Krysalis: Krysalis (28 page)

“Where did you train?”

She threw back her head and laughed, too theatrically for Albert’s taste. “I did not train. I had a father, who liked to eat only the best.” Her head came back to horizontal. “And a mother who died when I was young. Before we got out, my father owned an establishment in Brno. He taught me …
everything!”

“You’re Czechoslovakian?”

“I am.”

“Your name faced me. Racine.”

“I changed it when I came here. I disliked the one my father gave me. It is something I have in common with Septimus. But fathers are … you’ve been to Czechoslovakia, perhaps?”

“Passing through.”

Seppy grunted. He meant it to be a laugh, but it turned into something less funny. Albert was starting to dislike this man, who understood rather more than was convenient.

“Albert wants some help, darling.”

“And how may we help you, Mr. Albert?”

“Do you recognize this woman?” Albert handed over a photograph of Anna, one they had taken from her album, and then, acting on an impulse, he asked, “Did she have a reservation for today? For two, by any chance?”

Racine shrieked, “Oh my God!” and burst out laughing, a hand held to her throat. Her fingernails, Albert noticed, were painted an unattractive shade of green. “I thought she must be dead, at least.”

Albert briefly wondered what was more than death, in this context, but he had no time for whimsy. “Do you know her name?”

Seppy took a good look at the photo before settling
back against the filing cabinet, hands in pockets. “That’s Mrs. Lescombe.” Suddenly he seemed less assured, a man apprehensively waiting to see whether the squib will be damp or dry.

“She used to come here often?”

“At one time.” The Lamonts exchanged faintly mocking glances that excluded Albert. “It’s been more than two years now.”

“That empty table, it wasn’t for her?”

“No,” Racine said. “It wasn’t for her.”

“But you’re close. You see, that reservation was made—”

“Septimus, excuse me, but … who is Mr. Albert?”

“Ah, sorry. Would you mind …?” Seppy raised his eyebrows and this time the mockery excluded Racine. Albert showed his identification card.

“Police?” She sounded afraid. Albert remembered where she had grown up. He knew he would have to ask the Czecho desk about Racine, which bothered him, because the Czecho desk would then get all excited and start opening files where there was nothing to be filed.

“Sort of police.”

Husband and wife looked at each other for a few moments, sending-messages back and forth. When Seppy at last said, “Of course, we’ll do whatever we can,” Albert mentally tipped his hat to Fox, who had counseled the approach oblique, rather than the attack direct. Aggression would not have dented these people. They put on their clothes each morning, but their armor they never took off.

“Tell me all you know about this customer of yours, please. About Anna.”

“I never understood what he saw in her,” Racine
said. “She was so dull. All those black clothes, black stockings.”

“She’s a barrister,” Albert explained.

“I guessed she was a lawyer of some kind,” Seppy said. “Very precise. Lovely manners, though.”

“And from the way you talk, she had a companion. A regular companion?”

“Yes.”

“His name?”

Septimus did not answer at once. Albert knew he was missing something and it irked him. Something so obvious it would stand up and bite him in a moment … “His name?” he repeated curtly.

Racine answered. “Gerhard Kleist.”

“Kleist.” Albert, remembering one further detail picked out of Lescombe’s vetting file by Fox, was startled. “German?”

“Yes.”

“And he used to eat here with Anna?”

The atmosphere was icing its way toward absolute zero.
Why?
thought Albert.

“Look, Septimus, darling, I really ought to be seeing Vanessa about those cloths, perhaps you could deal with Mr. Albert.”

“I’d rather you stayed.” Albert’s smile only produced itself after a pause. “Mr. Kleist, he’s a lawyer?”

“No,” said Seppy. “He’s a psychotherapist.”

Albert stood very still. Butterflies had started to flutter inside him, beautiful, multicolored, richly textured lepidoptera…. “Say again?”

“A psychotherapist. He became a regular customer of ours. Then he turned into a friend.”

