple enough: if you were pregnant, the strip turned pink; if you were not pregnant, it turned blue.

  It took fifteen minutes to react. She sat there, watching it. She wondered what Pascal would say if he knew the truth, if she told him that she wanted it to turn pink, wanted it with her whole soul. What would he say if she confessed that the desire to have his child had taken hold of her the day of that hospital shelling, and that the desire, still acute, was with her still?

  She covered her face with her hands. She had no need to imagine a reaction to an emotion she did not intend to admit: she knew what the reaction would be. She had seen it in that brown and orange hotel room, when she had explained that she had just missed her period; concern, then anxiety, then something very close to despair.

  “You are still taking the pill? I don’t understand.”

  “Yes. I am. I think it’s just overwork. Tiredness.”

  “Gini, are you sure? You couldn’t have missed a day or two by accident?”

  “No. I checked. Don’t worry, it’s just the stress—it’s happened to me before.”

  He tried to embrace her then; he began insisting she see a doctor for a checkup. When she had done so, and it was confirmed that she was not pregnant, Gini found herself unable to meet his eyes. She was afraid to see the relief in them. She stared at the ground.

  “Suppose I had been,” she said in a low voice. “What then, Pascal?”

  “Darling, I don’t know…” He put his arms around her. “We’re only halfway through our time here. This was something you so much wanted to do—this work. Your career matters very much to you. You said you didn’t want children. A mistake like that, coming at a time when we’re both working all hours, always on the move, in danger to some extent—”

  “A mistake?”

  “Well, it would have been a mistake in one sense, darling, you know that. This is something we’ve never considered—the last thing we’d planned, coming now, in the midst of all this mayhem.”

  Gini turned away wordlessly. She could hear the anxiety in his voice; she thought she could detect an undertone of impatience, imperfectly concealed.

  He was right, she told herself; his reaction was sensible, pragmatic, responsible. She thought: he does not want another child; he does not want a child with me.

  The pain was very great. Despite the pain, and the rationality of his arguments, the desire remained. She still wanted his baby, and she continued to clutch at the hope that she might be pregnant long after leaving Bosnia. She knew, of course, when that desire began. She could date it to the day, the hour. After Mostar. She had watched too many children die; now her body dictated—she wanted to feel a child grow within her; she wanted Pascal to watch this child be born.

  The fifteen minutes had eventually passed. In that bathroom she had looked at a test-tube device, at a sample strip that reminded her of school chemistry lessons, years before. Its verdict filled her with desolation: as both feared and expected, the strip was turning blue.

  Charlotte was the first of the family to surface. She came down to the kitchen yawning, wrapped in a deep blue woolen dressing gown, complaining she had been awakened by sirens.

  Gini averted her face from the swell of her stomach; Charlotte, fussing over the dogs, did not notice her reddened eyes.

  “I don’t understand.” She waved a scrap of paper. “Max left me a note—he didn’t want to wake me, and I was dead to the world. But there’s been some kind of accident. He and Rowland had the police out last night, after we went to bed. But why aren’t they back? Where can they be? Why haven’t they called?”

  “I’ll make some tea.” Gini rose. “Don’t worry, Charlotte. There’s probably some simple explanation. It can’t be too serious. Max would have awakened you if it were.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. He’s protective. Of me—and this daughter of ours here.” She patted her stomach. “She’s kicking away now. Here…” She held out her hand. “Feel, Gini. Isn’t it extraordinary? So small, and all that power?”

  Gini allowed her hand to be taken. She rested her palm on the curve of Charlotte’s belly. Its hardness astonished her. At first she felt nothing, then she sensed a tremor, then movement. There was a bumping beneath her hand, as if tiny hands or feet resented this confinement and pushed against the womb’s walls. Then there was stillness, then movement again, rippling out beneath her fingertips in one long, fluent curve.

  “She’s turned over.” Charlotte smiled. “Now she’ll sleep. That’s the usual routine.”

  “She?” Gini withdrew her hand. Envy, and a longing so intense it stifled her, gripped her heart. She turned quickly away to the stove.

  “I believe Rowland.” Charlotte gave a low laugh. “I know he was teasing me, but I still trust him. Rowland’s so odd—he might well have magic powers.”

  She stopped speaking abruptly and swung around.

  Gini, turning, heard the sound of pounding footsteps, a voice calling frantically. A woman was running across the terrace outside. Without knocking, she flung
open the kitchen door. It was only when she began speaking, and Gini heard her accent, that she realized this white-faced, disheveled woman was the smart, overdressed Susan Landis, whom she had met and disliked the night before.

