Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  Had she not done so, Gini thought, she would have been swayed by him now. For the first time, he allowed his feelings to manifest themselves. Just for an instant, a certain impetuosity and an idealism in his manner reminded her of Pascal.

  “I do see that,” she replied quietly.

  “In that case—” He paused, as if coming to some sudden decision. “In that case, work with me on it, as I wanted you to do.”

  His directness surprised her, as did the swiftness with which the decision was made.

  “You’re sure?” She looked at him closely. “Last night, this morning—would you have offered me this story then?”

  “No.”

  “But you do now?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then I accept. I want to work on this. I want to work on it now.”

  Her reply pleased him, she thought. He made no comment, however, but turned away from her and restarted the car.

  “In that case,” he said, “there’s some other things you should know.”

  “Such as who provided that funding? Who came up with a quarter of a million Swiss francs from a numbered Zurich account?”

  “Sure.” He smiled and pulled out onto the road.

  “Who was it? Someone with known drug connections?”

  “No. The reverse. But it is someone you’ll have heard of. Someone whose involvement puzzles me a good deal.”

  “Who was it?”

  “A Frenchman.” Rowland steered them fast around a sharp bend. “A very rich, and a very influential Frenchman. His name’s Jean Lazare.”

  He gave her the rest of the information as they drove back, speaking as succinctly as he had done before. Gini, listening with close attention, admired his ability to impart all the necessary facts, in the correct order, and his scrupulous avoidance of bias. He spoke what he incontrovertibly knew, and nothing more. Used to working in a milieu in which her first task was almost always to try to sift fact from the accretions of supposition and surmise, quarrying for some truth that was often deeply buried beneath layers of misquotations, unsubstantiated allegations, and willful misrepresentation, she was grateful for this. McGuire was unexpectedly punctilious, and punctiliousness was not a quality she despised.

  He finished giving her the requisite information as they reached Max’s drive. He steered the Land Rover around to the back and pulled into the stable yard.

  “Before we go in”—Gini turned to him—“I want to be sure I have this correct. It was Lazare’s chief aide who delivered that money?”

  “Yes. His name is Christian Bertrand. Sorbonne. Harvard Business School. A high-flyer. He’s worked for Cazarès and Lazare for several years.”

  “And he returned to Amsterdam this week to collect a supply of White Doves? Six White Doves? Why so few?”

  “I don’t know,” Rowland said. “Of course, as Lindsay never ceases to remind me, it’s the Paris collections next week. The Cazarès show is on Wednesday. Perhaps those White Doves were what Lazare needed to get himself through the collection and its aftermath. That’s certainly what the American is claiming… On the other hand, it seems out of character. Lazare isn’t a weak man. He’s supposed to have this iron will, this iron control.”

  “You mean you thought the drugs might be destined for someone else?”

  “That crossed my mind. Maria Cazarès seems the likelier candidate. There are rumors about her volatility, her health. She’s the linchpin of a billion-franc industry, of a company that Lazare was said to be trying to sell off last year. If he were still interested in selling, Cazarès herself has to function, and has to be seen to function. It’s of key importance that she actually appears, in apparent health, at the end of her show. If she didn’t do so, if the current rumors about her health, her design capabilities, proliferated, what would that do to the price of that company? It would fall. Now, if a small supply of White Doves not only ensured that she appeared, but ensured that she did so radiant with confidence—you do see?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Anyway…” Rowland reached for the handle of his door. “That’s all speculation at this stage. We should concentrate first on this lead. Locate Mina. Locate Star. Talk to Mina and Cassandra’s friends. Talk to that Dutch girl Anneke’s family—”

  “And talk to your DEA contact,” Gini said quickly. “If I’m to go to Amsterdam, I should certainly talk to him.”

  She broke off, sensing Rowland’s sudden unease. He left his door unopened; there was a brief silence; wind buffeted the car.

  “No,” he said eventually. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. That’s—out of bounds.”

