Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  Gini could hear the agonized unspoken questions, and read them in her eyes. They were the same questions Mina’s parents had not dared to voice to her the previous night: What didn’t we see, how did we fail her, where did we go wrong?

  “Please. Take the photograph. Keep it. It’s yours.”

  Erica van der Leyden pressed the picture of Anneke into Gini’s hands. Her face crumpled, became lax with grief.

  “I loved her,” she said with sudden passion. “I loved her so much. If you don’t have children, you can’t understand. I love my husband, of course—we’ve been married many years, and I would never tell him this… But the way I love him, it’s nothing, nothing compared to the way I love my daughters. Is that terrible? I don’t care. It’s true. If I had to sacrifice him for them, I wouldn’t hesitate, not for one second. Him, myself, this house, everything we possess—it’s all meaningless, I’d abandon it all tomorrow, I’d kill to bring her back—”

  “Please,” Gini began.

  “—that’s what it means to be a mother. No man on earth can ever feel like that. Such desperate desperate love. Oh, dear merciful God…”

  She was shuddering from head to foot. She covered her face with her hands, then suddenly gripped Gini hard, forcing her to look up at her face.

  “Tell me Anneke knew that. If I could just believe she knew that…”

  “I’m absolutely certain she knew it,” Gini said quietly. “Mrs. van der Leyden, I’m sure she knew…”

  It was an inadequate reply, but it seemed to console Anneke’s mother—temporarily, at least.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “I pray to God you’re right.”

  Leaving the house, Gini walked away fast, and stood by the canal, holding tight against the railings of the bridge. She was trembling with the force of Erica van der Leyden’s emotion. It had passed from Anneke’s mother into her; she felt as if it were in her lungs and heart and blood. It was fearsome, and she feared it most because it had not simply been transferred from Anneke’s mother to herself—something within her had risen up to meet it, to recognize it. I have been claimed, Gini thought, beginning to pace the bridge, breathing in great gusts of the cold air; and because she knew that this had always lain in wait for her, that it was her female birthright, this moment was one she never forgot.

  She crossed to the far side of the canal and looked back. Anneke’s mother was drawing the blinds against the gathering dusk. Gini knew she had crossed a divide. For a moment she felt physically weak, weighted down by a disabling passion and concern. The next instant she experienced its very opposite, a heady strength so powerful, so affirmative, she felt light with joy.

  She had been ready for this initiation into womanhood, she thought. She had been preparing for it since arriving in Sarajevo, but how curious, how unlikely, that this revelation should be effected in a strange city, in the bourgeois hall of a bourgeois house, by a woman she had never previously met.

  This was how it felt to be a mother; this was the nature of that condition; she could feel its vulnerability and its power flow in her veins. She felt a sudden and overwhelming flood of gratitude to the woman who, having lost a child, had given her this gift.

  Was the conduit grief, or love? Both, she thought, and, turning, quickening her pace, made her way toward the Leidseplein, and its cafés and its lights.

  In the summer months the Rembrandt café would have been filled, no doubt, with students, backpackers, the international army of the young. Now, in January, its interior was almost deserted. Those few customers there were all foreign and elderly, perhaps retired couples taking low-price mid-winter breaks.

  Gini chose a prominent table by the windows and ordered coffee. She waited, calming herself, forcing her mind back to her work, though she knew from this moment on, she worked with new purpose and a deeper determination, and that her work would be informed by the emotion she had seen in Erica van der Leyden’s face. Two young girls had died; Mina Landis would not make a third, she would not let that happen—and as she let that thought settle in her mind, she felt it was not some empty assertion or boast: she was armed now, and injury to another daughter, another child, was something she could actually prevent.

  She needed assistance, however; she needed some new lead. Unless Fricke proved helpful, she could see that this visit, even if far from a wasted journey for her, was one that would produce little hard information. She needed a signpost; someone had to show her which road to take next.

