by Mick Herron
‘Mmm?’
‘All this.’ He waved a hand: the room, the cottage, the country. He was desperate for her to be pleased, she realized; for the stage to be suitable for a convincing performance of enjoyment. So they could both pretend, even in front of each other, that it was brilliant they were here. Maybe she should tell him, she thought as she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, that the entertainment potential in this weekend had increased by a factor of ten. On the other hand, though, she definitely shouldn’t.
‘All right?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Fine. Everything’s fine.’ And they went downstairs.
It was hard getting a handle on Gerard in his home environment. It was as if the slate had been wiped clean, and he was determined not to acknowledge in any way that their first encounter had been anything but immensely cordial. He did mention the explosion once, but addressed his question to Mark while Sarah was asking Paula something interesting about neighbours, and couldn’t butt in to prolong the dialogue.
‘Anything ever come of that incident? Developments?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Hmph. Trouble with the police, they’re so busy bending over backwards to prove they’re not racist thugs, they never get anything done. It’s like everything else, you want results, go private.’ He glanced at Sarah as he said this, but she was too busy being fascinated by Paula to respond. Something about a TV star three doors away. His last party started on Friday and went on till Monday morning!
One of the non-bomb-related puzzles that had been exercising Sarah, why there was no activity in the kitchen, was solved when Gerard explained he’d booked a table at the local pub for lunch. Booked, mind. Not one of those pub lunches where you just turn up. Within a few minutes of that, they were in The Feathers, a pub that was everything the rest of the village promised, having uniformed staff, a wide choice of real ale and expensive food. Sarah, though, was on her best behaviour. So, it seemed, was Gerard. When he spoke, she listened and laughed; when she spoke he attended as if expecting questions later. Mostly Mark did the talking, though, while Paula picked at her food and didn’t offer much, beyond adding the odd name to her list of the village alumni. Sarah thought she’d be happier in Planet Hollywood. Even Gerard threw her odd glances, as if wishing she’d try harder.
After the garlic bread, the lasagne, the summer pudding, Gerard suggested a walk. ‘Lovely walks round here, aren’t there, darling?’
Paula shrugged.
‘Woods?’ asked Mark, to show he knew a thing or two about the countryside.
‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’
They had a brief altercation about the bill which Gerard won, depending on how you looked at it, then set off to check out the surrounding countryside. A footpath took them beyond the village limits in a very short while. Here, Sarah expected segregation to set in: Gerard would stride on with Mark and discuss manly things, while she was left to dredge up enough small talk to keep Paula from slipping into a coma. In the event she was quite wrong, soon finding herself with Gerard, some fifty yards behind their spouses. Detective finds herself alone with suspect. What do they talk about? The weather.
‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘Good clean air,’ he said.
‘You’re not really a country boy, are you, Gerard?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. I’m from yeoman stock. Generations back, my family were farmers.’
‘Generations back everybody’s family were farmers.’
‘Funny, isn’t it? Everybody rat-racing in the city, struggling to make their pile, so they can get back where their ancestors sweated. Maybe we should all have stayed where we were in the first place.’
‘Would you have liked that?’
‘Of course not. This is the weekend talking. It’s not real life.’
‘Which is?’
‘Competition. Struggle. The survival of the smartest.’
‘And the devil take the rest.’
‘You think I’m a capitalist monster, don’t you?’
‘It crossed my mind.’
Gerard stopped to examine the view. She imagined the checklist in his head: sheep, yes; fields, yes; trees, yes. This was the country, no question. He nodded in quiet satisfaction and said, ‘When I meet people like those friends of yours, the ones with rather bizarre names, I must admit I play up to their expectations. They think wealth goes hand in hand with obnoxious attitudes.’
‘So that was a game.’
‘No. But it’s not the whole story, either.’
‘Underneath it all,’ Sarah said, ‘you’re just another raging lefty.’
‘That’s the trouble with you middle-class socialist types.’ He seemed to have had enough of the view now, and together they walked on. ‘You think you’ve the monopoly on compassion.’
‘Whereas you regard it as a free market.’
