Lovers and Liars Trilogy (17 page)

Gini ignored this. She said, “And then?”

“You’ll hear the alarm. Stay a few minutes more, then leave. The building has a coffee shop, American style. It’s just to the right of the main entrance. I’ll meet you there.”

“Pascal, is this going to work? There’s security cameras—I saw them in the courtyard.”

“Of course there are security cameras. If they actually have film in them, and if they’re in operation, they scan the entrance, the lobbies, the elevators, and the corridors. Also the fire escape. As I said, it’s good you’re blond.”

Gini gave in. She left him and retraced her steps. She stopped, and applied some lipstick, reserved for occasions such as this one. She crossed the courtyard and entered the lobby. In the corner was the porter’s desk. It was flanked with an impressive array of technology, several telephones, an intercom system, a switchboard, and—behind him—just visible from where she stood looking plaintive, an array of video screens. One showed a grainy picture of a fire escape—an empty fire escape. The porter was aged about thirty, outfitted in a blue uniform. Gini greeted him warmly. Strengthening her American accent, she launched herself on her spiel.

Afterward she could scarcely remember what she said: some convoluted story about a friend who’d rented an apartment here, and recommended it, followed up by a lengthy inquiry as to whether any apartments were available right now, and if so, who were the rental agents…. The porter threw himself into her predicament. Gini did not dare to glance at the video screens behind him. The porter was in the act of finding the agent’s telephone number when the alarm went off.

Gini jumped: A buzzer sounded behind the desk; a series of red lights began to flash; in the distance, muffled by the size of the building, she could just hear the jangle of the alarm itself.

The porter reacted unexpectedly. He swore, and then apologized. “Sorry, miss. It’s this new system they’ve just fitted. High tech. Given us nothing but trouble, it has. Hang on just a second….”

He turned. Gini fixed her eyes on the central video screen: It still showed a fire escape—an empty fire escape.

The porter consulted a clipboard, then the flashing control board. “Apartment Twelve. Mr. McMullen again. Would you believe it? It’s the second time this week. And we’re short staffed. Here’s that address you need, miss. The police will be here in a minute. But I have to go straight up and check—”

“The police?” Gini said.

“Direct transmission to the station—they’re just up the street. A waste of their time and a waste of mine. You know what sets them off half the time? The heat.”

“Heat?”

“Heat and insects, blasted things. It’s all those magic eyes—body heat and movement detectors. All the apartments have them. And the insects just love them—they’re always warm, see? Flies, spiders, little earwig things. They crawl in, make a nice little nest, and before you know where you are…Still, I’d better go up. Might not be insects. Might be a cat burglar, yes?” He grinned.

Gini thanked him and left.

In the coffee shop, which was deserted, Muzak was playing. Outside, there was an empty terrace, where dripping plastic chairs and tables were stacked. Pascal had positioned himself so he could see out through the room’s plate-glass windows front and back. He was reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. Two cups of coffee were on the table. In the far corner a bored waitress leaned on a counter, reading a book. Gini sat down.

“Pascal,” she began in a low voice. “The police are coming. It might be kind of a good idea if we left.”

Pascal glanced at his watch. “But of course the police are coming. That is the whole point. Sit still. We wait.”

“Act naturally?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you realize just how recognizable you are, Pascal? You’re six feet four inches tall. You’ve got a ridiculous French accent.”

“My accent is not ridiculous. I resent that.”

“It’s
memorable,
dammit. You stick out. People will remember you. The porter. That waitress over there. They’ll remember me.”

“So what if they do? I have no criminal record. Do you?”

“It’s a miracle you
don’t
have a criminal record, the stunts you pull. Creeping into people’s private estates, holing up in their shrubberies, burgling people’s apartments—” She broke off. Pascal was paying not the slightest attention. “In which context,” she said, leaning forward, “it may interest you to know—it could be we’re not the only people eager to get into McMullen’s apartment. This is the second time his alarm’s gone off this week.”

“You’re sure? How do you know?”

“The porter mentioned it. Presumably there were no visible signs of a break-in. The porter put it down to mechanical failure. He didn’t seem worried at all.”