  She had already seen the police inspector who had handled Anneke’s case; he also had spoken perfect English, and been eager to assist. But nine months of inquiries, it seemed, had thrown up virtually nothing.

  “Your police have the advantage over us,” he said. “They have a description at least. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised Star actually exists. I’d decided Anneke van der Leyden invented the name. It wouldn’t have surprised me. With girls her age, nothing does.”

  A dead end, Gini thought. The previous day, at Max’s, before Rowland left with Lindsay for London, she had tried to persuade him once more to let her talk to his DEA contact here. She had been expecting a refusal, and a flat refusal was precisely what she got.

  “Then just give me a place name, Rowland,” she had said, walking out to the drive with him. “A café. A bar. Somewhere this Dutch chemist goes, where his American partner hangs out.”

  “No. I will not. I’ve already explained. I get information on condition I do nothing to prejudice a DEA investigation that’s been in place for months.”

  “I’m not going to prejudice it, for God’s sake. What do you think I’m going to do, Rowland? March up to these guys, order a crate of White Doves, flash my press card, and demand Star’s real name or else?”

  “The answer’s no. It has to be no. I gave my word, my professional assurance.”

  “Oh, very well. It seems to me that finding Mina is rather more urgent than some DEA shadow play that’s been going on for months. Still, you’re the boss.”

  He was not amused by that. He gave her one long, cold, green look.

  “Shall I just make something crystal clear? You step out of line on this, Gini, you embarrass my source, and I’ll take you off this story. You won’t work for me again—ever. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Gini had replied with an irritable shrug. She had been about to turn away, go back into the house, but something in Rowland’s manner made her pause. He seemed to be waiting for some further response. Gini hesitated; she knew her manner had been graceless; she still did not find it easy to accept instructions from men—she had worked with too many men in the past whose editorial dictates she despised, and Rowland McGuire’s tone, that cold, flat statement of terms, had made her hackles rise at once.

  He was still waiting: standing in the driveway, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat, the wind lifting his dark hair away from his forehead, his green eyes—he had the clearest green eyes she had ever seen—still resting on her face. She could feel his disapproval—and he seemed to regret that, as if he had expected better of her. This was not just intransigency, male obstinacy, she realized, feeling guilty. Rowland was waiting for her to admit that his seniority to her was not the issue; he was waiting to see if she had the honesty to admit that he was right.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, turning to him with a gesture of apology. “Really. I do understand the priorities here. I give you my word, Rowland. I won’t do anything to prejudice your source.”

  “It could be dangerous if you did,” he said, and something in his tone confused Gini.

  “Dangerous? You mean to me?”

  “No. Of course not. At least I hope not. To my source, obviously.”

  “You mean—if his cover was blown? Rowland, I’d never do that.”

  “I did explain. The DEA didn’t put an operative into Amsterdam just to report on the activities of a small-time Dutch chemist, however lethal or successful his product. Amsterdam is a major conduit for hero
in and cocaine. At a conservative estimate, five billion dollars’ worth of those drugs passed through that city in the last twelve months. With those sums of money involved, the stakes are extremely high. So are the risks for any operative on the ground. I imagine I don’t need to explain that.”

  Gini flushed. “No. Of course not. You’re right to rein me in. I’m sorry I spoke as I did. I realize—I’m rushing it, going too fast. I do that. I get obsessional. It’s been remarked on before. I’m nearly cured…”

  He had looked at her then with slightly more warmth. He began to walk away toward Lindsay’s car, then turned back.

  “Just as a matter of interest—who remarked on your impetuosity? Was it Max?”

  “No. My father—for years. And Pascal’s certainly touched on it more than once.”

  She knew he picked up the wryness of her tone, but he made no further comment. He gave her one last odd, assessing look, then climbed into Lindsay’s car for the drive back to London.