  Gini stared at him in astonishment. “Out of bounds? Why? Rowland, all the information you’ve been getting has come from that one source. I have to talk to him. There have been developments—he might know something about Star.”

  “I’m sorry. No. Any contact made with the DEA is made through me. Those are their terms, not mine, and I have to accept that. I’m a passenger here. They have my assurance, my word, that my investigations will do nothing to prejudice theirs.”

  “But I wouldn’t prejudice them. I’ve been in this kind of situation before. I understand the drill, Rowland—”

  “No.”

  “That’s it? Just no? I have to accept that?”

  “If you want to work with me—yes, you do.”

  His tone was courteous and unyielding. Gini, who had been about to argue further, decided to wait; she would return to the attack at a more propitious time. She glanced once more at Rowland; his green and steady gaze was disconcerting, she found. She looked away, across the cobbled yard. From one of the barn roofs an owl took flight. She watched the white beat of its wings, then climbed down from the car.

  Without speaking, Rowland led the way across the yard and through the gardens. When they came to a flight of steps, he politely held out his hand and guided her up them. Although it was so cold, his hand felt warm to the touch. Gini glanced at him fleetingly, wondering if his silence indicated some displeasure, but his face gave no indication of any emotion at all.

  “Watch your step, it’s icy here,” he said as she stumbled at the top of the stairs.

  There was ice on the flagstones of the terrace also. Gini made her way across them carefully, then paused for a moment, looking up at the night sky, bright with stars.

  “You never see stars in London anymore,” she said. “The lights of the city block them out. Aren’t they magnificent? I used to be able to recognize some of the constellations, but now I’ve forgotten them. Orion…”

  “Those stars there.”

  “And the Pole Star? The Plow?” She tilted her head backward.

  Rowland, who had not been looking at the sky, now glanced upward again.

  He pointed out each sequence of patterns in turn. There was the Plow, there the Great and Little Bear, there Cassiopeia, and there the Pole Star, so useful in navigation. Looking up at this last star, Gini shivered, and Rowland, with an air of courteous concern, took her arm and guided her across the slippery flagstones, to the door.

  Lindsay was sitting in the kitchen when she heard the spurt of gravel as the Land Rover turned into Max’s drive.

  She had been reading a story to Colin and Danny. In pajamas and robes, they were now curled slumberously on either side of her, fighting sleep. Max was in his study telephoning; Charlotte was upstairs supervising Alex and Ben’s bath. Lindsay closed the book. It was eight o’clock. Rowland and Gini had been gone several hours.

  “Bed, you two,” she said. “You’re both half asleep. No, no arguments. Off you go.”

  Danny gave her a wet smack of a kiss; he and Colin left obediently, hand in hand. Lindsay rose and paced the room. Ten minutes passed. What on earth were Gini and Rowland doing? Were they sitting talking in the dark?

  Max had said, over tea, his manner very casual, that he was just wondering if Lindsay might be persuaded to give Rowland a lift back to London the next day. He himself, he said, had deci
ded to return a little later than usual, on Monday morning, by train. If Gini was going to work on the Cassandra Morley story, she would want to stay on a day or two, to interview Cassandra’s and Mina’s friends. Max then began to discuss train timetables. Lindsay, thinking his manner was shifty and evasive, quickly realized the reason: Max thought this proposal would not please Rowland McGuire.

  “Why can’t he take the train with you?” she asked.

  “He just can’t, that’s all. I—he doesn’t like trains.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “He’s—funny about them,” Max said, polishing his eyeglasses.

  “He’s funny about a lot of things, if you ask me.”

  “Come on, Lindsay. You can stand his company for a couple of hours, surely?”

  “Oh, very well,” Lindsay said. “I’ve got something to tell him anyway.”

  “You have?” Max looked interested.

  “Yes. He gave me that file to look at, you remember? The one on Lazare? I’ve finished going through it, and I noticed something strange. I—”

  “Damn. The phone’s ringing. It’ll be the news desk. Or Landis. Tell me later, Lindsay.”

