Webster wondered if he should just let it go. Perhaps Hammer was right: perhaps there was nothing very much wrong with Darius Qazai, or at least nothing obvious, and to insist on taking him apart piece by piece until every last bone was found to be present, every vein and artery in place, was an exercise in vanity and not in diligence. It wasn’t what they had been paid to do, and it didn’t make anyone happier, or wiser, or better, least of all Webster himself. But he was too stubborn to stop, and too intrigued by the raw spot he had exposed.
“If there’s a link, that’s part of our job.” He held Qazai’s eye. “There’s a lot going on. I’m wondering whether I should investigate what happened to Parviz last week.”
Qazai looked at Timur, turned back to Webster, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he had collected himself.
“I appreciate, Mr. Webster, that your job requires you to see the world as interconnected. Everything has a cause and an effect and you look for the cause. I understand that. But again, what happened last week is an unpleasant, personal matter and not your business.”
Webster turned to Timur. “You told your father what happened? The whole thing?”
Timur nodded. He had his legs crossed away from them both and looked like he didn’t want to be drawn in. “Of course.”
“You still think the motive was money?”
“Yes,” said Timur. “I do.”
“Of course it was money,” said Qazai. “Kidnappings happen every day in that place. That is what happens when you have billionaires and slaves living side by side. The sooner Timur can move to London, the better. Which is why, Mr. Webster, we need you to finish your work. These are distractions.”
Given another three or four questions along these lines Webster had the impression he might goad Qazai into becoming truly angry, but although this was tempting in its own right he saw that it served no one’s purpose—not Ike’s, not his own. He had learned something, and that was enough.
“All right. But if I were your adviser, and not your investigator, I’d say that you should have a good think about who your enemies might be.”
An unconvinced smile flashed on Qazai’s face. “Thank you, Mr. Webster. I will. We should all do that from time to time.” He sat back, finding his composure. “Good. That was a useful session.”
He stood, and came around from his side of the desk. To complete the reconstruction of his familiar, easy self, he put his hand on Timur’s shoulder and smiled. In that moment of stiff contact Webster thought of his own relationship with Daniel: Had Qazai once been free to play with Timur, to whirl him around, to throw him in the air? Had they always been this reserved, or had they stiffened over the years? Curiously, the effect was to make Timur, eager for approval, desperate not to disappoint, seem more like a child, and despite his fine words about giving his son his chance this was exactly what Qazai wanted. All afternoon he had led, and Timur had merely watched.
• • •
BY ELEVEN, dinner had finished, the diners had gone their separate ways and Webster, relieved that the day was over, was walking on the lowest terrace and smoking a cigarette. The lake breeze was fresh, the sky free of cloud, the stars close, and from the newly watered flowerbeds rose the rich, cool smell of damp earth. He found a bench and watched the black stillness of the lake and the clustered lights beyond.
Dinner had been easier than lunch. Senechal had arrived from London just as they were sitting down, and his cold presence had made the situation somehow less intimate, as if Qazai was now protected again and not available for taunting—a corporate rather than a family gathering, throughout which Ava had been polite but spirited, Timur agreeable, Qazai quietly imperious.
Webster gave thanks for his own family’s simplicity. His parents were still married, still seemed happy, had never filed vicious claims and accusations against each other. They had never directed him or been disappointed by the directions he had taken. His inheritance would be modest in financial terms but rich in love, wisdom, a certain clarity in thinking about priorities, the only burden a duty to live up to their example.
Perhaps Qazai had had no choice but to damage his son. Perhaps the anxieties that propelled him had inhibited the confidence that might have set Timur free. The Qazai project could not be seen to end with Qazai; his legacy was as important as his own achievements. That, more than mere riches or power, might explain why great men found it so difficult to pass on happiness to their children: that they could never stop to know it themselves. Webster smiled at the notion that he was unlikely to encounter this problem himself.
Deep in thought, he felt the cigarette grow hot in his fingers and flicked it over the low balustraded wall into the night.
Faint footsteps behind him on the grass made him turn and there was Ava walking toward him, almost silhouetted against the lights from the house. A shawl was pulled closely around her. She stopped in front of the bench and smiled as he made to get up.
“Don’t be silly. Sit. Could you spare a cigarette?”
Webster pulled out his pack and tapped one free.
“May I?” she said, taking it.
“Please.”
She sat beside him at an angle and he struck a match for her. Her face glowed as she bent over it.
For a moment or two they sat and Ava smoked.
“I’m sorry about lunch,” she said at last. She held the cigarette delicately between the last joints of her fingers and turned her head away from him each time she exhaled.
“Don’t be. It was much more interesting than dinner.”
She turned to him and smiled. “God. I don’t know which was worse.”
“Is Senechal often here?”
She shook her head and sighed, looking out at the lake. “Today was the first time in months I’ve seen them apart. It’s not healthy.”
