When it is done, she comes to me. She wraps her arms around me so tenderly, I almost die of gratitude. I lay my head on her shoulder and start to cry, shuddering sobs that feel as if they are flaying the skin off me, but I don’t know how to make them stop. She strokes my head. She murmurs softly. With a gentle touch she picks out slivers of glass from my hair and off my face, leaving nicks and scratches behind and little snakes of scarlet that slide down my skin as if my body is crying.
Finally I stop. I look at my sister through my damp lashes and she has on a face I have never seen before. It is tight and hard. As though an iron door has slammed shut inside her.
I kiss her cheek. It is wet from my tears. ‘Thank you, Romaine. Thank you for saving me.’
Her eyes come alive again. Her mouth pulls into an odd smile. ‘It is easier the second time.’
I moan.
‘Who is he?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.’
‘Can it have been a random attack?’
We stare at each other. ‘It wasn’t a random attack.’
Tremors take me again as I remember his filthy fingers inside me. Romaine drapes an arm around me and steers me to the bed, where she strips off every scrap of bedding. We lie down together on the bare, stained mattress, her arms looped around me, holding me tight. We lie like that for a long time, indifferent to the roll of pink damask on the floor beside the bed, but I do not mention his German accent. Nor do I mention that he came for her.
‘Well?’ I ask.
My head is pounding and is thick with what feels like a hangover, though I have not touched a drop of Romaine’s whisky. She is sitting on the floor in a corner drinking straight from the bottle.
‘Well now,’ she gives me that odd smile again, ‘we are not going to the police.’
I nod.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she says. ‘We will have to drag the body downstairs in the middle of the night when everyone is—’
‘No. I know someone.’
‘Who will deal with this?’
‘Yes.’
Her mouth falls open. There is blood on her teeth. Mine? Her own? The dead man’s? I do not know.
‘You know someone who will get rid of the body for us, no questions asked? Really?’
‘Yes.’
She waits for more. I pick my words carefully. ‘Roland works with the Intelligence Service sometimes. They have a team that clears up mess. That’s their job.’
‘You’ll tell Roland?’ She takes a swig of whisky and her eyes half close with pleasure. ‘Is that wise?’
‘Let me deal with all that.’
I sit slumped on the bed. My torn dress hangs off me in shreds, so I force my body back into action and inspect my sister’s clothes on the hanger on a wall hook. I lift off a dreary cotton blouse and a skirt and I put them on. They are both brown and I know make me look like shit, but tonight I don’t care. It is dark outside. Every bit of me hurts.
I pull her to her feet. ‘Come on. We must leave now.’
She nods obediently. I head for the door, remembering to take my handbag, but she veers back to the bed and kneels down. She unlaces the strap that seals the slit in the mattress, pushes her hand in and draws out the small pouch that I found before. She doesn’t look in it. Instead she pushes her hand in again, this time off to the left and pulls out a narrow box. I frown. I recognise it. I rush over, snatch it from her and flick it open. It is Papa’s watch.
‘Maman gave it to me,’ she says quickly. ‘I didn’t steal it. I am going to sell it to raise money for Aya Abed’s operation.’
I hold it out to her. I say nothing. I cannot speak. She bunches a light cotton dress under her arm and we leave. I pull the door shut but the lock is broken, so it is pointless. Neither of us care. There is nothing in the room worth stealing. She leads the way down the stairs and I watch her short blonde curls bob below me. Violent emotions seal my lips.
I want to ask her about the confession she wrote, the one I tore up. But she killed a man for me today. That is enough.
‘You bastard.’
I storm into Gustav Müller’s office and slam the door. His is the only office with a light still on because all the other officials in the building have long since gone home. This man lives, breathes, eats his work. His office walls are lined not with books or even with the obligatory pictures of Adolf Hitler, but with rows of files. Information is power. That is his maxim. So he keeps the information at his fingertips, not in a dusty basement storeroom. Row after row of files. They are intimidating. I know one of them is on me.