  Max disappeared. He had reappeared, several times, while Lindsay was reading to his sons, but had shown no inclination to question her further. Lindsay, nursing her discovery, was disappointed. Max was not interested in anything she had to say, she thought glumly. Rowland probably would not be interested either. She beat a tattoo on the kitchen table. Twenty minutes after hearing the Land Rover, she heard footsteps on the terrace at last.

  Rowland and Gini entered on a blast of cold night air. Lindsay looked at them circumspectly. Rowland was helping Gini off with her coat; he made some remark Lindsay could not catch, and Gini smiled.

  “Did you see Mitchell?” Lindsay began, determined not to be invisible.

  “What?” Rowland was now removing his own overcoat. “Oh, yes, we did. And very useful it proved. Where’s Max?”

  “So what do you think, Rowland?” Gini was saying. “One day here? One day should do it. Then I could go on to Amsterdam.”

  “One day should certainly be enough. I doubt the school friends will have much to contribute—but they might. They could have heard about Star—it’s possible that either Cassandra or Mina had met him before.”

  He stopped. Max had just entered the room, waving a piece of paper. Insofar as Max could ever look excited, he looked excited now.

  “Breakthrough,” he said. “They’ve found the car. The police just called.”

  “The BMW? Where?”

  “Somewhere interesting.” Max’s glance intersected with Rowland’s. “In Paris, would you believe?”

  “Paris? They’re sure?”

  “It’s confirmed. It had been abandoned in the Pantin district, close to the periphérique. A humble policier found it around three hours ago.”

  Max broke off; a telephone had begun ringing. Hearing Charlotte answer it upstairs, he turned back to Rowland.

  “Yes, Paris,” he continued. “And given your previous information, Rowland, that’s an interesting choice of destination, wouldn’t you say?”

  Lindsay, resigned to invisibility again, had been watching Rowland. He was slow to reply. The reason, she realized, was that his attention was on Gini. She was standing very still, her hands frozen in the act of removing her green scarf. She was listening to the murmur of Charlotte’s voice in the distance; her eyes were unnaturally bright, her face was tense and pale. She began to move as she heard Charlotte’s footsteps above. She was already running toward Max’s office as Charlotte shouted down the stairs: “Gini,” she called. “Quickly—he’s been trying to get through for hours. The line’s awful, but you can just hear him. Gini, quickly—it’s Pascal.”

  PART TWO

  Europe

  Chapter 9

  THE CHURCH BELLS WOKE Mina. They made their way into the dream she was having. At first, still inside the dream, she thought they were cowbells, and she was high in the mountains somewhere. Then they became sleigh bells, and she was flying across the snow under a fur rug, with Star by her side. Then the dream began to slip away, and she understood they were church bells, somewhere outside this Paris room. She stirred, opened her eyes, and began to remember. She remembered the room, the mattress on which she was lying, and the clean patchwork quilt that covered her, a quilt covered with navy-blue stars and scarlet hexagons.

  She sat up, rubbed her eyes, then smiled: Star had said he was going out, that was it, and she should rest: well, now he had returned.

  He was sitting opposite her on a small wooden chair, and he was watching her wake.

  “What time is it, Star?”

  “Time for the second Mass. Eight o’clock.”

  “Mass? You mean it’s Sunday?”

  “It’s Sunday. You were exhausted. It was a long drive. We had to find this place. You’ve been sleeping for hours and hours. You want some breakfast? There’s a café I know near here.”

  “I am hungry. Maybe the pink jewel made me extra sleepy. I would like breakfast.”

  “There’s a bathroom on the landing. You can use that. Look—I bought you a present while I was out. It’s a scarf. A blue scarf. It matches your eyes.”

  He magicked the scarf out of his pocket; he magicked it into his hand. Mina saw that it was silk, and a most beautiful color, the color of a kingfisher’s wing. She gave a small cry of delight. Star rose and put it gently in her hand.