  “Please,” she said. “Oh, God, Charlotte—please, you’ve got to help me. I’ve been calling and calling—I just went up to the manor. There’s police everywhere…”

  She swayed, grasped a chair back, and made a choking sound.

  “Please help me. Something terrible has happened. Cassandra’s dead—and Mina’s disappeared. She’s such a good girl—she’s only fifteen. Charlotte—please. I can’t make the police understand. Mina’s gone!”

  At nine-thirty Rowland was sitting in a small interview room in the main Cheltenham police station. The room was tiny and smelled of stale nicotine. He had been sitting there since six-thirty that morning. He had not eaten, washed, shaved, or slept. Max, who had driven him there, was in the interview room next door. It was he who had made the preliminary identification of Cassandra Morley’s body. Now, presumably, he was doing what Rowland had been doing for the past three hours, going over the events of the night before.

  Rowland had given a statement, been questioned on the statement. What time, when, how: why had he been up there, alone, at that time of night? Why had he moved the body?

  “Because I didn’t know she was dead,” Rowland had replied. “She was lying awkwardly. I checked for neck and spinal injuries, then I moved her. Then—”

  “Are you a doctor? You have medical qualifications?”

  “No. But I’ve had some paramedical training.”

  “You have? Why?”

  “Look, I climb. In Scotland. I’ve climbed in the Alps. I know how to check for those kinds of injuries. It was automatic to do that. I suppose—I was also looking for other obvious signs… a head wound—I don’t know.”

  “Did you attempt resuscitation?”

  “No. There was no pulse—”

  “You’re sure?”

  “For God’s sake!” Rowland lost his temper. “Rigor mortis had set in. It was—what? Minus five degrees? By the time I found her, she’d been dead several hours.”

  And so it went on. An interview with one officer, then a second. The gradual and unpleasant realization that because of the circumstances, because he was a man, he might not be believed. Eventually their interviewing tactics changed and their tone became less hostile—presumably because they had received an interim medical report, and Max had corroborated his story. But Rowland was left with a sick sense of their distrust. He felt guilty by gender, a feeling he had never experienced before.

  The statement was taken down, revised, amplified, then taken away to be typed. From outside the interview room came constant noise. Some of the travelers from the barn were being brought in, presumably questioned, perhaps busted for possession: Rowland had no way of knowing, and no one was likely to inform him. Around nine someone brought him tea he didn’t want, and half an hour later the more senior detective returned. He was a middle-aged man who had already mentioned the fact that he had two teenage daughters. He looked as weary and sickened as Rowland felt. Passing his hand across his face, he sat down and gave Rowland the statement to sign.

  “One thing.” He indicated its first paragraph. “Your emergency call is logged at two-eleven A.M. What time was it when you got back to the body?”

  “Around two-thirty. Maybe two thirty-five.”

  “And you noticed the music had stopped—when?”

  “Maybe five minutes later. I’m not sure. I wasn’t really thinking about it, not to begin with. Is it important?”

  “It helps.” He gave a sigh. “By the time our cars got up to that barn, the travelers were already packing up. The ringleaders had already left—or so the others claim. Usually those affairs go on all night. I’d like to know why they broke up early, that’s all.”

  “There are ringleaders, then?”

  “Oh, sure. The travelers will feed you any amount of crap. Claim they were just following ley lines, took tarot readings, make out they just all happened to congregate in that one place at one time. In this case, a girl’s dead. So they’re prepared to be that bit more cooperative. Nothing to get excited about. They know who the suppliers are—but they won’t name names.”

  “Was it drugs?” Rowland looked at him. “Is that what killed her?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy report, obviously. It’s probable, I’d say. We’ve had stuff flooding into the area recently—Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, amphetamines. People think rural areas are safe. They think drugs are a big-city problem. They’re wrong. I try to explain to my daughters—they listen. Then they laugh the second I leave the room. You have children?”

  “No.”

  “Wait until you do. It’s as easy to score around here as it would be in London. Pubs, clubs, discos, parties, raves—grass, Ecstasy, over the course of an evening, it’s cheaper than beer. Sometimes they’re buying garbage, sometimes they’re getting something very pure. It’s a kind of Russian roulette, and the kids like that. Adds to the thrill, maybe. Who knows?” He tapped the statement. “If you’re happy with it, sign. I expect you’d like to get out of here.”

  Rowland signed.

