Lovers and Liars Trilogy (160 page)

The escape had not been an easy one; there had been times in Paris when she had despaired, as had Pascal. But something—God, luck, perseverance—had been there to assist them. And now, today, she could feel her own good fortune: she might not have merited it, but fortune was hers and it had been lavishly dispensed.

Twice blessed,
she thought, and gave a little pirouette of impromptu joy. Then she pulled the sweater on over her thin white nightdress because she wanted to feel Pascal against her skin. She padded out to the kitchen and began her preparations dreamily, laying a tray—maybe she should put a flower on that tray? Absurd, she thought; but these details mattered because she wanted them both to remember them always. So: perfect tray, perfect breakfast; and a perfect beginning to this, a perfect day.

“What a day…” someone remarked as Rowland opened the back door to Max’s house and stepped out into the freshness of the May morning.

Rowland halted, annoyed. It was not seven yet; he had not expected anyone else to be up. He had certainly not expected to encounter anyone else in Max’s garden, and the accents and intonation of that particular voice filled him with foreboding. He glared to left and right. No one was visible.

“Perfect,” he replied in a discouraging tone.

“A perfect day for a
walk
,” said the voice, which now appeared to come from behind a clipped yew. “Mind if I join you?”

Rowland did mind. He minded very much. He accelerated in the opposite direction, around a hedge, and along a laburnum tunnel. Just when he was congratulating himself on the success of this maneuver, Markov—the risible figure of Markov—materialized at his side.

“What
a good idea,” Markov said in faintly satiric tones. “A walk before breakfast on an English spring morning. The wind in one’s face. A stride across the hills. Or maybe a gentle
meander
along the river valley…”

Rowland gave Markov one quick, assessing glance. He had not the least idea why Max and Charlotte had been insane enough to invite Markov to the christening of their daughter, although he assumed Lindsay had had a hand in the invitation. He regretted his presence in their house, and he regretted it even more here. He looked Markov up and down. The intolerable man was, as he had been the previous evening, wearing foolish clothes. His trousers appeared to be made of black velvet. His jacket—no, Rowland could not bring himself to look at the jacket. He was wearing earrings, and had set a black baseball cap back to front on his long flaxen curls. As usual—he had not removed them once during dinner the previous night—he was wearing dark glasses.
Reflective
dark glasses.

Rowland scowled at his own mirrored face. He glanced down at Markov’s very white high-top designer sneakers. His lip curled. With luck, he thought, Markov, the heavy smoker, would be out of breath before they left the orchard.

“Not the valley,” he replied with great courtesy. “I’m going up there.” He pointed in the direction of the hills. “Do join me, by all means. Only I should warn you. It’s steep. And it’s likely to be muddy.”

“No worries.” Markov waved a languid hand. “I guess I’ll manage to plow my way through. I love walking. Back home—I’m from California, did I mention that?”

“I guessed.”

“—Back home, you know where I go? You’ve heard of Yosemite?”

“I’ve climbed in Yosemite actually. Several times.”

“Wow. Cosmic coincidence! I go there every month. I get back from location, no matter where, and I
trek.
Out into the wilderness. Beyond the reach of man. It kind of irrigates my mind. I guess you’ll understand that…”

Rowland shuddered, and lengthened his stride.

Reaching the bottom of the steepest hill behind Max’s property, he began to lope up its narrow and indeed muddy path. To his intense irritation, Markov kept up. Rowland accelerated again; he waited for complaints, or pants, or sighs; none came. Markov was right on his heels, like some appalling hound of God.

“I would have thought,” Rowland said tightly some way farther on, “that a country christening wasn’t really your style. Or walks, for that matter.”

“In that case,” said Markov, putting on a spurt, “you’d be oh so but completely one hundred percent wrong. I wouldn’t have missed this occasion for
anything.”

Rowland gave him a glance of pure dislike. Markov, who was tall, lean, and wirily built, had now somehow contrived to get in front of him. He bounded ahead, his ghastly sneakers flashing white as he negotiated boulders and rabbit holes. Rowland slowed, but this technique did not work either. Markov, blessedly lost from sight just minutes before, suddenly popped up from behind a thorn thicket. With a wide, authoritative smile, he once more took his place at Rowland’s tweed-jacketed elbow and matched him stride for stride.