The last vestiges of Albert’s boredom finally dissolved into intense elation.
Someone had gained access
to Anna Lescombe’s mind.
Perhaps he had manipulated that mind, perhaps she was mentally ill. And if that was right, the discovery could supply him with the lever he so desperately craved: there was only one thing to be done with a mad dog….

He thought of the empty table, its prize location. “This man Kleist was supposed to be lunching here today?”

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t keep the reservation…. Did he telephone?”

“No.”

“Is that usual?”

“Sometimes he gets held up with a patient.” Racine was whispering now. “He doesn’t always …”

“He doesn’t always bother to let us know.” Seppy finished his wife’s sentence.

“He used to eat here with other women, would I be right in thinking that?”

“Very infrequently. He was rather a solitary sort of chap.”

“I suppose you don’t, by any chance, have an address for Mr. Kleist?”

Septimus stared at the floor. At last Racine said, “I’ll look it up for you.” She opened a drawer. “My diary … an old one. Here we are….”

Albert wrote down the address.

“Is there anything else you need?”

“I’d like to look at your bookings over the past five years. No, that’s unreasonable, isn’t it? Over a period going back as far as you can and ending with the last time Mrs. Lescombe ate here.”

The diaries were produced, after a search. Albert skimmed through them, looking to see if Kleist’s reservations
married up with the dates in Anna’s chambers diary, and was not surprised to find that they did.

She had been seeing a psychotherapist. He could think of only one reason for that. It was because she needed help.
What kind of help?

“Is it all right if I take these away for a while?”

Seppy nodded. “Of course.”

“We’ll have to analyze them in detail, but perhaps you could help me … was there a pattern?”

“Pattern?”

“What I mean is, did they lunch here twice a year, something like that? Or three times a week for six months, followed by a break … know the sort of thing I mean?”

Seppy thought. “At the beginning, years ago, they were a couple. Then it changed. There was a long break, as I recall.”

“A row of some kind?”

“I wouldn’t know. After two or three years, suddenly there she was again. But by then it had become more like you said earlier, lunch twice a year. Birthday, perhaps. Catching up on the news.”

Damn, thought Albert. Twice and thrice damn. But there’s no need to harp on inconvenient details when I make my report. “It went on like that, until …”

“Two years ago. Or so.”

“And then it stopped. But Kleist continued to be a regular customer?”

“On and off. His wife died of cancer, we didn’t see him for a while. Look, this is all a bit … is there anything else?”

Albert thought hard. “Only my bill, please.”

Seppy produced it very quickly. Albert paid in cash, Fox’s cash, adding a reasonable but not lavish tip.

“I’ll show you out,” said Seppy. At the door he said, “If you do have to get in touch again, perhaps you’d make a point of coming through me?”

“Understood.”

“You see, my wife … she was a patient of Kleist’s. When her father died.” Seppy made a face. “Cost us an absolute bloody bomb.”

“I’m sorry.” Albert knocked his forehead with a knuckle. “I was being thick.”

“Anna Lescombe wasn’t the only one, you know. Kleist had a few, how should I say, favorites. After his wife died.”

“Lovers, you mean?”

“I would think so. One in particular. An American. Don’t know her surname, but he used to call her Robyn.”

“Did Anna and Kleist …?”

“Screw? I was never there, so I can’t say. But I’d guess yes, at the start. You get a nose for what people are up to in this business.”

“And later?”

Seppy shrugged.

“Did you ever hear them talk about … about anything, really?”

“Nope. Inflexible rule: no eavesdropping. It’s their business and none of yours.”

“Racine, would she have heard them discussing anything?”

Seppy guffawed, then subjected Albert to a look of pity not unmixed with scorn. “Understood,” he said quietly, putting obvious quotation marks around the word. “That’s what you said, old bean. ‘Understood’ …”

Then, yes, it did dawn, and Albert realized what he
had been missing earlier, that obvious “something.” “He became a friend,” those were Seppy’s words, what kind of friend, thought Albert, how close, on a scale of one to a million, just how
intimate,
would you say?