  “This is the second death of this kind in four weeks,” the man went on as Rowland rose. “The last one was a girl too. It was just before Christmas. She was Dutch, a runaway. She was fourteen years old, good family, plenty of money, no problems there. She hadn’t been home in nine months. Her parents identified the body Christmas Day. It wasn’t the best Christmas I’ve ever known.”

  “She was Dutch?” Rowland said. “From where?”

  “Amsterdam, I believe. Needle tracks on both arms. The amphetamines she’d taken didn’t mix too well with the heroin. And the heroin was unusually pure. The dealers introduce high purity consignments from time to time—when they need new clients, and need to hook them fast.”

  He opened the door. “Thank you for your help. Your friend should be through soon. You can wait out there.”

  Rowland returned to the lobby. He felt angry and dispirited and on edge. He had been too late to save Cassandra Morley, and the information he had given was unlikely to be of great assistance. He sat down beneath a poster warning of the perils of drunk driving, and resigned himself to waiting for Max.

  There was no sign now of the travelers. The lobby was deserted except for the constable on duty at the desk, and a plump, belligerent young man with a South London accent who was wearing an expensive suit and a loud shirt: the two were having an altercation that had clearly begun some time before.

  As Rowland entered, the man raised his voice.

  “Look,” he said. “Can I get this through your head? I’m here to report a stolen vehicle, not answer damn stupid sodding questions. It’s a top-of-the-range five series BMW. Silver. Leather upholstery. Alloy wheels. We’re talking almost thirty thousand quid…”

  “I have those details. I have the registration number. Are you the owner of the vehicle, sir?”

  “No. I’m not. For crying out loud. My name’s Mitchell—you’ve got that? You can spell that okay? The car belongs to a lady friend of mine. I just had it for the weekend. Is that a crime now? Anything else you’d like to know? My blood group, maybe? My mother’s birth date? I mean, if that’s what it takes to get some action around here—”

  “Was the car locked when you left it, sir?”

  “Yes. No. Look—I’m not sure. I already told you…”

  “You’re not sure? Had you been drinking, sir?”

  “No. I goddamn well hadn’t been drinking. What is this? I already told you. I was driving back to London, from here, and—and I got taken short. I needed to take a leak. L-e-a-k—you’ve got that?”

  The constable made a note of this information, his face impassive. Rowland listened with closer attention. This was a war of attrition, and he knew who would win.

  “So I get out to take a quick piss, okay?
” Mitchell went on. “I’ve driven off the main road. I’m on this track, in the middle of nowhere. Up ahead of me is this barn. I can see lights, hear music—so I think I’ll check it out, see what’s going on. What do I find? The place is crawling with hippies. I take one look—I’ve left the car maybe two, three minutes—and what do I find when I get back? The sodding car’s gone. So I do the obvious. I go back. I ask around. I make some inquiries—like have any of you deadbeats seen a thirty-thousand-quid BMW recently? I get nowhere. There’s all these bleeding kids milling around. I give up, start walking back down the track, and what do I find? They’ve pinched my sodding wallet as well. No money. No plastic. Put it this way—it didn’t improve my mood. So, what I’d like to know now is—are you going to report this vehicle as stolen, or piss around—”

  The constable made a note. He said: “Time, sir? This would have been when exactly?”

  Rowland, watching with keen interest now, knew the question was not idle. Mitchell sensed it as well. His manner at once became evasive.

  “Time? I’m not sure. Midnight—maybe a bit before.”

  “It’s past nine now, sir.”

  “So?”

  “Why didn’t you report the matter earlier?”

  “Because I was stuck miles up some sodding track, in the dark. Because I had to damn well walk miles, because when I got here, when I finally got here, a whole lot of jerks kept me hanging around—”

  Mitchell stopped. During this last peroration, the constable had picked up a telephone and said a few words. Replacing the receiver, he emerged from behind his counter and took Mitchell by the arm.

  “If you’d come through here. One of the detective sergeants would like a word.”

  Mitchell began protesting loudly. Rowland saw him eye the door, as if wondering whether to bolt for it. Clearly, he thought better of it. He disappeared into an adjoining room. Through the closed door his voice could be heard for a while, blustering. Then he fell silent. Rowland thought: they’re telling him about the girl.

  He leaned back against the wall and stared dully at the posters. Mitchell had been lying, that was obvious. He wondered whether he would prove to know anything useful, but his mind would not fix on that question, or any other. He felt a deepening black despondency, and he knew where this would lead his thoughts next if he did not guard against it: back to Washington, D.C., to a street near Dupont Circle, and to a different kind of drug killing that had happened six years before.