  An unusual man, Gini thought now; an interesting man—and a man who was every bit as capable of impetuosity as she was. Lindsay had described him, on the trip down, as arrogant. Gini wondered if she had since revised that view—with which she herself would not have agreed. In the short time she had known Rowland McGuire, she had already clashed with him twice. She did not like to recall that moment when he had rounded on her in Max’s kitchen and accused her of lack of charity. He was the only person present on that occasion who had had the courage to say what they all thought, and she admired that. Not arrogant, she thought, but uncompromising—and though she might not admit it to him, she owed Rowland a debt for that angry remark. It had shocked and shamed her out of the slough of despair and aimlessness and misery in which she had been drowning for months; but she was grateful for it. Rowland McGuire had put her back on course. Thanks to him, she had rediscovered how it felt to be herself.

  She must call him, she thought, as well as Pascal, when she returned to her hotel. Meanwhile—she looked at her watch—it was nearly four, and Fricke was late.

  She opened her bag and took out the picture of Anneke. It was a studio portrait, her mother had said, taken to celebrate her fourteenth birthday. Her last birthday; within a year of this picture’s being taken, Anneke was dead.

  A pretty, elfin-faced girl stared back at her. She had short flaxen hair, like her mother, cut in a neat bob. She was wearing an old-fashioned dress, which made her look younger than her years. Like Mina, she could have been taken for a twelve-year-old. She was thin, flat-chested, and her smile looked forced, as if cameras made her self-conscious.

  “She hated that picture,” a voice said.

  Gini looked up to see Fricke by her side, clutching a violin case. She made a grimace, then sat down, poured herself some coffee, and immediately—with a defiant glance at Gini—lit a cigarette.

  “It doesn’t even look like her. They dolled her up.” She gave Gini another of her slow, measuring looks. “So. This girl who’s missing now—Mina, right? You have a picture of her?”

  “Not with me. No.”

  “Does she have dark hair by any chance? Black hair?”

  “No. She has red hair. Why?”

  “Because he likes dark hair. Anneke told me. She dyed her hair black to please Star. You didn’t know that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she did. He cut it off, cropped it, so it was really really short, like yours. Then she dyed it black for him. She liked it. It looked cool, she said.”

  “I see.” Gini returned the measuring look. “So, is this what you wanted to tell me? That you and Anneke were in touch after she left? And your parents don’t know this?”

  “No one knows.” She gave Gini a mutinous glance, then pushed back her hair. “Tell them if you like. I don’t give a shit.”

  “I don’t want to run telling tales.” Gini paused, trying to assess her. “But why tell me?”

  “You came all the way from England.” She blew out a cloud of smoke, then shrugged. “Maybe I was touched by that. Maybe I thought you had a brain in your head, better than most of those creeps who tried to interview my mother. I was watching. I thought you were pretty smart. On the other hand… Maybe I just felt like it. Anneke’s dead now. Why not?”

  “And that makes a difference? Had you promised her you’d say nothing?”

  “Yeah. She called twice when my parents were out. The first time was about three days after she left. The second was about two weeks after that. She made me swear I wouldn’t tell—and there was nothing to tell anyway. None of it was heavy—she just wanted to chat. She didn’t tell me where she was. She said she’d be coming back… And I believed her. I thought she really was okay, the way she said—”

  She began to cry suddenly, as suddenly as her mother had. Tears dripped down her nose and misted her glasses. She took them off and began to rub them furiously with a paper napkin. Gini watched her quietly: without her glasses, without that expression of sneering defiance on her face, Fricke looked young, vulnerable—and afraid, Gini thought.

  “Is that the problem, Fricke?” she said gently when the girl’s fit of sobbing had stopped. “Have you been feeling guilty about this?”

  It was the wrong approach. “Who said I felt guilty?” Fricke snapped. “Why should I? I told you—she didn’t say one fucking thing that would have helped anyone find her. Get off my back…”

  “Fine,” Gini said, and decided to try another tack, since sympathy evidently made the girl feel angry and cornered. “Then let’s stick to some facts. Let’s start with you—who taught you your slang, Fricke? Were they American or British, because someone did.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everyone Dutch speaks good English. I’ve been learning it since I was six.”