“
Tais-toi.
” Pascal rested his hand over hers. “Here’s the police—look.”

A white car had pulled up by the courtyard. Two uniformed constables climbed out. They did not appear to treat this as a matter of great urgency, but strolled, almost sauntered through the gates.

“Five minutes,” Pascal said. “Ten at the very outside. Wait.”

He was correct in his second estimate. Some ten minutes later, the policemen departed. Five minutes after that, Pascal rose to his feet.

He took her arm, paid for the coffee, exchanged a few pleasantries with the waitress, and led Gini outside, where he drew her back along the alleyway to the Thames, skirted the water, whose level seemed much higher than before, and came to a halt at the foot of the fire-escape steps.

“Right. Now we go up. Fast. And we hope for the best. If this works, we’ve got half an hour in McMullen’s apartment—no more.”

“Only half an hour?”

“After that the tide will be in. It comes in at four feet a minute, which is fast. And dangerous. We’d have to sit on the fire escape and wait for the ebb. Not the best idea. Okay, you first.” He gave her a gallant look. “You don’t suffer from vertigo, I hope?”

Gini mounted the fire escape fast, Pascal at her back. She tried not to think about video screens, or the apartment windows that overlooked these steps.

Halfway up, it began to rain without warning, and with considerable force. Pascal cursed. By the time they reached McMullen’s windows, her hair was drenched, and water ran down her face.

Pascal ignored these conditions. From his pocket he produced a heavy pocketknife. “Now,” he said. “Either we force the window and nothing happens, or we force the window and the alarm goes off. It’s a gamble.”

“What are the odds?”

“About fifty-fifty, I think. Usually, with these alarms, when they’ve been triggered, they have to be reset….”

“Did you trigger it? How?”

“Easy. Look.” He pointed to two small black boxes on the inside of the window frame. “These are contact alarms. If you hit the window frame hard, they go off. Luckily, these are oversensitive; they need adjustment. Sometimes you really have to slam into them. These went off easily. A gentle touch…” He grinned.

Gini said, “You sound very knowledgeable. I guess you’ve done this before?”

“Of course.” He inserted the blade of the knife between the upper and lower frames of the window. “As systems go, this is medium good, medium price. I’ve dealt with better than this. And worse.”

He grunted, pushed harder, levered the knife back and forth. Inside, the catch slid back, and Pascal gave a sigh of satisfaction. He eased the window frame up and held out his hand to Gini to help her up.

Gini ignored the hand. She hauled herself up onto the window ledge and peered into the huge room beyond. “What about those magic eye things? The porter said they had them.”

Pascal showed signs of impatience. “I told you. It’s all right. The system’s off. If it were on, it would have gone off the minute I inserted the knife. Listen, when an alarm system’s been triggered, it has to be reset by an engineer. There was just a possibility the porter had the codes, but I thought he wouldn’t—too great a security risk. He’ll be downstairs now, calling the alarm company, telling them no, he’s checked, the police checked, there was no sign of forced entry, so it must be a mechanical fault. They’ll come out to reset, but not immediately—at least I hope not immediately. Sometime this afternoon, I expect. Meanwhile we have half an hour before the tide rises, so hurry up.”

“A common criminal.” Gini looked at him with admiring disgust. “I’m working with a common criminal. Great.”

“Get a move on,” Pascal said charmingly. “I’ll take the bedroom. You check the desk.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything. Diary. Address book. Letters. Telephone messages. Something, anything, that tells us where McMullen’s gone to ground.”

The apartment was the nearest thing Gini had seen in London to a New York loft. The living room was enormous, its ceiling double height. Looking around her, Gini revised her ideas of James McMullen. It had not occurred to her that McMullen the drifter could be rich.

Yet rich he must undoubtedly be. He could afford floor space that dwarfed most London flats. He could afford, or had perhaps inherited, some fine antiques. The room gave her clues to the man: He liked both old and modern furniture. McMullen was not only well off, he had taste. He liked listening to music—there was a large collection of CDs, most of them Mozart He was a reader—one wall contained floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There must have been at least two thousand books, many of them works of history, many of them in languages Gini could not read. She stood frowning in front of these, revising her opinion of the man again. A former Oxford scholar after all, she reminded herself. She checked the kitchen—well equipped, the refrigerator empty—then made for the desk.

