In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  Eve had felt a chill with her words. But it was followed by an anger so wild that for a moment she didn’t trust herself to speak. So she shifted her briefcase from one hand to the other and looked at her watch as she instructed her blood not to wash across her face.

  At last she said, “I’m afraid I haven’t the time to accommodate you at the moment, Ms.—” and she gazed at the other woman’s identification.

  “Tarp,” she said, “Diana Tarp,” in a voice that told Eve she was unconvinced by and unimpressed with her performance.

  “Yes. Well. If you have no wish to arrange an interview through my office, Ms. Tarp, then give me one of your cards and I’ll phone you when I can. That’s the best I can do. At the moment, I’m already overdue at my surgery.”

  After a pause in which they examined each other as potential opponents, Diana Tarp handed over a card. But she’d never moved her eyes from Eve’s face as she pulled that card from her jacket pocket.

  “I do hope to hear from you,” she said.

  In the back of the Rover, as she rolled towards Marylebone, Eve inspected the card. It bore the woman’s name, her home address, her work phone, her office phone, her pager, and her fax. Clearly, if there was a story to be got from any source about any subject, Diana Tarp had made herself available to get it.

  Slowly Eve tore the card in half, then in quarters, then in eighths. When she had reduced it to the size of confetti, she spread the pieces across the palm of her hand and, when the Rover drew up in front of the constituency association office, she dropped them into the gutter, where a rivulet of bronze-coloured water was trickling in the direction of a drain. So much for Diana Tarp, Eve thought.

  It had been nothing, she concluded now. The journalist’s approach was unusual but that, perhaps, was merely her style. She could be working on a story about the growing numbers of women in Parliament, about the need for more women in the Cabinet. She could be investigating any one of a dozen areas that were the responsibility of the Home Office. She might want to know about changes in immigration policies, about centralised policing, about prison reform. She might wish to discuss the Government’s position on refugee resettlement, on the movement towards a permanent cease-fire with the IRA. She might be digging into something potentially nasty regarding MI5. It could have been anything. It could have been nothing. It was merely the timing that had unnerved her.

  Eve returned her spectacles to her nose and adjusted her hair so that its fringe did the job to cover her scar. She said to her image in the mirror, “Member of Parliament. Undersecretary of State,” and when she had those elements of her persona in place, she returned to her office and buzzed in her next constituent.

  That meeting—a convoluted conversation with an unmarried mother of three who had a fourth on the way and who had come to protest about her current position on the list for council housing—was interrupted by Nuala. She didn’t buzz this time. Rather, she tapped discreetly on the door and opened it as Miss Peggy Hornfisher was demanding, “So, zit s’posed to be my fault they’ve all got the same dad? Why’s that disqualify me? If I slept round and popped out kids without a blink as to who their dads were, I’d be at the top of that list and don’t we both know it. And don’t tell me to talk to the councillors. I been talking to the councillors till I’m blue in the face. You talk to them. That’s why we voted for you, isn’t it?”

  Nuala’s “Excuse me, Ms. Bowen,” saved Eve from having to explain the finer points of qualification for and distribution of council housing to Miss Hornfisher. And the fact that Nuala had interrupted in person suggested a matter that required immediate attention.

  Eve went to the door and joined Nuala outside her office. The secretary said, “Your husband’s just phoned.”

  “Why didn’t you put him through?”

  “He didn’t want to be put through. He said you’re to come home at once. He’s on his way and you’re to meet him there. That’s all.” Nuala shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. She’d spoken to Alex in the past. She would know how unusual it was for him to give his wife a directive without talking to her personally. “He didn’t say anything else.”

  Eve felt the touch of panic, but she reached for what Alex had reached for on Wednesday night. She said with perfect sangfroid, “His father’s not well,” and returned to her office. She made her excuses to Miss Hornfisher, followed them with promises, and began to stuff her belongings into her briefcase as Miss Hornfisher lumbered from the room. She tried to remain composed even as her mind careened from one thought to the next. It was Charlotte. Alex was phoning about Charlotte. He wouldn’t have told her to come home otherwise. So there was word. There was news. Luxford had relented. Eve had held firm, she had refused to cave in, she had been unmoved by Luxford’s performance, she had stood her ground, she had shown him who had balls, she had—

  The phone rang. She snatched it. “What?” she snapped.

  “It’s Joel Woodward again,” Nuala said.

  “I can’t talk to him now.”

  “Ms. Bowen, he says it’s urgent.”

  “Oh damn it, put him through,” she said and in a moment heard Joel’s voice saying with uncharacteristic insubordination, “Shit! Why haven’t you answered my calls?”

  “Exactly who do you think you’re talking to, Joel?”

  “I know who I’m talking to. And I know something else. Something dodgy’s going on over here, and I rather thought you’d be interested in knowing what it is.”

  The Friday night traffic was bad. The month of May, the beginning of the season’s largest influx of tourists, the rush to get to the theatre: All these elements combined to clog the streets.