Webster said nothing.
“The hold he has on my father. Since my mother ran off. I think that’s when it started. It’s getting worse. I don’t know how it must make Timur feel.”
Webster watched her profile as she drew on the cigarette.
“What do you mean?”
Ava sat up and back on the bench, crossing her legs. “My father treats Timur like one of his treasures. He’s on display, to be admired. The most important piece in the collection. But he tells him nothing.” She shivered. “But that freak knows the lot. I’m sure of it. Ever since . . . My mother didn’t behave well. Since then my father has closed up. He was never easy, but no one’s allowed in now. Except that man. Like he’s the only person that can be trusted anymore. Because he’s paid. He’s a professional.” She shook her head and looked past Webster out to the lake. “He’s the one you should be interviewing.”
“What is there to tell?”
She looked at him, raising her eyebrows and plucking a piece of tobacco from her lower lip with her thumb. The intensity he had seen earlier had returned to her eyes. “You tell me, Mr. Webster. You probably know more than me by now.”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t bank on it.”
She took a long drag, coughing as the smoke filled her lungs. “God, these are strong.”
“Sorry.”
She dropped the cigarette half-smoked on the grass and trod it out with her toe. Behind them the lights in one of the downstairs rooms went out, casting the terrace into deeper darkness.
“Are you going to be able to give him what he wants?” She moved to the edge of the seat and turned to him as she said it.
“I don’t know yet.”
She hesitated. “What have you found?”
“I can’t say.”
She nodded to herself. In the half-light her eyes were intensely on his. “Something bad?”
“Not obviously.”
“So you think there’s something?”
“I didn’t say that. Do you?”
“No. Of course not.” She shook her head, a tiny movement, and looked down at her hands in her lap. “It’s just . . . He needs this work. He needs you.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s not a vain man. He’s not what you think. He’s practical. Always practical. Everything he does is for profit or power. You’re here because he needs you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might have found out.”
“And if I had?” Webster was finding it hard to tell whether Ava had come out here to grill him or warn him. Or to seek comfort.
“You wouldn’t tell me.”
“I shouldn’t.”
She nodded gently, sat up straight on the bench, collecting herself. He thought she was going to leave but instead she turned to him.
“My father is a very arrogant man. He thinks he’s better than everyone else. At everything that matters to him. It’s that simple. The best trader, the best businessman, the best collector. I’ve never seen him depend on someone before. First Yves. And now you, here.” She shook her head. “He would never have had someone like you here before. This is his special place. It was never for business.”
Her voice, which had been calm, was now uneven, and Webster thought he could sense unexplored anxieties there, close to the surface.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Is there something else?”
“No. I’m just worried about him.”
“Are you worried about Parviz?”
She bit her bottom lip but said nothing.
“Anything you tell me can stay with me. I’m not a policeman.”
She shook her head, suddenly resolute, and stood. As she looked down at him her face was set again, the trust gone. “Nothing I know will be of any use to you. Goodnight, Mr. Webster. Tread carefully.”
As he watched her walking back to the house through bands of floodlit grass Webster shook his head; how he wished Elsa could have heard this conversation. She might have understood it. She might have known whether Ava was desperate to say something or terrified to let it slip.
11.
TO KNOW THAT HE was more or less an impostor in the house lent the rest of Webster’s short stay a certain piquancy. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or put out that the room he had been given, he had assumed on merit, had in fact been intended for grand acquaintances—diplomats, colorful entrepreneurs, heads of minor states, dignitaries of the Iranian diaspora—and not for English detectives, if that’s what he was, who billed by the hour and spent their time rooting around in other people’s affairs. But of all the hints and signs that Ava had given him the night before, by design or not, one thing was really striking: he had assumed since they had first met that Qazai found their work necessary, but not critical—serious, but not grave—and the growing realization that it was for some reason essential to him began to cast everything in a different light. Webster had gone to sleep feeling that the many and conflicting pieces of this project, not least his own feelings toward it, were beginning to align.
He slept well, in the vast white bed, and woke early to find the lake overcast with low cloud. As he came downstairs he was shown by one of the servants into a yellow breakfast room where eight settings had been laid on a long table, at one of which sat Senechal, neatly pressed in black suit, white shirt and gray tie, reading a document in a plastic binding and drinking a cup of black coffee. He didn’t appear to have had anything to eat.
Webster wished him good morning and sat down opposite, cursing the fact that he hadn’t brought his book. He ordered coffee and two poached eggs and taking his BlackBerry from his jacket pocket started looking at his e-mails, all of which he had already seen, while Senechal, for his part, returned the good morning without cheer and continued to read, every now and then raising his cup to his lips to take a tiny drink but never taking his eyes from his work. Webster did his best to decipher the document from across the table but managed only to work out that it was in French.
