Lovers and Liars (79 page)

He came to a halt, finally, some distance behind the ambassador’s residence. He could just see its roof through the trees, and beyond it the glittering dome, the minaret of the mosque. The sky was a clear sharp blue-white. To look at it hurt his eyes. My love, Pascal thought; the pain was acute. He could locate it exactly: heartache was not a generalized, nor a metaphoric term - that was where the actual pain actually was: in his heart.

He turned, and walked back very fast to his car. He drove back to the rented house over-fast, and parked badly. If these actions drew attention to himself, he no longer cared. He could now not understand at all what had possessed him to leave the house. Suppose Gini had called? He ran inside. It was now one forty-five. The little red light on the answering machine was not blinking: so - Gini had not called. He felt then a sense of absolute

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despair. He went upstairs, and stared at his cameras. They failed to distract him or to console.

‘Christ/ he said out loud, and punched the wall. He ran downstairs to the telephone again, picked it up, and dialled the number of Gini’s flat in Islington. He did this, at precisely the second that Gini, in Oxford, dialled his line. As she was listening to the engaged tone, Pascal was talking to the answering machine in her flat.

‘Darling,’ he said, ‘call me. Please call me. Call me the second you return.’

He slammed the receiver down, and tried to think. Maybe, when she returned to London, she would go to that safe cottage in Hampstead first, to collect her things. He could see her now, doing just that, letting herself in with the key he’d thrown at her. He gave a groan. He picked up the receiver, and dialled the number there. He left the same message. Then he hung up. Then he decided it was a bad message, and said all the wrong things. So he dialled both numbers again, and added a longer corollary. ‘Gini, I love you. I love you with all my heart, darling. Call me the second you get home.’

He replaced the receiver. He was about to dial both numbers a third time, because he suddenly realized that he had forgotten to say he was sorry, forgotten to explain his remorse. He reached out his hand to the receiver, and at that second, it rang.

Pascal snatched it up. He said ‘Gini’, at exactly the same second that she said, ‘Pascal’.

As he did so, a black car with tinted glass turned into the cul-de-sac behind him. From where he stood, Pascal could just see it. It turned in, drove to the end, paused outside the Gothic villa, then circled, drove out and disappeared.

‘You mean iff Gini was saying. ‘I love you, Pascal. I canft see. I can’t hear. I can’t think for happiness. Also, I’m crying. I don’t know why. I started crying when the line was engaged. I’m sorry, Pascal. I’m so sorry. You’re right. I am all those things you said I was … f

Pascal smiled. ‘So am 1, darling. I have to have you here with me. Come home.’

‘The next direct train, the fast one, is at four-thirty. It gets to Paddington around five-forty. I’ll get a taxi from there. I’ll be with you by six, I swear.’

‘Canft you get an earlier trainT

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‘There’s no point, Pascal. The four-thirty is an express. Besides, I’ve talked to the police and there is something odd about this. I’m just going to look at the place where he died, if he died-‘ ‘IfT Pascal said sharply.

‘I won’t explain now. But the police have been lied to. Pascal, I’ll just do that then I’ll go straight to the station. I promise you I’ll catch that train.’

Pascal was about to burst out with another flood of arguments, another set of pleas. He stared at the wall, and forced himself to remain silent. He said, and it cost him great effort to say that little, ‘You promise me, darling, you will take careT

They talked on while Gini kept feeding coins into the slot. She told him about her conversation with the police sergeant, and she read him the list of items found on McMullen’s body. Pascal copied it down. Gini searched in her purse: she had now run out of change.

‘Darling/ she said, ‘I’ll have to go. I’m running out of moneyIt’ll get dark very soon. I’ll see you at six. That’s only three hours and a bit … ‘

‘It’s three hours and a bit too long, Gini.’ They talked a short while longer, then the call-time expired.

In Oxford, Gini walked out into an ordinary street which felt made-in-heaven. There was a made-in-heaven sky, and made-inheaven rain. She lifted her face rapturously to the rain, and let it wash her face.

In London, Pascal, dazed, stared out at an empty cul-de-sac, and a dazzling blue-white sky. He made himself some coffee, smoked several cigarettes, listened to silence and to joy.