“Of course, the real reason, the serious reason I’m here is Lindsay,” Markov went on in a reflective way. “Because I really admire her and like her, and right now she needs her friends. So—moral-support time. I guess she hasn’t told you? No—there’s no way she would. Poor Lindsay. She really needs help and advice—but can she ask for it? No. Too much pride, of course.”

He cast a little glance at Rowland McGuire as he made this pronouncement. Rowland’s handsome face gave no sign of any reaction, and Markov felt a grudging admiration. Just as devastating as Lindsay had claimed, he thought, and no pushover. This would require rather more labor than he had anticipated; Rowland’s scorn was almost palpable. It was there in the contemptuous flash of his green eyes, and in the set of his lips. Markov decided to be more impressive; wave the wand, he thought—oh, and better modify the speech.

Dispensing with his usual verbal mannerisms—so much camouflage, in any case—Markov talked on. He wondered how long it would take this McGuire man to realize that his companion was not a fool. Five minutes. Ten? It took fifteen. Five minutes on the subject of Scotland, where luckily Markov had been often on shoots; five minutes on the subject of Dostoevsky—here Markov knew he excelled—and five minutes of complete silence. It was the silence that clinched it, Markov felt. Rowland McGuire accelerated the last five hundred yards to the crest of the hill at a pace even Markov could not quite match, but he then waited for him there, a slight smile on his face.

“Okay,” Rowland said as Markov reached his side. “You walk well. You talk well. Why are you here?”

“I’m not hitting on you,” Markov replied with some impudence. “Just in case it like crossed your mind.”

“It didn’t. I’m sure you rarely waste your time.”

“‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me,’” Markov quoted smartly. “Not my style. You’re right.”

He leaned up against a wall, drew out a pack of Marlboros, and lit one. He turned his reflective glasses to the valley a long way below them. “Great view from here.”

They were not far from the place where Rowland had discovered Cassandra Morley’s body. Rowland, thinking of that night, and other events subsequent to it, made no reply. He, too, leaned against the wall, and with a closed expression turned his face to the valley below. After a while Markov, reading the alteration in him, silently passed him a cigarette. McGuire, who—as far as he knew—did not smoke, accepted it without comment. They leaned back in the sunshine, tobacco smoke curling into the air. Neither spoke. The silence lengthened and became almost companionable.

“Well, what do you know?” Markov said at last. “You’re not what I expected at all. Seriously, I quite like you. And I thought you’d be a prick.”

“Oh, really?” McGuire colored. “And who gave you that impression? Lindsay, I suppose.”

“Lindsay—a bit. Other people too. I asked around. After you killed those pictures of mine. Remember that?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Not that anyone had a bad word to say—exactly. I mean Lindsay’s always singing your praises. How much she admires your judgment. Your editorial skills.”

“Lindsay?” Rowland looked genuinely astonished. “I can’t believe that. She never stops telling me how to do my job.”

“Oh, that’s just her way.” Markov gave an airy gesture. “It means nothing. Just Lindsay being defensive. Or teasing you maybe. She might do that. She found you insensitive, I think, and she did mention you were pretty
arrogant
—but then, other people said that.”

McGuire’s color deepened. He shrugged. “Well, maybe so. It’s one of my faults. I have plenty of others, no doubt.”

“Yeah, sure. Don’t we all? And then, of course, you have a reputation as a womanizer, did you know that?”

McGuire’s color deepened even further. He shot Markov an angry glance.

“I can’t see that’s any of your business.” Then: “Lindsay said that?”

“Lindsay? No. Someone else. Lindsay wouldn’t bad-mouth you that way. One, she’s discreet, actually rather seriously discreet, and two—I told you, she likes you. You know, up to a point. Apart from the arrogance, that is. Not that she gives you much thought, except when I’m prompting her. She has other things on her mind right now. Too bad. You’ve noticed the change in her, I guess?”

“Change? Change? Since when? No—I haven’t.”

“Oh, well, she hides it, at work, I suppose. And then, you haven’t been at the
Correspondent
that long, have you? It’s about what, six or seven months?”

“About that. Yes.”

“Oh, well, it happened just after you arrived, so I guess you wouldn’t really notice the difference. How tense she is. Like really strung out. I mean, I know she wouldn’t break down, or cry—not at work, not in front of someone like you… But I’ve known her for years. I’m gay. She trusts me. So when she sees me, she really opens up.”

