“I’m most awfully sorry,” she began. “Obviously, if I’d had any idea…And she seemed such a nice woman as well. Anything I can do, in the circumstances…Of course. I remember her very well. And I have the details on computer, right here.”
The meeting lasted half an hour. Pascal and Gini were in Belgravia shortly after ten. It was raining again. Pascal parked the motorbike. They walked the length of Eaton Place twice before they admitted the obvious. The beautiful blonde claiming to be Mrs. J. A. Hamilton had given a plausible but false address. There was no 132 Eaton Place. They tried Eaton Square and Eaton Terrace without success. They returned once more to Eaton Place. The rain stopped, then started again.
“Merde,” Pascal said, looking along the line of discreet, expensive white-stuccoed houses. “Merde. We might have known it. I’ll check the phone number that Hamilton woman gave—if her name was Hamilton, which I doubt. You try knocking on doors. Describe her, mention the coat. It’s worth a try. She could live in the neighborhood. Something might jog people’s memory.”
There was a telephone booth across the street. Pascal made for that. Gini walked slowly along the street. She examined the houses to the right and left. Their white façades were immaculate, their iron railings perfectly preserved. There were window boxes here, expensive curtains and shades, an atmosphere of affluence. A few minutes’ walk from the fashionable shops of Sloane Street, a brief taxi ride to Harrods or Harvey Nichols, it was the perfect address, no doubt carefully selected, for a woman delivering parcels dressed like a fashion plate in Vogue.
An idea was coming to her, a route she could explore next. Meantime, she would try knocking on doors. She could see Pascal down the street, on the telephone, gesturing. When he had arrived at her apartment that morning, he looked tense and exhausted, and she wondered if he, as she had, had spent a wakeful night. Now, even at a distance, she could see the familiar energy returning. He seemed to be arguing with someone; she saw him slam down the receiver and redial. She smiled to herself, and turned into the gate of the end house. Like its neighbors, its paint was new, its curtains crisp.
Its owner finally answered on the third ring: a slender, well-dressed woman with short, dark hair.
“If it’s about the jumble sale,” she said rapidly, “you’re too late. I did ring and explain. We spent weeks waiting for you to collect them. Now I’ve taken them to Oxfam. Including the Ozbek evening dress which is really the most awful waste….”
“It’s not about the jumble sale,” Gini began.
“Oh, God, it’s not religious, I hope?” The woman looked harassed. “If you’re one of those Mormons, or those Witness people, I’m afraid it’s no good. We’re all C of E here.”
Gini explained. The woman looked inclined to close the door, but grew more interested as Gini described the coat.
“Sable? Good Lord…Tall and blond-haired?”
“Very recognizable.” Gini smiled. “We roomed together in college. She always was vague. Such an idiot, giving me the wrong address…”
The woman frowned. “Well, it could be one of the other Eatons, I suppose. There’s quite a few. Eaton Square, Eaton Terrace…”
“I know. I already tried them. No luck.”
“Well, we’ve lived here three years, and there’s certainly no one like your friend in this street. Actually, most of the neighbors are getting on—or foreign. You know how it is—oh, sorry, I don’t mean American.” She smiled. “Arab. Quite a lot of Japanese. That sort of thing.”
“Could she have stayed here some time—or visited?…”
“Well, of course, it’s always possible. Hamilton? No, I’m sure there’s no one of that name that I’ve met. Why don’t you try Lady Knowles across the street? She knows everyone. She’s lived here yonks….”
“Yonks” turned out to be thirty years, and Lady Knowles knew no resident by the name of Hamilton either. The description evoked no response. Gini tried five other houses, then returned to the bike. Pascal was astride it, the helmet under his arm. He looked gloomily up at the sky.
“Does it ever stop raining in this country?” he said.
“Not in January. No.”
“No luck?”
“None. A total blank, just as we expected. You?”
“Nothing. The number she gave doesn’t exist. No listing for any J. A. Hamilton, male or female, anywhere in London. So. That’s that.”
“Never mind. That girl at ICD was very useful. We’ve got an address for McMullen now.”