Later, when he was calmer, he looked down the list Gini had read to him: a wallet, credit cards, keys, money, cigarettes, a lighter, a wristwatch, a handkerchief, a signet ring. He stared at this ordinary list, very little different from the contents of his own pockets, and he saw almost immediately that if these were the objects found on McMullen’s body, then something was badly wrong.

The place where McMullen had died was a bleak one. By the time Gini reached it, after losing her way twice, it was just past three, and the light was beginning to fail. She stood for a short while, shivering, on the bridge over the railwayline. The area was deserted. She was surrounded by newly ploughed fields. To her right was the track which led up to the back of McMullen’s

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cottage. It was rutted, visible for perhaps a half-mile, then it disappeared into a dark copse of pine, and an older stand of beech trees at the crest of the steep hill.

The railwaylines below her, just as the police had said, ran as straight as a die. Rooks cawed. Two black crows were scavenging below on the line. The nearest house, an abandoned farm, was two miles further back down the road. A fine and private place, she thought grimly, for a man to kill himself, or be killed.

She scrambled down the bank from the bridge to the rails. They had been fenced off once, but the wooden palings were rotten and broken down. Rusty barbed wire looped among dead brambles and nettle stalks. In front of her the tattered remnants of the plastic strips used to cordon off the area fluttered in the wind. At the edge of the lines there was a welter of rubbish - rusty cans, plastic bags, a bicycle wheel. Directly ahead of her, the stone chippings between the rails were stained a brownish colour. She stared at this, then averted her eyes.

Suddenly, the rails thrummed with life; there was a loud palpitation in the air, a burst of deafening sound. Then, glaringly fast, came the lights. The train was on her in seconds. From three yards back, she felt its rush and its suck. The suddenness frightened her. She reeled back with a cry, slipped and fell. The train was past and gone, before she lifted her head. The air rocked. From the distance came the banshee wail of the train’s hooter. The rooks rose up screeching from the trees.

Shaken, she hauled herself to her feet. Slipping and scrambling on the muddy bank, she climbed back up to the bridge. She turned and looked at the track which led up to McMullen’s cottage. She thought she could get the car up it, if she was careful. She was no more than twenty minutes from Oxford, and the station: she just had time. She looked at the dark woods at the summit of the hill and hesitated. The light was now thickening. She had no great wish to venture up there in gathering darkness, but she had not come this far to lose her nerve. She thought briefly of Hawthorne, the previous evening. Don’t believe all the lies, he had said.

She shook herself, ran back to her car, and eased it forward carefully onto the track. The going was easier, and quicker, than she had expected. She made it almost all the way to the summit. At this point, about sixty yards below the cottage itself, there was a clearing in the woods. The residue of the track was impassable. She cut her lights, switched off the engine, and climbed out of the car.

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The silence was startling. The only sound was the whispering and creak of branches. Stepping quietly and cautiously, she edged her way up the overgrown track through the gloom.

She came out from the shelter of the trees into a small yard to the rear of the cottage. She stopped, and listened. There were no lights, no sounds. She began to inch her way across the flagstones of the yard, to the wall of the lean-to kitchen at the rear. There was a door here; she turned its handle, but it was locked. The boarded windows were impenetrable. Feeling her way along the walls, peering ahead of her into the shadows, she edged around to the front of the house.

She listened. Absolute silence. The wind had died down. She moved quietly to the front door, and gave a gasp of fear and surprise. The door was unlocked. As she touched it, it swung open silently on well-oiled hinges. The room beyond was black. She could see nothing at all.

She had come here without a flashlight, she realized, and silently cursed. She stood on the brink of the room. From some distance beyond, across the track, a bough creaked, and there was a tiny scuffling noise. She froze, but there was no further sound. An animal, she told herself, some small animal, that’s all. She stepped into the room, shut the door behind her, pressed herself back against the wall, and reached for the light switch.

The light immediately steadied her. There was no-one here. The room was exactly as before. She looked around it quickly: the sticks of furniture, the two paperback books, the pile of newspapers, the whisky bottle and glasses, the paraffin heater.