I march over to his desk and sweep an angry fist across it, sending a framed photograph of his wife in Germany and a porcelain clock crashing to the floor.
‘What the hell did you do it for?’ I demand. ‘Why send someone to rape my sister?’
His expression remains cool and unruffled. ‘To teach her a lesson. She needed it.’
‘Don’t you dare do anything like that to Romaine ever again or—’
‘What happened? I chose that operative because he is dedicated to his work.’
‘Your dedicated operative is now a dead operative.’
‘What?’
‘So get rid of his body.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In her attic room. Send the cleaners in immediately.’
‘Mein Gott, she is ferocious, that one.’
‘Stay away from her.’
‘I can’t do that, meine freundin. She is at the heart of the Spanish Civil War support network.’
‘You have no proof of that.’
‘I don’t need proof.’
‘Müller, you are not listening to me. I’m telling you to stay away from her.’
In three brisk strides I am on the other side of his desk and yank open the top drawer. Inside lies a Mauser pistol. I snatch it up and point it at him. ‘If you ever hurt her again, I will put a bullet in you.’
He laughs in my face. Almost a purr. He is pleased that he has provoked me.
I slide into bed. I lie still. I try not to wake him. Minutes tick past in the darkness and I force my eyes to shut, my limbs to remain still. But it is no good, my need for comfort is too strong. I crave it tonight. Like my sister craves her whisky. I edge across the expanse of whiteness between us and I find Roland is lying on his side, his back to me.
Are you asleep? Or pretending to be asleep?
I cannot tell, but I no longer care because I inhale the scent of his warm sleep-soaked skin and it draws me to him. I tuck my naked body around his naked body, feeling the heavy curve of his buttocks warm and solid in my lap. I run the flat of my palm over it, the way I would over a horse’s rump, patting it, stroking it, caressing his powerful muscle there. When I am as close to my husband as this, I forget that his body is his, not mine.
‘Chloé was asking for you.’
Roland’s sleep voice is deeper, more resonant than his daytime one and I feel its vibrations pass from his chest into mine.
‘I’m sorry. Was she all right?’
‘Yes, of course. Where were you?’
I don’t like talking to his back.
‘I was with my sister.’
He sighs. I kiss the back of his neck and trail my tongue across to his ear.
‘She needed help,’ I say.
‘Help to walk a straight line.’
‘No, she wasn’t drunk. Just help to sort something out.’
He doesn’t ask why or how. He doesn’t speak her name. I press my breasts hard against his ribs.
‘Leave her to Horst,’ he says in a tone that ends the discussion. ‘He will look after her.’
That’s what I’m afraid of.
I roll away to my own side of the bed and we lie in silence for a long time, only our breathing in tune with each other. My mind fills with the memory of a hand crushing my throat.
‘Help me, Roland,’ I whisper into the darkness.
Instantly my husband is
beside me, is on me, is inside me, erasing all else. Ridding my body of the memory of the hands that touched me where no man but Roland has touched me. I wrap my arms and my legs around him, my hips bucking to drive him deeper into me until at last we are done, slick with sweat. The violent stranger with the marble eyes is erased from my mind. Along with all the other things erased from my mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
By midnight Romy found her way back to the safe house on the banks of the Seine, an almost empty whisky bottle still in her hand. To her disgust she felt stone-cold sober. In the darkness, the city’s lights glinted off the inky black void of the river and for all of five seconds she was tempted. A quick step. Over the edge. That’s all it would take. An easy way out.
She rubbed her fist hard on her chest. A block of ice had formed there just behind her breastbone. That’s what it felt like, despite the fact that her blood seemed to race hot through her veins and, with the whisky, should have melted it hours ago.
What frightened her was that she didn’t know herself any more. Didn’t know that she, Romaine Duchamps, could kill again. She could have stopped. After she’d walloped the rapist with the first bottle, when she’d seen his scalp split open and blood soak his hair like red paint, she could have stopped. But she didn’t. She hit him again. Just to be sure.