An expanse of well-polished mahogany. Some books, one blotter—unmarked; one container for pens, and one photograph—the only one she had seen in the flat. She turned its heavy silver frame to the light. Lise Hawthorne smiled up at her. It was a studio photograph, taken some time before evidently, for Lise looked no more than twenty. She was radiant in a debutante’s white evening dress.

Gini turned her attention to the desk drawers. There were six of them, all unlocked. Empty too: She stared at them in astonishment. No stationery, no files, no letters, no diaries, no address books, nothing—not so much as a paper clip. The desk had been cleaned out. Gini gave a low whistle. She felt around the back of the drawers. Nothing.

Moving quickly now, she rechecked the room. Examining it more closely, she could see that it too had been stripped. Yes, there was furniture—rugs, paintings, books—but the details of McMullen’s existence had gone. There were no papers, no letters, no bills: She opened every drawer, including those in the kitchen, but there was nothing to be found, not one single scrap of paper.

She looked around her with a sense of frustration. Who could have done this? McMullen himself—or someone else? From the bedroom beyond she could hear the sound of Pascal opening doors and drawers. Gini frowned, and returned to the desk.

A blotter, a container for pens, that pile of well-worn books, the photograph of Lise Hawthorne. Leaning across, she picked up the books and shook them, half hoping some hidden communication from McMullen might flutter out. There was nothing concealed in them, just the three volumes:
The Oxford Book of Modern Verse,
a copy of Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
and a battered paperback of Carson McCullers’s novel,
The Ballad of the Sad Café.
The second book had McMullen’s name written on the flyleaf, and beneath it the words: Christ Church, Oxford—1968.

This helped a little—it identified the Oxford college McMullen had attended, and the year he was there, but nothing more. Gini replaced the books. She stared fixedly at the desk. There must be something—she was certain of it. After all, McMullen had initiated this whole story: If he had had to disappear, if he had chosen to disappear, would he not try to insure he could be traced?

The blotter? Carefully, she removed the paper, but there was nothing concealed beneath. She lifted the photograph of Lise, and gently undid the frame fastenings on its back. At first she thought there was nothing there either, just a backing of cardboard and paper between the picture and the back of the frame—and then she saw it. On one of the sheets of paper used as padding, a series of numbers, written in pencil, arranged like this:

3

6/2/6

2/1/6

It could have been something; it could have been nothing at all. If it was a code of some kind, or a reference, there was no time to decipher it now. Quickly she folded the piece of paper and put it in her pocket. She pushed the glass, picture, and frame back together, and closed it up. She turned, about to tell Pascal what she had found, when from the bedroom beyond came a low exclamation and Pascal called to her.

“Gini. Gini, quickly. Look at this.”

Gini gave a small involuntary shiver. It unsettled her; it felt creepy and illicit, doing this.

She crossed to the bedroom. It was unmistakably a man’s room, austere, well ordered. One wall was lined with closets. Their open doors revealed row upon row of conservative jackets, conservative suits.

Pascal stood in the center of the room by the double bed. Next to him was a chest of drawers. Several of its drawers had been opened. Gini gestured toward them.

“Did you do this?”

“What—open the closets and drawers? Yes. Why?”

“Because the desk is totally empty. It’s been cleared out. I was trying to figure out who did that. McMullen—or the person who set off the alarm earlier in the week.”

“Someone’s been through the desk?”

“That’s right. Plus every single other drawer in the place. There’s not a single scrap of paper—except this.”

She held out the piece of paper she had found. Pascal examined it closely.

“It means nothing to me.”

“Nor me. But it was inside the frame of Lise Hawthorne’s photograph on his desk.”

“Keep it. We’ll look at it later.” Pascal lowered his voice and caught her by the arm. “Now I’ll show you what I found. Something very curious indeed. Look at this.” He gestured toward one of the drawers. Gini looked inside it, frowning.