Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  Romero at once left the room, closing the door behind him. Gini could feel Hawthorne’s eyes on her face. She turned back to look at him. It was the first time she had seen him close up. The energy he could convey even in photographs was, at a distance of four feet, intense. It radiated from him just as it did from his son. Despite the wheelchair, despite the black blanket folded neatly across his legs, despite the fact that she knew him to be paralyzed from the waist downward since the last stroke, he emanated will. She could sense it in the room; she could see it in the way his finely formed hands gripped the arms of the wheelchair, and above all, she could see it in his face.

  As a younger man, she thought, he must have been at least as handsome as his son, perhaps more so. Even now, and even in a wheelchair, he could convey physical strength. Over six feet tall, she judged, upright for all his age: His back was straight, his shoulders and arms powerful. His handsome face, patrician and cold, was dominated by the strong jut of his nose, which gave him a hawklike, predatory look, and by his eyes, much lighter in color than his son’s, which were finely shaped, deep set, like splinters of blue ice. They were the coldest eyes she had ever seen, and their gaze was unwavering. He sat there, not troubling to speak, giving her a hard, cold, assessing stare that began at her feet, traveled the length of her legs, then rested on her hips, her waist, her breasts, her neck, her hair, her face.

  He examined and assessed her in a way both sexual and oddly commercial. Gini had the sensation that he was undressing her as he looked at her, that this was his practice when looking at women, and that as he did so, he made his own valuation of what he saw, employing the same brutal dispassion with which some butcher might assess and value a side of meat.

  The inspection made her acutely self-conscious. She began to wish that she were wearing different clothes—that the narrow black trousers she had on were less tight, that she was wearing a jacket over her black sweater, a jacket that could have concealed her breasts. Then her own reaction angered her. She stared back at Hawthorne in the same cold way. For some reason, this appeared to please him. He smiled.

  “At times like this,” he said, “I regret my age. I regret these useless things.” He gestured toward his legs. “Still, I’m interested to meet you. John had prepared me to some extent. I do begin to see—” He broke off. “Ah, Frank. Thank you. On that table, I think.”

  Romero walked silently across the room. He was wearing, Gini saw, the same clothes as before: dark knife-edge-creased pants, a black blazer with brass buttons. He was carrying a small tape recorder and several boxes of tapes. He put them down on the table next to Hawthorne and glanced at him.

  Hawthorne nodded. “Yes. If you’d be so good.” He looked back at Gini. “I don’t share my son’s confidence in journalists, or in you, Ms. Hunter. Before we go any further, I’d like Frank to make some checks. Please don’t interfere.”

  Romero was already moving across the room. His face was impassive. He bent down and picked up Gini’s bag; he began to open it.

  Gini sprang to her feet. “Just what in hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Hawthorne lifted his hand. “Ms. Hunter, I never speak to reporters unless I’m certain our conversation will go unrecorded.”

  Gini made a grab for the bag. Romero gave her a contemptuous look and elbowed her aside. He felt inside the bag, retrieved a couple of objects, examined them, then put them back. He crossed the room and picked up Gini’s torn overcoat from the chair where she had laid it. He began to go through its pockets. Gini felt herself go white with anger. She took a step forward. Both men ignored her.

  S. S. Hawthorne said calmly: “The photographs, Frank?”

  “They’re here, sir.”

  “Good. I expected they would be.” He turned back to Gini. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hunter. But these pictures are not your property.”

  Romero had taken the envelope of photographs from the pocket of her overcoat. He put the coat down, then laid the envelope on a table on the far side of the room. Gini bent, picked up her bag, crossed to the chair, and reached for her coat.

  “Fine,” she said, tight-lipped. “I’ll leave right now…”

  “No,” Hawthorne said, still in the same even voice. “I wouldn’t advise that I know you’re hotheaded—let me see, what was the exact phrase? ‘Willful, impetuous, and obstinate,’ I think. But now might be the moment to curb those instincts, charming though they no doubt are in the right circumstances. Frank?”