There was a silence. McGuire seemed to be weighing this. He frowned out across the valley, the wind lifting his hair from his face. Once or twice he glanced back at Markov, as if about to speak, and then remained silent. Markov was glad of his mirrored glasses; McGuire’s glance, cool and assessing, disconcerted even him. The obvious response of most people at this point would, of course, have been to ask exactly what was wrong with Lindsay. McGuire’s refusal to do the obvious interested Markov; he awarded him a few more points, and waited. Eventually, Rowland said: “I suppose, now that you mention it, I have noticed some alteration. As you say, she doesn’t take me into her confidence, but—she has been
quieter
just this last couple of weeks.”

It was two weeks since their dinner. Markov made no comment.

“And then—I did notice yesterday. She’s looking pale…”

Pale and
interesting,
thought Markov, who had supervised the makeup himself. In Markov’s view there were two types of men in the world; one knew when women were wearing makeup, the other did not. McGuire almost certainly fell into the latter category, he had guessed. He now congratulated himself.

“I hope she’s not ill in any way? Is there some problem at home—with her mother, with Tom?”

The question was asked in polite and neutral tones; it was accompanied by another penetrating green glance. Markov, unsettled by that glance, hopped down from the wall on which he had half perched, and moved off toward the path.

“No, no—all fine on the home front,” he said in an evasive way, and waited for further prompts. None came. Silently Markov cursed.

“So, what I was thinking was…” he began as they turned back down the path with unspoken assent, “the thing
is
—I’m off on location next week. First Haiti. Then Tangier. Then somewhere kind of… remote. In the African bush. So I won’t be back for over a month…”

“Haiti? You choose odd locations for your fashion pictures.”

“Don’t I
just,”
replied Markov, repressing a small smile. “I guess I like to shake up people’s expectations. Give them a surprise.”

“Yes. I can imagine you might like that.”

“The point being—I’m away, Lindsay loses her number-one confidant, right? So I’m looking around. I’m
casting.
I need a stand-in—just for four weeks. I had thought you’d do—I mean, you work in the same office, you seem to get along okay. I mean, she’s not going to pour her heart out to you the way she does to me, obviously, but you could help in other ways. Take her for a meal now and then. Maybe the odd trip to the theater, the movies. Nothing heavy. Just so she could get away from that monster of a mother of hers. So she had a chance to go out once in a while instead of just sitting alone, getting more and more miserable every night. I mean, the main trouble is, she’s been badly hurt, and when that happens to women, all their self-confidence goes, you know? Some jerk throws them over—after three years, would you believe—and
wham
suddenly the women, they’ve got this fixed idea in their heads—they’re hideous, they’re dumb, no one likes them, no one wants to talk to them—massive hemorrhaging of self-esteem…”

Markov paused. He had promised Lindsay, under oath, that he would tell no direct lies, but allow McGuire to make certain assumptions. He glanced at McGuire; surely this message had gotten through? Or would he need more narrative tricks?

“I find this hard to believe.” Rowland was frowning, looking puzzled. “Lindsay always seems so confident, so assured. She’s very good at her job, she’s highly successful, I wouldn’t have thought—”

“Oh, you know women—”

“No, actually, I’m not sure I do.”

“All the same. Unfortunately. Success? What does it mean? Nothing.
Nada.
Complete zilch. I mean it’s
okay,
up to a point—but it’s not what they
really
want, right?”

“What
do
women want?” Rowland asked with a sidelong glance.

“Love, of course,” Markov said, ignoring the glance, which might have been amused. “Love, love, love. The holiness of the heart’s affections. All that.”

“Very wise.”

“You think so? Perhaps. It’s fine until it goes wrong. When that happens, a man just picks himself up, gets on with his life—I speak from the sidelines here, of course…”

“That’s certainly what people say.”

“Whereas a
woman
—oh, no. Terminal angst. And when they’ve been lied to, of course, lied to for over three years, promised marriage, the whole bit, and then that turns out not to be in the cards, because, guess what, the bastard’s
already
married, with a very rich wife he can’t leave, and three beautiful, vulnerable little kids—and when the woman concerned, she’s had no inkling of this, and she’s been lied to and lied to, and it turns out he’s been boasting about her so all his friends know, know, I mean, these really
intimate
details…”