To be sure.
To be sure of what? That he was dead? Was there a part of her that wanted to kill?
‘No,’ she insisted to the night breeze that ruffled the stray leaves in the gutter. ‘It was to save Florence.’
I would kill for her.
‘What the hell happened?’
Martel swept her into his arms the moment he opened the door to her. His face was tight with hours of worry, with hours of anger eating at him, but he took one look at her and the anger fell away.
‘What have you done?’
He smelled of soap. She let the weight of her head rest on his shoulder and felt his strong hand in the middle of her back, holding her upright against him, as though he feared she might fall. But she had no intention of falling.
‘Martel.’ She said his name. Quick and sharp. That was enough. To tell him she wasn’t broken. ‘I’ve done something terrible.’
‘What is this terrible thing you’ve done? You can tell me, Romaine. I won’t scream in horror or run away, if that’s what you think.’
‘I killed a man.’
He gripped her shoulders and held her away from him at arm’s length so that he could study her face in the yellow sheen of the single bare light bulb that hung in the room. Whatever he saw did not make him scream. Did not make him run. He didn’t even look shocked, as if he’d always known the possibility lay within her. Instead he gave her a nod and a smile.
‘If you killed a man, Romaine, then I’m sure the bastard needed killing.’
Martel fed her. Strong-smelling cheese and crusty baguette. Sweet slippery slices of peach and cantaloupe melon. He poured her a glass of red wine and watched her drink it, and when she had finished he peeled off her stinking sack of a dress and took her to bed.
Romy had expected the scars. Of course she had. She knew about the flying accident that almost stole his life, but she was not prepared for the number of them. White as silvery snail-tracks, they coiled around his hip and slunk through the dark hairs and across the muscles of his powerful chest, picking out his rib bones one by one. But the scars on his thigh were the colour of overripe plums, savage and brutal.
She lowered her head and trailed her tongue along the line of each scar. Piece by piece she licked away Martel’s pain. He tasted good. Of salt and strength and something stubborn. She heard him moan. A tremor ripped through him and his hands reached for her, his eyes dark as sin with wanting her. His mouth came down hard on hers, sending jolts of pleasure crashing through her, so that her body arched against his, demanding all of him.
There were no questions. No hows. No whys. No what nows between them. They just needed each other. Their bodies so hungry they ached with the pain of it. Fingers caressed and cradled, lips searched out secret places, touching and teasing, until their bodies drove each other to the very brink of la petite mort. His hand stroked her breast with such tenderness, yet there was a wildness to him that Romy had not suspected before. Something untamed, unbroken. It tore her heart wide open.
This was the stunt pilot. Not the commercial businessman. This was the reckless Léo Martel who yearned to scorch his way across the sky again, to flip a plane through the Arc de Triomphe at dawn. Locked together, they flew high and fast, pulsing with an energy and a wholeness she had known with no other man. When they finally collapsed together, their skin was silky with sweat, limbs entwined.
Romy laid her cheek on his chest to listen to his thundering heartbeat. The sound of it and the heat of him became a part of her.
Romy woke. Had she fallen asleep? How was that possible? After sex with any man, her instinct was to run. Run as far and fast as she could. Yet here she was, curled up in the crook of Martel’s arm, breathing his breath, smelling his skin, her head pillowed on the hard muscle of his shoulder, contented as a cat in the sun.
Because she couldn’t bear to tear herself away from this moment, she allowed her mind to lie to her. Nothing existed outside these four walls. Nobody walked the streets of Paris except Martel and herself. There was no attic room, no empty whisky bottles under a bed, no damned-to-hell-for-eternity intruder with a German accent and hair the colour of raw steak. No snipers behind the trees to slam a bullet into their brains if they chose to stroll beside the Seine like young lovers along the cobbled alleyways of the quais. She’d take him rowing on the river, the way she used to as a child with her sister. And she’d laugh when he lost an oar and had to strip to his waist to dive in to . . .