  Gini stopped dead. The three words he had just used to describe her had been used to her by Pascal the previous morning, in the back bedroom of the St. John’s Wood house. She felt her skin grow cold. Romero had turned to her. He met her eyes impassively.

  “If you’d just lift your arms, ma’am,” he said.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Ms. Hunter, do as he says.” Hawthorne sounded bored. “If you do, it will take him a few seconds to insure you have no recording devices concealed on your person. If you turn this into a drama, it will take three times as long, and be a great deal more unpleasant. Just stand still and cooperate, if you’d be so good. What I have to say to you concerns my son. It concerns you and the photographer you have been working with. How long is it exactly since you last spoke to Mr. Lamartine?” He glanced at his watch. “Ah, yes. Around fifteen hours. A great deal can happen in fifteen hours, Ms. Hunter. If I were you, I’d keep still, and cooperate, don’t you think?”

  Gini stared at him. He made no attempt to disguise the implicit threat. She hesitated, looked at Romero, and lifted her arms. Romero ran his hands down her body. He searched her as quickly and as impersonally as a police operative might have done. Gini averted her face. He had a shaving cut on his cheek. She could smell his hair oil and his aftershave, and the touch of his hands made her feel sick.

  “Thank you, Ms. Hunter. Sit down. Frank?”

  Romero had moved across to the tape recorder. Gini remained standing. Hawthorne gave a shrug.

  “Ms. Hunter, I have told you already. I do not want to waste time. This will be quicker if you sit down, listen, and avoid the temptation to interrupt.”

  A quick nod, and Romero picked up one of the tapes. Hawthorne smiled.

  “Now, Ms. Hunter. You see those tapes over there? They are just some of the tapes made these past twelve days. There are others. I felt we could save time if Frank prepared for us a composite, a selection of highlights, if you like.”

  Romero inserted the tape. He pressed Play. Gini stared at the machine. She listened to the sound of her own voice. Her first reaction, even then, was to walk out, until she met Hawthorne’s cold, blue-ice gaze, and she knew that any such attempt would be unwise. She listened, although it pained her and angered her to listen. She thought: I had better have some indication of just what he has heard, and what he has not.

  The tape had been skillfully edited, in chronological order. She and Pascal had been recorded in the parking lot outside the News offices, immediately after leaving the briefing with Nicholas Jenkins. They had been recorded in her apartment, of course. There was one little section, after the break-in there, when she and Pascal first went into her bedroom, and he showed her what had been done with her Beirut mementos, and what had been done to her nightgown.

  Hawthorne raised his hand. Romero paused the tape.

  “My apologies,” Hawthorne said. “Someone exceeding their duties, I’m afraid. But these things will happen, won’t they, Frank?”

  The two men’s eyes intersected. Hawthorne nodded. Romero pressed the controls, and the recording continued. Gini listened to herself and to Pascal in Stiltskins, the restaurant where they had gone to meet Appleyard; in her apartment again, the night before they left for Venice; and in Venice itself. She heard herself say: I cannot trust my own eyes, and Pascal reply, I trust your eyes…

  Hawthorne gave a sigh. “Trite,” he said. “Fast-forward, Frank. You know the section.” He turned to Gini with a smile. “I’m sure you appreciate, Ms. Hunter, that this kind of
work has a tedium of its own. Any person supervising surveillance of this kind has to find a way of dealing with that tedium. They will always have their favorite sections of tape. This is one of Frank’s favorite sections. Am I right, Frank?”

  Romero glanced across at Gini, then away. He suppressed a smile.

  “The technical quality here is good, sir. That’s always…gratifying.”

  He fast-forwarded the tape, then pressed Play. Gini gripped the back of the chair in front of her. She listened to the most private, the most dear of sounds: her reunion with Pascal in that Venice hotel. She heard him speak words intended only for her own ears; she heard her own answer, a sigh, the sounds of two people moving closer together. She leaned forward.

  “Switch that off,” she said, and the authority in her own voice surprised her, except that she knew it came from a sense of the most profound indignation, and disgust. Romero stopped the recording at once. Gini looked from Romero to Hawthorne, who had begun to smile again. He stopped smiling when he saw the expression on her face.