‘Oh very neat, yes. A market in which there’s no room for random acts of senseless generosity, shall we say.’
‘Why not?’ Sarah said. ‘It sounds like we’ve said it before.’
He chuckled at that. Annoying Gerard Inchon was an uphill task. No doubt he was aware just how irritating this was.
For all that, the weekend Gerard wasn’t what she’d expected. There was something to his manner – and the country clothes, the appreciative once-overs he gave the scenery – that told her he was playing a part, for his own benefit as much as hers. He wanted to be at home here but wasn’t quite making the grade, and what surprised her wasn’t so much this chink in his armour – she’d never met a man who didn’t come with one of those – as her own response to it: a mild disappointment at his obvious vulnerability.
. . . And there she went again, treating it all like a giant game. Though the players in this case were people, and some of them were dead.
‘It doesn’t bother you, though,’ she said after a bit, ‘just to write some people off?’
See if he appreciates the subtlety of that.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, my friend Rufus.’ My friend was a stretch, but he wasn’t to know that. ‘You decided he was a dead loss in no time flat. What gives you the right to do that?’
‘The same thing that lets me get away with it. He’s spineless, Sarah. Fond as you so obviously are of his retro missus, you have to admit friend Rufey is a bit lacking in what, in other company, I’d have to call balls.’
‘And that’s what makes a man?’
‘I’d call it a defining characteristic.’
‘Not everybody gets the same chances in life.’
‘It would be foolish to deny it. But not everybody makes use of the ones they get.’
‘He was an orphan.’
‘He wasn’t the only one.’ Gerard stopped abruptly, as if he’d said more than he’d meant to, and used a stick he’d acquired to point at a speck in the sky. ‘What’s that, do you think?’
‘A bird?’ Sarah ventured. ‘Mark’s the expert.’
‘Kestrel, probably. Or a hawk. Or a buzzard.’
Sarah surveyed once more the green sweep of landscape, receiving from it this time a sense of something large and impressive to which she could not readily put a name: possibly nature exerting its pressure; something, anyway, she didn’t feel in the city. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said, and because it sounded to her own ear as if the words had come out grudgingly, said it again. ‘Beautiful. What’s it like in the winter?’
‘God knows.’
The others were waiting at a stile, and they swapped partners as if the move had been choreographed in advance. Sarah spent the rest of the walk communing, largely in silence, with Paula, reflecting the while on her conversation with Gerard. From which she had learned precisely nothing. So the man was an orphan, or that’s what he’d implied: so what? As a clue, this ranked poorly against the tortured confession she might have extracted. The most interesting thing he’d said, he’d said to Mark: his comment about g
oing private when investigating crime. Which could mean he knew about Joe, which in turn meant he was having her watched. You might come down with a bad dose of paranoia in this business. Hadn’t Joe said he never spoke freely over the phone?
And Paula never spoke freely anywhere, or so Sarah was finding. ‘How long have you owned the cottage?’
‘About a year.’
‘And do you come here . . . often?’ Her voice trailing away.
‘Whenever Gerard feels like it.’
From up ahead, the odd word came wafting back: parts of that complicated vocabulary people never use, but money thrives on. Interim pre-tax profits. Commercial reserves. They spoke of entire nations as if other races marched ahead with a single thought in mind: The Germans always this. The Japanese never that. As if every other country in the world had a fixed agenda, while Jolly Old Blighty bumbled along, full of people who didn’t give a toss. That last part, in fact, felt pretty true to Sarah’s experience, but there were probably Wigwams and Rufuses in every country in the world.
‘And do you like it?’
But Paula just looked at her.