His coffee, when it came, was good. As he drank he watched the lawyer and tried to imagine the array of secrets stored up within him. Were they simply dry, legalistic, of little interest to anyone but himself and his client, the papery trappings of mortgages, incorporations, transactions and financings, impenetrable only by virtue of their complexity? Or in among them were there dark stories that explained Qazai and threatened to undo him?
Senechal closed his document and spoke, breaking Webster’s sleepy reverie and making him start.
“I understand you had a useful session with Mr. Qazai.”
Webster was amused by the lack of small talk, and grateful for it. “Yes, thank you. We’re getting there.”
Senechal paused for a second. He had an unsettling habit of leaving a short delay before he spoke, as if calculating precisely how to couch what he needed to say in the most efficient and anonymous terms, his gaze blank and always steady. “When do you think you will be finished?”
“Two weeks. Three. It depends how neatly everything stacks up.”
The idiom seemed to puzzle Senechal; he frowned, then let it go.
“The first draft of the report—send it to me. I will respond.”
“Of course.”
“Mr. Webster, I think you understand how important it is that this case is successful.”
Webster looked up. “I have some idea. But I don’t decide whether it’s successful or not.”
Senechal frowned again, the merest movement of his brow.
“I can only report what I find,” said Webster in response.
“I appreciate that,” Senechal said, placing his cup on its saucer with great care and considering it for a moment before looking up and going on. “But the presentation is important too. The order of items. The level of detail. It is difficult for you to be completely neutral.”
“Of course. You have to trust us.”
Senechal smiled blankly. “And we do. We appreciate your work, Mr. Webster. If you complete the project to our satisfaction we would be happy to show that appreciation.”
Webster frowned now. “What do you mean?”
“Only that we hope your good work will not go unrewarded.”
“You’re offering me a bribe?”
“Of course not.”
“So when I write this conversation up in my report you won’t mind?”
Senechal’s expression didn’t change. “I’m not sure what you think you heard, Mr. Webster. I was merely discussing our wishes for the project.”
Webster held his gray, cold eye. He had never been offered a bribe before. He wondered how much he was worth.
If he played along, of course, he could find out, and a proven bribe would be enough to walk away from the case and leave this unhealthy pair to their problems. But he found himself too furious for games, and strangely riled by the prospect of his own corruption even while he knew it wasn’t real and wouldn’t happen. And besides, he had no desire to finish this now. Not when he was about to be proved right.
“I know what I heard,” he said at last. “You hired us for our integrity. That’s what you’ll get.”
If Senechal detected the trace of threat he didn’t show it. He took the napkin from his lap, folded it neatly into two and then four, and placed it on the table.
“I am delighted to hear it.” He stood. “Thank you, Mr. Webster. I look forward to the report.” And with that, taking his document, he left, floating across the floor on his light, even steps.
• • •
AT LINATE WEBSTER WAITED in a single, snaking queue to take off his shoes and his belt and have his bag X-rayed, absently watching his fellow travelers with their refined traveling gear: suitcases obediently to heel, laptops held close, shoes ready to be slipped off in an easy motion. Like everyone else he checked his BlackBerry aimlessly,
head bowed.
He should have taken the train. Overnight to Paris, the window open all the way, in his own cabin, on his own time; dinner in the dining car and a cigarette leaning out into the night somewhere around Lyon. A sentimental notion, attractive because it allowed him to indulge the fantasy that his life was his own.
As he untied his laces and unbuckled his belt he pondered the morning’s conversation. Would Senechal have made the same suggestion, as subtle as a whisper, to anyone? Or was there something that made him seem a susceptible bribee? Something equivocal, biddable? Would Senechal, for instance, have made it to Hammer? Had he already?
He shook that thought from his mind. No one would try to bribe Ike. You’d have to be dimwitted to mistake that keen edge for greed. No, these were the wrong questions. The only one that mattered was whether to tell Ike what had happened. He would stop the case if he knew, and Webster could then wash his hands at last of these puzzling and unsavory people—and start looking for the next client, who might be better or who might be worse, but who was unlikely to have that noxious mixture of arrogance and threat that was shot through the Qazais.
He cleared security without a beep, collected his clothes and his bag, moved aside to put on his shoes and jacket and made his way to the passport queue. He would like to be rid of them, that was clear, but at the same time he wasn’t ready to let them go. For the sake of Ava, and Timur, and most importantly Parviz, he told himself, he shouldn’t stop until he had worked out what was at the dark center of Qazai.
From his glass booth an immigration officer signaled that he should step forward. Webster handed across his passport, old now and full of stamps, the gold lettering on the cover worn away, and watched the officer open it to the back page, tap at his keyboard, inspect the photograph, glance up at him and then study his computer screen. He always wondered what it said on his file, a universal curiosity perhaps: he had Russian clients who were forever asking him to find out why they were stopped for questioning when they came west, a hopeless task. The officer tapped some more, picked up his phone, leafed through the passport as he said a few words and then hung up.
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