  “Do you really think,” Gini began in a low, tight voice, “you really think I’ll be beaten down, intimidated in some way by this?” She gestured contemptuously at the tapes. “Keep your tapes. Listen to them as much as you like. I couldn’t care less. As far as you are concerned, they’re in a foreign language. You’re despicable—both of you. No matter how long you listen, or how hard you listen, you’ll never even get close. There’s no way men like you could understand that.”

  She began to move to the door. Hawthorne gave another faint sigh.

  “I did warn you, Ms. Hunter,” he said. “These histrionics may be good for your self-esteem, but they merely waste time. Perhaps I should make one thing very clear. If you want to see Mr. Lamartine again—and judging from his performance on tape, and your own, I’m sure you will—then you will sit down, listen, and not interrupt. The final section, Frank, and then you can leave us.”

  Romero pressed the controls once again, fast-forwarded, then straightened up with a slight smile. Gini stood very still. She was now listening to herself and to John Hawthorne. It was the conversation he had had with her on Friday night. It picked up at the point where he had been describing his affairs. It included the moment when her telephone rang, and it ended with those things he had said to her before he began to touch her. Gini listened, stony-faced. Romero flicked a switch, and there was silence. He looked across, toward the wheelchair, and Hawthorne again nodded. Romero left the room at once.

  “Now, Ms. Hunter.” Hawthorne turned his wheelchair with a slight whine, a slight hiss. “I will explain everything to you, and then we will agree, you and I, as to what happens next. But before I explain, just one word about my son…” He glanced away from her, his face becoming set. “That last section of recording you listened to? I should like you to understand. My son will have suspected I had your apartment wired—indeed, he mentions that possibility, though not me by name, earlier on that tape. It would not have surprised him. As I expect you know, as many people know, I have always made it my policy to know exactly what my son is doing, when, where, and with whom. I have protected my investment in him from his time at Yale onward in that way. So, the conversation my son had with you in your apartment on Friday, while it was very much, and quite sincerely, directed at you, Ms. Hunter, was also directed at myself. He was sending a message to me, Ms. Hunter. His message to me was one of defiance. My son knows perfectly well that had it been left to me, both you and that photographer would now be dead. I do not play around, Ms. Hunter, with matters of importance, as I imagine you know by now.”

  Gini stared at him. “Four people have died as a result of this investigation,” she said. “Are you telling me you’re responsible for that?”

  Hawthorne gave her a cold, impatient glance. His answer chilled her heart. “Whoever actually died on that railroad track in Oxford, that death had nothing to do with me,” he said. “For that, we can hold Mr. McMullen responsible. As you suggested to my son earlier tonight on the telephone, McMullen, who is rather more intelligent than I had anticipated, staged his own death. I do not know whom he killed in his place, nor does it greatly concern me. My son, and his future welfare, however, do.”

  He was sitting upright and very still now, his gaze fixed on her face. “What I would like you to understand, before we continue, is this. When my son came to your apartment on Friday, when he spoke to you as he did, and acted as he did, he was directly contravening my instructions and advice.” He again looked her up and down in that brutal, assessing way. “Now that I see you, Ms. Hunter, I’m disappointed. You’re pretty enough, but the world is full of pretty women, most of them obliging if one offers them enough. Personally, I cannot understand what my son sees in you. However, he sees something. He is probably influenced by the fact that as of now, you are unavailable. He has always been attracted to what he cannot have. As I say, had it been up to me, you would have had a little traffic accident a week ago. There would have been a brief fuss, and then you would have been forgotten, because you are neither greatly memorable nor greatly important.”

  He paused. “However, my son persuaded me to wait. He attempted by various means of his own, first through pressuring your paper’s proprietor, then your editor, then by enlisting your father’s assistance, to persuade you to drop this. He failed. Then he compounded his own foolishness by going to your apartment and speaking to you in a very open and unguarded way.” He gave her a long, cold, glittering look. “You should understand my son’s character before we continue. He is highly intelligent, very able, very ambitious, but he has two very great weaknesses, Ms. Hunter, particularly where women are concerned. Here and here.” He touched his groin, then his heart.