When they got back to the cottage it quickly became apparent that the fresh air and exercise element of the country weekend was officially at a close, and the drinking far too much aspect just breaking open. Gerard uncorked several bottles of wine at once, some to breathe, some not to get the chance, and for the next few hours time seemed to stand still for long stretches, then gallop to catch up at unexpected moments. Sarah kept a stern eye on her glass at first, until the effort of remembering her suspicions while pretending to enjoy herself started to weigh too heavily to allow for other considerations. Perhaps she was only pretending to suspect, and genuinely enjoying herself. Gerard kept up a flow of jokes which grew progressively raunchier as the afternoon wore off; Mark laughed a lot and it struck her as an unfamiliar sound. And Paula drank steadily and spoke about life in London, and where the best places to be seen were, and what made them the best places. She was starting to sound like a Muppet. When Sarah giggled at the wrong moment she found she couldn’t stop. ‘Sorry.’ Gerard said something she didn’t catch, and next moment Mark was bending over her, closer to her than he’d been since they’d last had sex. ‘I think you’re quite drunk, Sarah.’ I think we all are, she wanted to tell him, but the effort was beyond her so she meekly allowed him to lead her upstairs instead, where she woke several hours later in a very dark room, with her head screwed on too tight and a mouth so dry she must have been force-fed crackers in her sleep.
She found the loo then cleaned herself up a bit. The face in the mirror was red-eyed, very pale-skinned: not a brilliant advert for your husband’s career she thought, before remembering she didn’t give a sod about Mark’s career, and it wasn’t her fault she’d got drunk anyway. When she came out it was to the sound of a minor earthquake in the adjoining room, and since its light was on and the door open she stuck her head round to find a fully clothed Paula on the bed, snoring to wake the dead. The survivor of a thousand city nights wasn’t looking too hot. Probably the country air. Feeling less a casualty for having witnessed another crash, she went downstairs in search of moving bodies.
Mark’s was not among them. Draped over the sofa, head back, mouth open, he had a washing-up bowl balanced on his knees, which Sarah’s long-term experience indicated was both prudent and not his own idea. The main light was off, and for one moment his face seemed to flicker in the dark, as if she were catching a glimpse of him from a passing train. But the movement was illusory; the darting shadows the TV. Gerard Inchon was watching a movie.
‘Cary Grant,’ she said, more to announce her presence than to let him know who he was watching. Buried in an armchair, he hadn’t looked round as she came down, and for a moment she thought he was asleep. But at last he turned his big head lazily round and nodded as if he’d been expecting her.
‘Archie Leach,’ he replied.
‘Archie Leach was a nobody,’ she said. ‘Cary Grant was a star.’ Why did she feel the need to duel with this man?
Whyever, he didn’t join in. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘Have a drink.’ He waved at an array of wine bottles, most of them empty. ‘I can open another,’ he added, reaching the same conclusion.
‘Water’ll do, thanks.’
‘We’ve got some of that. I think we keep it in the tap.’
‘I’ll find it.’
There were more empty bottles on the kitchen table, forcing Sarah to suppress a shudder as she found a glass, poured some water, drank it, poured some more. She couldn’t remember an afternoon when she’d drunk this much. Nor wished to. The afternoon anyway was long over: the kitchen clock said 11.20, and through the back window dark trees waved at her. She could make out her own reflection too. It wasn’t doing her any favours.
Back in the sitting room Cary Grant was climbing a flight of stairs, carrying a glass of milk with a light bulb in it. Gerard seemed engrossed but beckoned her to sit, pointing at a tray of sandwiches somebody had fixed up at some point. Suddenly ravenous, Sarah ate four, while on the screen in front of them an improbably happy ending imposed itself on what had been, up to that point, a good film. When the urge came to tell the audience Everything is going to be all right, it was definitely time to pack it in.
Gerard got up and turned the TV off.
She said, ‘Do all your weekends end like this?’
‘With me the last man standing?’
She nodded at Mark. ‘With your guests comatose, yes.’
‘Everybody arranges these things differently. I mean, how would I go about capping that evening at yours? Blow the neighbours up?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past you.’
‘They’d have to really annoy me. Wear brown shoes, or whistle in the mornings.’
‘Heinous crimes like that.’
‘We’ve all got standards. That husband of yours, drink a lot, does he?’
‘Depends on the company.’