“In Venice.” Pascal sighed. “That’s three hours away, minimum—and I’ll bet he’s not there.”
“And Johnny Appleyard. I told you, I know Appleyard. I can always get hold of him.”
“He’s a gossip columnist?”
“No. Not really. A tipster for gossip columns, among other things. The kind who keeps in touch with Hollywood gynecologists so he can tell the National Enquirer a movie star’s pregnant about one hour before she gets the results of her tests.” Gini made a face. “A real creep.”
“Appleyard. Appleyard.” Pascal frowned. “Why send a parcel to him?”
“I don’t know. But I can call and ask him. He knows me. Jenkins is always using his stuff. I’ve talked to him on the phone several times. I’ve met him once—no, twice.”
“And McMullen? In Venice? In January? Why would he go there when Lise Hawthorne was so eager to keep him in London?”
“He might have connections in Venice. Besides, it’s a quiet place in winter. A good enough hiding place, if he wanted to disappear.”
“He hasn’t disappeared.” Pascal met her eyes. “Or not effectively enough. Someone knows where he is. And sent him a parcel. Just like us.” He ran his hands through his hair. The worried look returned to his face. “Who’s the puppet master?” he said. “I would like to know who’s pulling the strings. Someone is.”
“Who’s jerking us around, you mean?” Gini smiled. “No one perhaps. It could all be coincidence.”
“I think not. I feel maneuvered.” Pascal glanced away. Farther along the street, a black car pulled into the curb. Its engine was left running; no driver or passenger emerged.
“I feel watched.” Pascal frowned.
Gini shivered, and drew her coat tighter around her. She glanced toward the black car; she could just make out two occupants, a man and a woman. As she watched them, the man took the woman in his arms.
“We shouldn’t be paranoid,” she said, turning back to Pascal. “It’s an occupational disease. Let’s concentrate on what we do next.”
“I think I know what we’re supposed to do,” Pascal began. “Go chasing off to Venice, the same way we came chasing over here. I get the feeling that someone’s trying to delay us, or waste our time. Now, we could go to Venice—except it’s Friday today, and we’re supposed to be meeting the Hawthornes tomorrow at your stepmother’s house. I don’t want to miss that.”
“Neither do I. I want you to meet Hawthorne. In the flesh.”
“So, first I’ll check if this Palazzo Ossorio has a telephone. I have a friend who works for the Italian phone company.”
“And at least we do know the Palazzo Ossorio exists,” Gini put in, “unlike Mrs. Hamilton and her house here. It must be a real place, it must be there—that parcel was delivered, after all.”
“Exactly.” Pascal frowned. “I suppose we could go to Venice today. But if we did, we’d be very tight on time. I suppose it’s just possible we could go to the palazzo and find McMullen there—but I doubt it. It’s too simple by far. And if he isn’t there, we’d have no time to make inquiries, we’d have to get back. One problem with the flight—fog, delays—and we miss Hawthorne. No. It’s not worth it.” He paused. “Better to go the day after, Sunday morning, we could take an early flight, stay over in Venice, return Monday….”
His expression altered; a shadow passed across his face. “If we did that,” he went on, “I’d have to return via Paris. It’s my visiting day. I cannot miss that. I see Marianne
then.”
There was a silence. Gini looked away up the street. She was tempted to question him; she would have liked to offer consolation, even if it was only the opportunity to talk. She had tried that the previous evening, on their way to the restaurant. It had been a mistake. All personal questions met a wall of silence. Eventually, sensing bitterness and pain, she had stayed away from the subject. Pascal’s defenses were formidable: She could see he preferred them unbreached.
“All right,” she said at last, turning back. “Let’s plan on that. Venice on Sunday, why not?” She hesitated. “Meanwhile, I think we should split up. I want to go back to the office. I want to check out Appleyard plus one or two other things….”
“What other things?”
“Nothing. Just an idea I had.”
Pascal looked reluctant to accept this. He argued against it for a while, then eventually, with an air of resignation, gave in.
“Very well. Maybe you’re right. We save time that way. I’ll go back to my hotel. Make some telephone calls. Try and fix up a meeting with McMullen’s sister. Then I’ll meet you back at your apartment. Around three?”