  St. James rode with Luxford, following Stone. Luxford used his car phone to speak to his wife, delaying his arrival home. He did not tell her why. He said to St. James, “Fiona doesn’t know about any of this. I can’t think how to tell her. God. What a cock-up.” He kept his eyes on the car in front of them, his hands low on the steering wheel. He said, “Do you think I’m involved in this? In what’s happened to Charlotte?”

  “What I think isn’t important, Mr. Luxford.”

  “You regret your own involvement.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Why did you take this on?”

  St. James looked out the side window. They were passing Hyde Park. Through gaps in the great plane trees, he could see that people still walked along the pathway in the fading evening light. With dogs on leads. With arms about each other. With small children in push-chairs. He caught sight of one young woman lifting a child high into the air, the sort of play that a baby loves. He said, “It’s rather too complicated to explain, I’m afraid,” and he was grateful when Luxford said nothing more.

  When they reached Marylebone, Mrs. Maguire was just leaving, with a yellow poncho slung over one shoulder and a plastic bag dangling from her arm. She spoke to Alexander Stone while Luxford pulled into a vacant spot farther down the mews. By the time they walked back to the house, she was gone.

  “Eve’s home,” Stone said. “Let me go in first.”

  They waited outside. The occasional car passed on Marylebone High Street. The muffled babble of conversation drifted in their direction from the Devonshire Arms on the corner. Other than that, the mews was silent.

  Several minutes passed before the door opened. Stone said, “Come in.”

  Eve Bowen was waiting for them in the sitting room. She stood next to the sculpture from under which she had taken the kidnapper’s note two nights earlier. She looked poised the way a warrior is poised before hand-to-hand combat. She was a picture of the sort of equanimity that is intended to intimidate.

  “Play the tape,” she said.

  St. James did so. Eve’s face didn’t alter as Charlotte’s voice piped among them, although St. James thought he saw her swallow when the little girl said, “Cito, I had to make this tape in order that he would give me some juice ’cause I was so thirsty.”

  When the tape finished pla
ying, Eve said to Luxford, “Thank you for the information. Now you may leave.”

  Luxford’s hand shot out as if he would touch her, but they stood at opposite sides of the room. “Evelyn—”

  “Leave.”

  “Eve,” Stone said, “we’ll phone the police. We don’t need to play the game his way. He doesn’t need to run the story.”

  “No,” she said. Her face was as stony as her voice. St. James realised that she hadn’t taken her eyes off Luxford since they’d all walked into the room. They stood about like actors upon a stage, each having taken a position from which none of them moved: Luxford by the fireplace, Eve across from him, Stone by the entry to the dining room, St. James by the sofa. He was nearest to her and he tried to read her, but she was as guarded as a wary cat.

  “Ms. Bowen,” he said and he kept his voice low, the way one would speak to maintain calm at all costs, “we’ve made progress today.”

  “Such as?” Still, she looked at Luxford. As if her look were a challenge, he did not avoid it.

  St. James told her about the vagrant, about the sightings of him that had been confirmed by the two residents of Cross Keys Close. He told her about the policeman who had run the vagrant off, saying, “One of the constables at the Marylebone station is going to remember that man and that description. If you phone them, the detectives won’t be starting from nothing in an investigation. They’ll have a good lead.”

  “No,” she said. “Try your best, Dennis. You can’t have it your way.” She was communicating something to Luxford with the words, something beyond merely her refusal to act. St. James couldn’t guess what it was, but it seemed to him that Luxford could. He saw the editor’s lips part fractionally, but he didn’t reply.

  Stone said, “I don’t see that we have a choice, Eve. God knows I don’t want you to go through this, but Luxford thinks—”

  He was silenced by her look, so swift it might have been shot from a gun. Treason, it said to him, treachery, betrayal. “You as well,” she said.

  “No. Never. I’m on your side, Eve.”

  She smiled thinly. “Then know this.” Her gaze went back to Luxford. “One of the lobby journalists requested an immediate interview with me this afternoon. Convenient to the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That means nothing,” Luxford said. “For the love of God, Evelyn, you’re a bloody Junior Minister. You must get requests for interviews all the time.”

  “As soon as possible, she said.” Eve continued as if Luxford hadn’t spoken. “Without mentioning the fact to any of my staff because, she told me, I might not want my staff to know she was talking to me.”

  “From my paper?” Luxford asked.

  “You wouldn’t be that foolish. But from your former paper. And I find that fascinating.”

  “It’s just coincidence. You must see that.”

  “I would have done had it not been for the rest.”

  “What?” Stone asked. “Eve, what’s going on?”

  “Five journalists have phoned since half past three this afternoon. Joel took the calls. They have the scent that something’s up, he told me, they all want a word, so do I know what it is they’re after and how would I like him to handle the sudden influx of interest in…‘What is it they’re suddenly interested in, Ms. Bowen?’ ”

  Luxford said urgently, “No. Evelyn. I haven’t told a soul. That has nothing to do—”

  “Get out of my house, you bastard,” she said quietly. “I’ll die before I cave in to you.”

  St. James spoke to Luxford outside, standing next to his car. The last person in the world he would ever have expected to feel a stirring of pity for was the editor of The Source, but he felt pity now. The man looked haggard. Patches of damp the size of dinner plates soddened his natty blue shirt. His body was rank with the scent of perspiration.