  “As he told you himself, he has a very strong sexual drive. Perhaps rather stronger and rather more unusual than he admitted to you. That I understand. I have a similar drive myself. What I find less easy to understand”—he pressed his hand to his heart once again—“is his occasional weakness in that area. It is, I’m glad to say, very occasional, almost bred out. So I assumed, when he interceded on your behalf, that he intended to fuck you, Ms. Hunter, and then to forget you. That would be the normal pattern. However, I have begun to see that rather more was involved. Never mind. No doubt John will come to his senses shortly. If you could be persuaded to go to bed with him, the entire thing would be over by the morning—but since I rather doubt that possibility short-term, we will do it this way.” He gave her another penetrating look. “I want your silence, obviously. Beyond that, I want you out of my son’s mind. He has more important considerations than a girl such as yourself. So, I’ll talk, Ms. Hunter, you’ll listen. And when I’ve finished, you can tell me what your cooperation will cost.”

  There was a silence. Gini looked around the room, wondering if this conversation too was being recorded, or even filmed. She looked at that large mirror above the fireplace, then at the crippled man in the wheelchair, and wondered, once this kind of insanity was begun, where it could ever stop.

  She sat down in the chair opposite Hawthorne. He turned his cold gaze toward her, waited, then began to speak.

  “In Venice,” he said, “where those two degenerates were killed, you found a button, I think. Am I right? That was careless of Frank. However, did you note the design on that button?”

  “Yes, I did. It was a garland, or a wreath.”

  “I chose that device, years ago, for my staff. It depicts the kind of garland put on the brows of—” he paused—“you know the term victor ludorum?”

  “The winner of the games. Yes.”

  “The winner of the games. The victor of the games. Precisely. I have always set great store by winning games, Ms. Hunter, all games, the trivial ones and the serious ones. I do not like to come in second. I like to win, as does my son. Now”—he leaned forward—“for most of my adult life I have been playing one very serious game. I want to see my son fulfill his destiny. I want to see him win the best prize of al
l—and I shall do that yet. There have been setbacks, delays—well, you know about those, John described them to you the other night. The illness of his own son, and so on. He faltered then. Now, however, he is back on course. Another year or so here, then a return to America—you understand, I’m sure.”

  “I understand what you want for him—and for yourself. Yes.”

  “Every father wants his son to go farther down the road than he did,” he said sharply. “I don’t pretend altruism here. But that is what I want, and John wants, and it’s what I intend to get. I don’t intend to be thwarted by John’s sick neurotic bitch of a wife, or by the pathetic machinations of a nobody like James McMullen, or—I should make it clear—by the efforts of some paparazzo and his girlfriend reporter. Is that clear?”

  “Oh, more than clear. Yes.”

  “So, when John told me last summer that his problems with Lise had worsened, and when I understood that she had enlisted McMullen in her private war of attrition against John, I moved very quickly.” The icy blue eyes glittered. “John and I came to an arrangement years ago, Ms. Hunter. His hands need to be clean—mine, well, the cleanliness of mine is of no importance now. So, when he encounters problems, I deal with them. If at all possible, John knows nothing of my actions, or my techniques for dealing with those problems. He can, on occasion, have a conscience—another weakness of his—and besides, in politics, genuine ignorance is almost as good as innocence.”

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his lap. “So, without going into all the tedious details, I had both Lise and McMullen very closely watched. I wasn’t yet quite sure just how far they intended to go. They are both unstable, especially Lise. They both believe they have a grievance against John—and I wanted to be certain in my own mind whether they intended to injure his reputation, or worse. It had occurred to me that Lise might enjoy being John’s widow. She would retain her prestige, even enhance it with decorous grief. She would have sole control over their sons—or so, no doubt, she thinks. So I was interested to see, McMullen being army-trained, an expert marksman, just how far she would push it, and him. I waited, Ms. Hunter, and while I waited, I took out some insurance against Lise.”