Gini glanced at her watch. “Better say four. If you get there before me, you can let yourself in, unless you feel like burgling me, of course—”
Pascal gave her a cool glance. “It wouldn’t be exactly difficult. I’ve looked at your windows and doors. You know how long it would take me to break in? Five seconds flat.”
“Well, you won’t need to,” Gini said sweetly. “Because there’s a spare key. I keep it there for my upstairs neighbor. Sometimes she pops down to feed Napoleon. It’s under the third flowerpot from the left.”
“And I suppose it was there all last night?”
“Yes, it was. I forgot. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You can’t open a door with a key when the person inside has shot the bolt.”
“You are impossible,” Pascal said. He paused, about to put on his helmet. He looked into her face. He lifted his hand. With one finger, gently, he wiped the rain from her cheeks. “Impossible,” he repeated. “Headstrong. Obstinate. I thought that the very first day I met you. Twelve years later, and what do I discover? You’re unchanged, Gini. And I was right.”
He put on the helmet. Gini confronted a black glass visor, an invisible face. He lifted his hand in a half-wave, then kicked the starter pedal. The engine fired; he wheeled, and roared off down the street.
Gini waited until he was out of sight. She watched him round the corner, and for a moment his absence was intense in the street. Gini stood there for a while in the rain, waiting for the sensation of loss to abate. When she was sure she had it under control, she took the tube to Baker Street. From there, she walked north to Regent’s Park, entering it at its southwestern corner, through Hanover Gate.
The park was ringed by an outer circle road. She stood there, looking to right and left. To her right was a terrace of serene and beautiful Nash houses; to her immediate left were the buildings of the London Central Mosque. Beyond its pale stone, and the copper gleam of its dome, the road curved. On the opposite side of that road, actually within the park itself, was Winfield House, official London residence of the U.S. ambassador. It was no more than seventy yards to her left, shrouded from the road by a thick belt of shrubbery: John Hawthorne’s home.
Crossing the street, she entered the park. She wanted to take a closer look at that residence, but she approached it discreetly, by a circuitous route. She wound her way through Regent’s Park first, passing the boating lake and making for the bandstand, where, in summer, military bands sometimes played. The rain fell heavily; the park was almost deserted. Only a few stalwarts walked their dogs. The gaily painted bandstand, and the Guards’ band playing in it, had been an IRA target once, years before. Several men had died there. She walked on.
She approached the ambassador’s residence from the rear, where its large gardens bellied out into the park. From there, too, the house was almost invisible. She could glimpse only its roofs and chimneys through the trees and evergreen shrubs that had been planted inside its tall, spiked perimeter fence.
She circled the gardens, then returned to the road. She walked along the sidewalk directly in front of the house. There were two entrances, she saw, one barred off with reinforced gates, an entrance that looked unused. The other, to the north of the house itself, was flanked by a low lodge-type building. Aerials bristled from its roof; security cameras were trained on the gates and driveway; a window of greenish bulletproof glass confronted anyone seeking admission to the house.
She was beginning to feel conspicuous. There were the watching cameras, and there were also security men. She glimpsed them to the side of the entrance lodge, in the driveway. They were wearing dark suits, and dark raincoats. There were two—no, three—leaning up against a black limousine, ostentatiously ignoring her as she passed.
At her desk in the features department, walled in by word processors, and by the babble of other people’s work, she telephoned. Mary first.
Her stepmother seemed surprised to hear from her again; she was rushing out to see friends, but she did have time to confirm that, yes, The Ivy was certainly a restaurant she’d recommend.
“Oh, yes, darling,” she said. “Do take your friends there. I’m sure they’d love it. Try those little tomato tart things they do. Scrumptious.”
“I know it’s always full in the evenings….” Gini pushed a little harder. “What’s it like for lunch?”
“Oh, I love it, I often go there before matinées. It’s always full of actors, writers—lots of chums.”
There was a pause. Gini said nothing. Sometimes it was better not to prompt.