There was something wrong though, something inching its way forward from the back of her mind. The rucksack was gone, for one thing, but it was more than that. She looked around, and then she realized. The room was not cold. When they had come before, it had been icy here. With a low exclamation, she moved quickly across the room. She touched the paraffin heater, and recoiled sharply. The metal was still warm.

She stood there rigid, her heart beating very fast. Someone had been here, and been here very recently too. She ran across silently to the kitchen. The container of gun-oil Pascal had described was gone. She darted back into the main room, crossed to that newspaper stack, and picked up the top-most paper on the pile.

It was a local paper, the Oxford Mail, Friday’s edition. Yesterday’s edition. She stared at the date. Dead men did not buy

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newspapers. How did McMullen acquire that paper, bring it here, when at six on Friday morning, he had been lying dead on the railwaylines three miles away?

Her eyes moved slowly around the room. A bottle of Scotch, two paperbacks, three unwashed glasses, a still-warm paraffin stove; a lie to the police as to McMullen’s whereabouts the night before his death.

Was he dead - or was he very much alive?

Her mouth felt dry with fear. Her skin felt shivery.

The house was silent. She made herself do it. She crossed to the stairway door, and eased up its latch. She stood for a moment, shivering, peering into the dark at the top of the stairs.

The stairs creaked as she mounted them. There was no banister, no light switch. They led straight into a single upstairs room. Above her head, high in the roof eaves, there was an unboarded skylight. She crept into the room, and pressed her back against the wall. She waited for her eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom.

Gradually, she began to discern shapes from the patches of faint light and shadow. There was no furniture. Across the room, under the skylight, there was a make-shift bed - a strip of carpeting, and the hummocky outline of a sleepingbag. For one horrible instant, she thought the bag had an occupant; her skin crawled. Then she realized it was empty. She was looking at crumples and folds of puffy material, no pillow, no sign of any clothes, but next to the bag there were some objects on the floor.

She crept across the room to the bag, knelt down and tried to identify them by feel. An empty tin candlestick, a box of matches … and a package of some kind. She felt the outline of this package. It was flat and stiff, a reinforced envelope about twelve inches by eight. It had been opened; she could feel the neat slit, made with a knife.

She held it out to the thin light coming from above, and could just see that there was something written on the envelope, but she could not make out the words. She was starting to shiver again. She listened to the silence fearfully. She could feel something inside the envelope, something stiff and smooth.

She felt around on the floorboards, felt under the sleepingbag, but she could find nothing concealed. Clutching the envelope, she made for the stairs.

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In the light of the downstairs room, she breathed more easily. She must hurry, hurry … She stared down at the envelope’s computerprinted address: James McMullen, CIO Dr Anthony Knowles, Christ Church Oxford. No stamp, so it must have been delivered by hand.

Inside there were photographic prints, masked by a sheet of thick white paper. When she saw what had been typed on the paper, she gave a low cry of astonishment. The signatory was John Hawthorne’s father; the message was brief, and to the point:

Mr McMullen [it read]

You have been making some very unwise allegations concerning blondes. I feel you should know the truth. These photographs were taken in the final three months of last year, in each case on the third Sunday of those months. Goodbye, Mr McMullen: I shall not expect you to trouble this family again.

Gini stared at this message in confusion. She thought: I was wrong, and Hawthorne lied. She hesitated, unwilling to look at these pictures, then she lifted the covering letter aside. She had a sick premonition of what she might see, but she had not expected this, and she was unused to hard-core pornography. When she saw the three images, October, November, December, she gasped, and let them fall from her hand.

She bent down, and looked at each month’s picture in turn. All three were in black and white. In all three the woman wore a black, tight-waisted basque, which left her breasts bare. She wore long black gloves, black stockings, and black patent leather stiletto-heeled shoes. In all three pictures, the woman was kneeling, in front of a man. Each of the men was different, though all three were young, in their late teens or early twenties, and all had blond hair. Gini recognized none of the three. Each had his hands cuffed behind his back; each of the men wore workman’s clothes: overalls or dirty jeans; each had the heavy muscular build of the manual labourer. One of them had scratch marks on his face. The November man had removed his shirt to reveal heavy arms covered in tattoos. In each of the three photographs, the man’s flies were opened, and his penis was exposed.