  “Cover your hair with it,” he said. “Just for now. We have to be careful, Mina. Even here.”

  Mina looked at him hesitantly.

  “I will be able to call them soon, won’t I, Star? I don’t want them to worry. My mother—Star, if it’s Sunday now—she’ll just be frantic. I have to tell her I’m safe. It’s all right—I won’t say where we are…”

  “Sure you can call them.” He smiled, and the room lit with his smile. “If you hadn’t been sleeping—you can call them from the café. It has a phone booth. Come on, little Mina.” He took her hands in his. “This is an adventure, remember? Our adventure. Later this morning—” He broke off, and Mina saw his face change.

  “Later this morning, what?” she said, watching his eyes alter and darken.

  “Later this morning I have an appointment, that’s all. I have to go out to the airport. Charles de Gaulle. While we’re there—you can decide. There’s hundreds of flights to London. One every hour—more. If you want, I’ll put you straight on a plane. You can be back home this afternoon.”

  “I could?” Mina looked at him uncertainly. “Star, I don’t have any money for airfare. I don’t have any money at all. I gave all the money I had to Cassandra.”

  “No problem.” He gave another of his conjuror’s movements, and there was money, fistfuls of it, in his hands.

  “Francs, dollars, pounds—more than enough for a flight to England. Just say the word, Mina, and we can both leave. We can go anyplace in the world.”

  “I couldn’t let you pay my fare.” Mina frowned. “I’d have to pay you back, Star.”

  “Let’s not fight about it. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get out to the airport and you won’t want to go. Hurry up—it’s a fine day. We can sit in the café and watch the sun shine on Paris. Paris is one of the four most beautiful cities in the world.”

  He made this pronouncement very seriously. Mina was impressed.

  “Which are the other three?” she asked.

  “Venice, New Orleans, and Hong Kong. One day I’ll take you to them. Maybe.”

  “You know all those places?” Mina said, but he turned away as if suddenly bored.

  “Sure,” he replied. “I’ve been around.”

  Mina could tell she was dismissed. She was learning about Star, and one thing she’d learned was that his moods changed very suddenly. One moment he gave her this fierce attention, so it felt as if his blue-black eyes read her mind like a printout; the next moment, something happened: he blanked off, and his face c
losed.

  She went out onto the landing, found the bathroom, washed, and combed her hair. It was a primitive bathroom, but then, this house was old. They were right at the top of it, on the attic floor, and the house itself was at the summit of a hill. Opening the window, she could see a dazzling roofscape, domes and slates and chimneys and spires. Star said this was a friend’s pad; he said they were in the student quarter, he said they were on the Left Bank, which was the best part of Paris, and they were near the Sorbonne.

  Mina took her new blue scarf, which was so fine, like a scrap of summer sky, and tied it carefully over her red hair. She fixed it the way the traveler women fixed theirs, gypsy fashion, so it fastened at the back and came low on her forehead, just above her brows. It looked pretty, and she smiled at her reflection. She had washed off that silly hawk transfer, but she’d left the last of the gold paint on her eyelids, and she was still wearing Cassandra’s old black clothes. A skirt that was long and loose, halfway down her calves; an Indian shirt Cassandra bought in a thrift shop; a heavy jacket, also black, with black embroidery, that Cassandra’s mother had brought back from somewhere abroad. She looked so different now, so much older—and she felt older, too, as if in one day and two nights she’d come of age and traveled around the world.

  She could not wait to tell Cassandra what had happened, where she had been. She could imagine the scene at school; she could hear her own voice: Yes, we left at midnight, we drove all through the night. When we came to Paris, it still wasn’t dawn. We stayed at a friend’s place. Star has friends everywhere, he told me. He’s always traveling, Cass. I could have stayed there with him. He asked me to stay. He said—if we wanted, we could go right around the world… She checked herself. Star was calling to her. She thought of her mother then, and her father, and the doubts resurfaced. She felt jittery, a little anxious and afraid.