“When was I last there at lunchtime?” Mary went on. “Let me think…I know! I took Lise there, that’s right. It was just before Christmas. I remember, because she was going down to the country the following week. She’d never been there, for some reason, and she adored it—so it has her recommendation too. I knew it would be her kind of place. Not John’s perhaps, but—what, darling? Your other line? Fine. I’ll see you and your Pascal tomorrow night.”
Gini hung up. This she had expected, but it was as well to check. Appleyard next.
She flicked the cards on her Rolodex. Appleyard. There were two numbers, she remembered, two lines to his Gramercy Park apartment. She tried the first. She let it ring for a long time. Just as she was about to hang up, the receiver was lifted.
The answering voice was wary. It was male, and sounded young. “Yes?” it said. “Who is it?”
“Hi. This is Gini Hunter. I’m calling from the News. Is Johnny in?”
There was a pause, a scrabbling sound. Then the voice said, “Could you spell that, ma’am? The News? Which News is that? I’m just writing that down….”
Gini could hear the broad accent now. Midwest, she thought. She spelled her name, and explained she was calling from London. For the boy to take this down took an age. He sounded so pathetically eager to be efficient that Gini was patient.
“I guess Johnny’s out, then?” she said finally. “Do you work for him? Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Oh, no. I don’t work for him. Not exactly. I mean, I get to take messages, that kind of thing. I’m Stevey. Stevey with a ‘y.’ I’m Johnny’s roommate, his friend. I guess we haven’t spoken before, but I’ve been living here a real long time.”
Of course: It came back to her then, some malicious reference Jenkins had made to Johnny Appleyard’s current toy-boy, encountered on Jenkins’s last New York visit: A face like a young Rudi Nureyev, my dears. Semiliterate, and oh-so-eager to please. He spent an entire evening telling me about pig breeding—sorry, breeding hawgs. Tedious? It was fucking tedious. Johnny picked him up at Penn Station, yes, straight off the train. Couldn’t resist his bum, apparently. I said, Johnny, give me a break. He’s straight out of a Steinbeck novel. He’s still got straw in his hair.
Gini hesitated. She said: “Stevey? Of course. That’s right, I reme
mber now. The last time I saw Johnny, on his last London trip, someone mentioned your name.”
“They did?” The boy seemed pleased by this. “That would be the trip Johnny made last fall, I guess…I nearly came along on that trip. I was real excited. I’ve never been overseas. But then Johnny changed his mind….”
Indeed, Gini thought: Given Appleyard’s rumored behavior on trips to London, a devoted farm boy might have cramped his style. She felt a shaft of pity for the boy.
“So, tell me, Stevey, when do you expect Johnny back? I need to talk to him urgently.”
“Well, that’s kind of difficult to say….” He hesitated, and his voice took a dip. “You see—I don’t know where he is right now. He just took off real suddenly, and since then, he hasn’t phoned.”
“Oh, I see.” Gini could hear unhappiness and anxiety in Stevey’s voice. Gently, she said, “He just took off, Stevey? You mean he’s been gone—what? A couple of days?”
“More than that, ma’am. He left December twenty-seventh. I was expecting him back that evening. He’s been gone now ten, eleven days….”
Gini wrote down the date; she tensed. An absence of a few nights might be understandable enough, given Appleyard’s predilections, but ten days? “That’s quite a while, Stevey,” she said, keeping her voice casual. “I guess you must be getting pretty anxious. Maybe some story came up….”
“I don’t reckon so, ma’am,” he said cautiously. “He’d have told me, he always does. And then he’d have phoned. He always phones to collect his messages. Even when he’s out of town.”
“You mean you’ve no idea where he is, Stevey? I really do need to get hold of him. You’ve no idea at all?”
There was a long silence. Eventually the boy said, in a reluctant way, “Well, he did send me a fax. But that was five days ago. And it was a weird kind of fax too.”
“Weird in what way, Stevey?”
“He didn’t tell me where he was—just said he’d be in touch. It was typed, and Johnny always writes his faxes by hand. Also, he spelled my name wrong. He put ‘ie’ on the end, not ‘ey.’ Johnny would never do that.”
Lovers and Liars Trilogy Page 17