  He said in a shell-shocked voice, “What next?”

  “I’ll talk to her again.”

  “We’ve no time.”

  “I’ll talk to her now.”

  “She won’t give.” His gaze went to the house, which told neither of them anything other than the fact that more lights had been switched on in the sitting room and another in a room upstairs. “She should have aborted,” he said. “All those years ago. I don’t know why she didn’t. I used to think it was because she needed a concrete reason to hate me.”

  “For?”

  “Seducing her. Or making her want to be seduced. The latter, I suspect. It’s terrifying to some people when they learn to want.”

  “It is.” St. James touched the roof of Luxford’s car. “Go home. Let me see what I can do.”

  “Nothing,” Luxford predicted.

  “Nonetheless, let me see.”

  He waited until Luxford had driven off before he went back to the house. Stone answered the door.

  “I think it’s high time you buggered off,” he said. “She’s been through enough. Jesus. When I think I almost bought into his performance myself, it makes me want to punch holes in the walls.”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side, Mr. Stone,” St. James said. “Let me talk to your wife. I haven’t finished telling her what she needs to know about today’s investigation. She has a right to that information. You’ll agree with that.”

  Stone evaluated St. James’s words through eyes that narrowed. Like Luxford, he looked worn to nearly nothing. But Eve Bowen, St. James realised, had not looked like that at all. She had looked ready to go another fifteen rounds and ready to come out the victor.

  Stone nodded and stepped back from the door. He climbed the stairs heavily as St. James returned to the sitting room and tried to think what to say, what to do, and how to move the woman into action before it was too late. He saw that in place of the altar that Mrs. Maguire had set up, on the coffee table a chess set was now spread out. The pieces were untraditional, however. St. James picked up the opposing kings. Harold Wilson was one. Margaret Thatcher was the other. He replaced them carefully.

  “He’s made you think he cares about Charlotte, hasn’t he?”

  St. James looked up to see Eve Bowen in the doorway. Her husband stood behind her, a hand on her elbow.

  “He doesn’t, you know. He’s never even seen her. One would think, in the ten years of her life, that he might have tried. I wouldn’t have allowed it, of course.”

  “Perhaps he knew that.”

  “Perhaps.” She came into the room. She sat in the same chair she had chosen on Wednesday night, and the light from the table lamp showed her face as composed. “He’s a master dissembler, Mr. St. James. I know that better than anyone. He’ll want you to think that I’m bitter about our affair and how things turned out. He’ll want you to see my behaviour as a reaction to the weakness in myself that caused me to fall victim to his plethora of charms all those years ago. And while your attention is focused on me and on my refusal to recognise Dennis Luxford’s essential decency, he’ll move nimbly behind the scenes, orchestrating our anxiety from one level to the next.” She rested her head against the back of the chair. She closed her eyes. “The tape was a nice touch. I might have believed it all myself had I not known he would stoop to anything.”

  “It was your daughter’s voice.”

  “Oh yes. It was Charlotte.”

  St. James went to the sofa. His bad leg burdened him like a hundredweight; his back ached from the strain of heaving his body over brick walls. All he would need to make affliction complete was one of his migraines. There was a decision to be taken, and the very reluctance he felt pulling at his body with every movement told him how necessary it was that he take it.

  He said, “I’ll tell you what I know at this point.”

  She said, “And then you’ll leave us to fend for ourselves.”

  “Yes. I can’t in good conscience carry on with this.”

  “You believe him, then.”

  “Ms. Bowen, I do. I don’t particularly like him. I don’t much like what he stands for. I think his newspaper
ought to be blasted from the earth. But I do believe him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, as he’s said, he could have told his story ten years ago. He could have told his story when you first stood for Parliament. He has no reason to tell his story now. Except to save your daughter. His daughter.”

  “His offspring, Mr. St. James. Not his daughter. Charlotte is Alex’s daughter.” She opened her eyes and turned her head to him without lifting it from the back of the chair. “You don’t understand politics, do you?”

  “At your level? No. I suppose I don’t.”

  “Well, this is politics, Mr. St. James. As I’ve said from the first, this is all about politics.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re at an impasse.” She made a weary gesture in his direction. “All right. Give us the rest of the facts. Then go. We’ll decide what to do and your hands will be utterly clean of the decision.”

  Alexander Stone sat in the pillowlike chair that matched the sofa, next to the fireplace and across from his wife. He sat on the edge of it, elbows on his knees, head bent, eyes on his feet.

  Released from a responsibility he hadn’t wanted to assume in the first place, St. James didn’t find himself freed at all. Rather, the weight he was carrying felt heavier and more dreadful. He tried to work past it. This was not his obligation, he told himself. But still he felt the tremendous effort attendant to shrugging it off.

  He said, “I went to the Shenkling school, as we discussed.” He saw Alexander Stone raise his head. “I spoke to girls from eight to twelve years old. The girl we’re looking for wasn’t there. I have a list of the absentees from today if you’d like to phone them.”

  “What’s this about?” Stone asked.

  “A friend of Charlotte’s,” his wife explained as St. James passed her the list.

  St. James said, “Charlotte’s music teacher—”