  “Come on, Fricke. You didn’t learn four-letter words in a classroom. You use them in a very idiomatic way. You scarcely pause to think.”

  “So? It’s a crime, is it, to have English friends, American friends?” She gave Gini another scornful look. “All year Amsterdam’s full of foreigners, people my age. Sure I talk to them. I meet them all around the place…”

  “Where all around the place?”

  “Just all around. In cafés. Art galleries. Here in the Leidseplein.”

  “Oh, come on, Fricke. Let’s stop fencing around. You covered for Anneke, didn’t you? All the time your mother was explaining how careful she was, how she always knew where Anneke was, I was trying to figure out how Anneke got around the restrictions. It didn’t take a great leap of imagination. You did it together, didn’t you? Gave each other alibis? Backed each other up?”

  “So what? Everyone does. So we skipped jail once or twice…”

  “Sure. And your sister ended up dead. Who introduced her to Star, Fricke? Was it you? One of your American or English friends?”

  “No, it fucking wasn’t. I never met him. I never saw him in my life…” Her voice rose. “You’re getting this all wrong. You’re just like my parents. You think Anneke was my sweet little kid sister. Listen, she went on the pill when she was twelve. It was Anneke the boys all chased, it was Anneke who was screwing around, not me. And last January she got thrown over by this boy she really liked. It really cut her up. My mother thinks she was so happy—well, she wasn’t. She used to cry, she’d come to my room every night, and we’d talk, and she’d cry some more… That’s why she went to Star, because he understood.”

  “What?” Gini said. She had known that if she kept the pressure up, Fricke would eventually make a slip. She had just done so, and she still hadn’t realized. She was staring at Gini blankly.

  “She went to Star, that’s what you just said. Not—went off with him, to him.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “No. I don’t think so, Fricke. Your English is too good. I know why you phrased it that way. Anneke already knew Star, didn’t she? She didn’t meet him the day before she left, the way she wrote in that note. She’d planned to leave.” Gini sigh
ed. “Oh, come on, Fricke, you’re sixteen, you’re intelligent. Why do you think I’m pressuring you like this? Your sister’s dead. Another girl in England is dead. Mina is with Star right now, and she’s at risk. I want Star found, and I want him stopped. You want that too—surely you do? So why the hell can’t you trust me and give me your help?”

  There was a long silence. Gini was not sure, even then, if she had made the right approach. Outright appeals, antagonism, sympathy—nothing she said seemed to reach this girl. She was still looking at Gini with a mutinous hostility, as if Gini were irrevocably on the other side of some impassable wall between the young and the adult.

  Gini could sense the impasse. Feeling suddenly tired and dispirited, she signaled to the waiter to bring more coffee. There was an irony here, beneath the surface of this difficult conversation. Gini wondered if Fricke would believe her if she tried to explain how close she herself felt to Anneke, to Mina. She thought of herself, a few weeks short of her sixteenth birthday, cutting school, taking a plane to Beirut to join her father, the last futile attempt she had made to make her father notice her, take some interest in her life.

  “I want to be a journalist too, Daddy,” she had said. “I thought—if I came here. Watched you. I could learn. And I wanted to see you, of course.”

  He hadn’t even replied. He’d just sat there in his hotel room, sipping his bourbon. When she mentioned journalism, there was an immediate flicker of derision in his eyes; he laughed suddenly—a snort of laughter. Gini had never forgiven that.

  Her father had been her god: since she scarcely knew him, rarely saw him, it had been easy to imagine him as such. In Beirut, day by day, watching him sit sweating in the bar of the Hotel Ledoyen, doing next to no work, rehearsing his endless anecdotes about Vietnam, his Pulitzer, to a crowd of sycophants, she had discovered how misplaced her idolatry had been. She turned back to Fricke, to her cold, hostile stare. The girl was already on her third cigarette.