‘Romaine.’
She dragged herself back from the cliff edge of sleep. He was stroking her cheek, soft tender touches that loosened her focus.
‘Tell me what happened.’
So she told him. Every last dirty minute of what happened in the stiflingly hot little attic. She spared him no detail. No glossing over the number of bottles under the bed or the sound of bone cracking when the second blow broke the man’s skull. It felt like lancing a boil. The poison poured out. The festering ceased.
‘We must remove the body immediately,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t you be telling me I did wrong? That I must go to the police at once?’
‘Oh, Romaine, I would do exactly the same as you did without a second thought – to save the person I love.’
His gaze was fixed on her, leaving no room for doubt as to whom he meant.
She shook her head. ‘My sister said she would get her husband to deal with it. It seems that our government employs professional laundrymen to clean up their dirty messes.’
‘That makes sense. I will have your room checked over nevertheless.’
‘But who was the attacker? Why was he in my room?’ Her pulse raced. ‘Was it a random assault from a man unconnected with—?’
‘No, Romy, stay calm.’ It was the first time he’d ever called her Romy. He let his thumb roll gently down the pale skin of her throat and she remembered the marks of violence on Florence’s throat. ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that it was meant to be an attack on you. He got the wrong sister.’
He studied her with a dark, serious gaze, watching her reaction. He kissed a spot on her temple, letting his lips linger there, and she felt the warmth of his lips steady her pulse.
‘But you know that, I can see.’
‘Do you think he might be Cupid, the one you told us about who is trying to destroy our cells of resistance? You said there was rumour he might be German.’
‘It is possible. At this stage,’ he frowned with frustration, ‘anything is possible.’
She didn’t want this. The German in bed with them. In one quick movement she rolled herself up on top of Martel, her body stretched out along his, hip to hip, her face grinning down
on him, her lips a hair’s breadth from his.
‘Tell me about yourself, Léo Martel. When did you start flying? What was stunting like? Where do you get your planes from?’
His eyes smiled back at her. ‘You are beautiful, Romy. Every part of you, outside and inside. Even the little scar under your chin is a perfect crescent, do you know that?’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘You have no idea how lovable you are.’
She nipped the tip of his nose with her teeth. ‘Stop it. Listen to me. What was your first plane?’
He kissed the hollow of her collarbone. ‘A Caudron G.3 biplane.’
‘Really? That old thing? They were held together by string and a prayer.’
He laughed and its vibrations stirred her.
‘Tell me about your family,’ she ordered. ‘Are there more like you at home?’
‘I’d rather talk about you.’
‘Martel!’
‘Call me Léo.’ He said it softly, as if those words rarely saw the light of day.
She kissed his mouth, tasting the wine. ‘Léo, don’t hide from me.’
His eyes grew soft on hers and he started to talk. Some parts came easily. Others she had to tease out of him, pulling the threads one at a time. Unravelling him.
He grew up in Toulouse. His parents ran a printing business and pretty much left Léo and his brother Charles to bring themselves up, while they worked all hours.
‘We ran wild,’ he laughed, remembering. ‘Got into all kinds of scrapes, but we both became obsessed with early aircraft. Especially with the brilliant aviation engineer, Louis Blériot.’
At eighteen Martel sold his father’s ancient Renault 40CV, which was languishing unused in the garage, funded flying lessons for himself and his brother with the proceeds and took himself off to California to be a stunt pilot. His eyes lit up in a way Romy loved to see when he talked about the crazy thrills and spills of working on the film Wings with Gary Cooper. Like he had a fire inside him. And then he tumbled into pylon racing. He’d started travelling the race circuits for pilots across America. Romy shuddered. Pylon racing was a lethal way to make a living. You might as well cut your throat before you start. Under her, she could feel his heart roaring like a propeller in his chest.
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