The sudden vision was disturbingly real: Racine Lamont standing in the doorway of her long, narrow office, watching the table overlooking the garden, week in, week out, one face sometimes different but the other ever the same, monotonously the same, with eyes for
l’amie du jour,
not for her. Never again for her….

“Correction,” Albert said lightly. “Under orders. Sorry.”

CHAPTER
22

Anna tried to struggle, but they bundled her into the car, Gerhard and the stranger off the ferry, yes and the policeman, too. For her own good. For the sake of her health. When she cried out, at first the onlookers frowned, then they noticed the police uniform and their indignation gave way to smiles. She found herself sitting in the back of the Fiat. Someone had bandaged her wrists together; she was helpless. A prisoner of the man she had once trusted more than any other, apart from her husband, David.

“So, Kleist, it’s good to find you still alive.”

The last English words she heard for a long time. She remembered nothing of the journey back to the house except lengthy exchanges in an ugly, guttural language she didn’t understand but assumed must be German. Then she was sitting at the kitchen table, while Gerhard took beers from the fridge.

“Untie me,” she demanded.

“Will you promise to be quiet?”

“Go to hell.”

Gerhard shrugged and moved away. “Suit yourself.”

Anna fought the bandages but they were expertly knotted; all she succeeded in doing was chafe her wrists.

“I’ll be quiet,” she said in a low voice. “Just untie me, will you?”

Gerhard cut the knots with a kitchen knife. He sat down opposite her, next to the stranger, and for a time the two of them drank their Hellas without speaking. The man in cream had a habit of sucking both lips after he’d taken a swig, first the lower one, then the upper, his tongue always careful to milk the ends of his mustache of their last vestiges of sustenance.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asked Gerhard defiantly.

He looked at the other man first, as if seeking permission; only when the newcomer nodded did he say, “This is Jürgen Barzel.”

“You know him?”

“I know him.”

“Who is he? What’s he doing here?”

Gerhard stared at her. It was as if a sheep had miraculously asked its shepherd what butchers did for a living.

“He’s a kind of … troubleshooter.”

“Why do you say it like that? As if you were enemies.”

Why? thought Gerhard. Because HVA has found out about this villa and I don’t know how. I don’t know what
they
know, don’t know anything except that I’m terrified. That’s why my throat constricts and my saliva dries up, Anna.

“Mrs. Lescombe … have I pronounced it rightly?”
Anna found herself being drawn into Barzel’s eyes as they inflated to fill her own vision.

“Yes.”

“It’s a pleasure meeting you. You have stimulated us! We have been working late nights on your account, Anna … I wish to call you Anna. Do I have permission?”

“I suppose so.”

“And I am Jürgen. Tell me about yourself, Anna.”

She obviously didn’t understand what he required. Barzel must have sensed what was in her mind, for he smiled and said, “Don’t be nervous, I pray you. I am your friend. That is why I’m here—to help you and Gerhard.”

Not so, thought Gerhard.

“What should I tell you, then?”

“About yourself. David. And your daughter, Juliet.”

“You … know a lot about me.”

As Anna began to speak, Gerhard mentally begged her to be careful. If HVA had discovered the fax he’d sent to London, they would kill him. Execution, that’s what they’d call it, because that’s what you did with traitors, no good planning a new life in South America, too late for that…. And since Anna would be a witness, then she too must die.

When did things start to go wrong? The plan he’d put together looked so foolproof. For a long time now he had wanted out, some grand finale on which to bring down the curtain of his nerve-shredding career as psychotherapist-cum-spymaster. He’d been cultivating his contacts in Lima and Asunción, old friends of Clara, knowing he must flee. Even if it meant the end of his own sister and her family, he could do that. He could do it because each new job for HVA had come to represent
a fresh episode in a serial nightmare that would one day destroy him, and when the chips were down it looked simple enough: he was more important than Ilsa.