‘I would, in his posish.’ Gerard had, even in his own. But except for a bloodening round the eyes and the occasional verbal stumble, you wouldn’t know it. Not bad going, with a dozen empties about the place.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning his job. Keep your hair on.’ He clumsily poured another glass of red. ‘So how’s it going, anyway? Your little problem?’
‘My what?’
He waggled his fingers. ‘BHS.’
‘Vino veritas,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t keep up the pretence, could you?’
‘Which pretence is that?’
‘That you’re not a shit.’
‘Ah, Sarah. Now, the thing is. What you have to do.’ He belched, softly. ‘You really have to learn who your friends are.’
Mark stirred and mumbled something in an alien tongue.
‘This is really good advice you’re giving me.’
‘You want good advice? I can give you that. Batten down the hatches, girl. You’ve got big trouble coming.’
‘So have you.’
He ignored her. ‘You’ll be wishing you were bored again. Soon. Trust me on this.’
‘I don’t trust you on anything.’
‘Time zhit?’ said Mark.
Gerard looked at him, then back at her. ‘If I was you, I’d get out while you can.’
‘Thank you, Gerard. You’re a prince among men.’
Mark sat up straight very suddenly. ‘God. Must have dropped off.’
‘Must have.’
‘Did I miss anything?’
‘Only Cary Grant.’
Mark rubbed his eyes. ‘Cary was here?’
‘Come on, old son,’ Gerard said. ‘Better be getting you upstairs.’
Ten minutes later they were all in bed, and what felt like ten minutes after that, Sarah was awake again. Downstairs, a shockingly healthy-looking Gerard was making tea for a gratifyingly woebegone Paula: they looked like a normal couple, damn them, Gerard having reverted to his Brilliant Host role, pouring tea from a caddy str
aight into the pot.
‘That’s a lot easier to gauge if you use a spoon.’
‘There’s not a spoon to be had. They’re all in the dishwasher.’
The downside of technology. Michael Crichton was probably writing a book about it. Gerard made a tray for her to take upstairs, and told her he and Paula were just off to mass, they’d be back in an hour or so. Sarah was mildly surprised, but hoped it didn’t show.
She went back to bed. Mark was well out of the running, only coming round long enough to make it clear he didn’t want breakfast and hadn’t appreciated the offer. So Sarah drank tea alone and unattended, reflecting as she did that there were two whole rooms in the cottage she’d not been in yet. Probably she’d have been able to sleep if that thought hadn’t arrived.
She showered, giving temptation time to wither and die, which it didn’t, and took their bedroom first. There wasn’t much to it; it looked, in fact, like a second guestroom, with even the clothes in the wardrobes having the air of being extras, spares. She imagined matching counterparts in other wardrobes in their London house; could almost picture Gerard and Paula buying two of everything, to save carting back and forth.
But poking around in other people’s bedrooms was a grubby business. She shut the door quietly behind her and thought seriously about forgoing the other room, which might only be a cupboard after all. So really there was no harm in looking, she decided; a piece of deductive justification which might have been more impressive had she reached the end of it before opening the door.
This room was tiny, little more than a boxroom, but it looked like Gerard got a dual purpose out of it anyway: part office, part gallery to his ego. On a table which was surely too big to have got through the door squeezed a PC, a telephone, a fax machine next to what might have been a baby photocopier plus a stack of papers and a palmtop. And around the walls hung framed photographs of Gerard at different stages of his important life: young and chubby, adolescent and chubby; prosperous and fat. In one of the older shots he stood in front of a low wall, flanked by, presumably, his parents. In the way old photographs have, this one looked as if black-and-white weren’t just the medium but the subject: the adults appearing straitened, uncomfortable; their very postures suggesting that their post-war years had kept oozing on into the sixties, the way they had in the North. In contrast young Gerard looked simply impatient, as though even at eight or nine he’d been waiting for the coloured times to arrive. He was holding a model aeroplane in a proprietorial way that left no doubt he had built it himself, but Sarah couldn’t discern much pride from his demeanour; more dissatisfaction that toys were all he had to occupy himself. His mother was pretty and slight. His father, much taller, stood with one hand on Gerard’s head, as if attempting to keep him where he belonged.