“I’d rather you looked after it.”
“You’ve a cheek,” he said. “I haven’t got a safe. D’you expect me to stuff the briefcase under my mattress?”
For the moment she put the briefcase down in the kitchen. “I’ll make us a coffee.” They hadn’t stopped on the way back and had missed out on lunch.
“Not for me,” Wolfgang said. “I have to go to the office. Now get the money in the safe.”
She had no choice but to go up to the loft. Fortunately he didn’t go with her. She wedged the briefcase in between the housing of the alarm system and the safe and went back down. “Mission accomplished,” she said.
He nodded. He looked tense as he glanced out of the window. “Doc won’t be too late coming back this evening, will he?”
“Don’t keep calling him Doc,” she said. “I hate it.”
With a brief grin he placed a sheet of paper with several telephone numbers on the table. “One of those should get Zurkeulen. If not, ask him to call back. It’d be best if you rang immediately. That way we eliminate any danger between now and tomorrow. With the prospect of getting out of the affair gracefully, he won’t be tempted to try any tricks. You know what you have to say.”
She didn’t know exactly because she hadn’t been listening to him properly. But the time and place were presumably sufficient.
Wolfgang left. Only ten minutes later Michael arrived home - and he wasn’t alone. She was standing by the desk and after three tries she’d finally got Zurkeulen. That was enough to explain the way her hands were trembling. As the two men came up the stairs, Zurkeulen was saying, “I’m delighted you’ve been able to persuade Herr Hardenberg to return my money. Unfortunately, however, I can’t manage tomorrow.”
On the stairs she heard Michael say, “Let’s ask her what she meant.”
“And I can only manage tomorrow,” she said to Zurkeulen. “I’ll be at the airport car park at precisely four o’clock. If you’re on time too, then we can get the matter over and done with in a few seconds. If not - my flight leaves at five. Don’t expect me to tell you the destination. What I can tell you is that it’s beyond your reach.”
Without waiting for Zurkeulen to reply, she replaced the receiver and turned to the door. Her smile was more than forced. “Hi there,” she mumbled.
Michael smiled at her. “What have you been doing to poor old Jacques? He doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.”
Her hands started to tremble even more and her knees decided to join in. She had to sit down. It had never occurred to her that this idiot would dare to ask her to explain herself in Michael’s presence, possibly even insist on some putative prior claim on her.
Michael looked at her, somewhat puzzled. “Is everything OK?”
“No,” she said. “I think Wolfgang should ask for police protection for us.”
Jacques had stopped in the doorway. Ignoring her comment to Michael, he unleashed, as he had the previous evening, a torrent of words, of which she could only pick out a few meaningless syllables.
“Just a moment, Jacques,” Michael said, his gaze still fixed on her. He looked worried as he asked, “Did you not get the money?”
“Yes we did, it’s in the loft,” she said. “But Zurkeulen…”
Ignoring Michael’s request, Jacques continued to pour out further incomprehensible French. He sounded furious. Michael flapped his hand at him, said, “Hold on a sec,” then asked her, “Is Zurkeulen refusing to meet you?”
“Yes,” she said. “But he will come. I—” She broke off and let fly at Jacques. “Oh do shut up. What’s all this hoo-ha about?”
Jacques did pause in the middle of a sentence, but then he started up again - a little more moderately so that she could catch some of it. The few words and expressions she could identify beyond doubt corresponded to what he’d been going on about the previous evening and added up to an explosive cocktail. He had no compunction about reminding her - in Michael’s presence! - of the plans she’d made with him. A villa on the Bahamas. Michael listened, his brow furrowed in concentration, his eyes switching back and forward between them.
“Did I not make myself clear enough yesterday?” she said in an attempt to stem the flood of words.
“Non,” he said.
“Then I’m sorry,” she said, adding, with a meaningful glance in Michael’s direction, “but I can’t make myself any clearer.”
“Dammit, Nadia,” Michael said, “what the hell’s going on here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know what he wants from me.” In fact, she thought she knew all too well, so she got up and headed for the door with her by now familiar ploy. “I need to eat something.”
Michael held her back. “He thinks you can’t understand him.”
It was a decision that had to be taken in a few seconds. Admit that she couldn’t understand Jacques, or hope that Michael would forgive her. He would probably even have forgiven Nadia a murder - for a baby. He couldn’t give that much importance to a brief fling with a sweetheart from the days before she’d known him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again and bowed her head. “I didn’t want you to hear about it. I - it wasn’t anything serious, really it wasn’t. You must believe me, it was just…”
She started to stammer. She knew nothing at all of what had gone on between Nadia and Jacques in the last few months and she was trying to fob Michael off with a few hints. It had happened, in memory of old times, which were meaningless now because she loved him, him alone, the father of her child. Jacques had nothing at all to do with that, whatever he imagined.
Michael’s grip on her arm tightened, it started to hurt. He listened with his jaws clamped together and looking daggers at Jacques. “You slept with him.” It was a toneless whisper, half-question, half-statement.
She sketched a nod. Jacques shook his head vigorously, at the same time waving his hands in denial. “Non!” he declared emphatically. What he went on to say she couldn’t understand. Dieter’s language course contained no sentences that came anywhere near expressing the mood of a furious man. All she could grasp was the name Alina. Coward, she thought and demanded, “Speak German, so Michael can understand.”
“I can understand enough,” Michael said, letting go of her arm and stepping away from her. He kept his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to be waiting for something. “He says you’re lying. He says you’ve no idea what he’s talking about.”
It was the critical moment. Of course she had no idea. All she knew was that, after he had separated from Alina, Nadia had written a heartrending letter to Jacques asking if they could make things up again. Was it perhaps Alina with whom he made things up? He’d presumably never read Nadia’s letter. “Retour à l’expéditeur.”
“It was when I was going through a bad time,” she said, keeping it deliberately vague - and accepting the risk that Michael might send her packing. “You know, when I was on the bottle. You’d taken up with that Palewi woman and that hit me hard. He’d just left Alina and I thought perhaps things might… with him rather than… I was completely drunk when I… I really wasn’t in my right mind…”
Michael stared at her, stunned. After some seconds he passed his hand over his eyes and forehead in a weary gesture. Then he patted Jacques on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t say anything of this to Alina.”
Jacques continued to swear and curse and to give further explanations. Michael pushed him out onto the landing. She sat down at the desk to get the trembling under control. She’d come through again, by the skin of her teeth, but at what cost? She heard the two of them go down the stairs, heard the front door close and Michael hurrying down the stairs to the basement. He must be beside himself. She knew him well enough by now to know that he worked off violent emotions in the water.
After a while she risked a call to Dieter. It was Ramie who answered, but that wasn’t a problem any more. “This is Nadia Trenkler. I’d like to speak to He
rr Lasko.”
Dieter was delighted that everything had gone according to plan in Luxembourg. “So why do you sound so depressed?”
She told him and he tried to reassure her. He found Michael’s reaction perfectly understandable. “He’ll get over it,” he said. “If not today, then tomorrow. And if he doesn’t, a divorce would really be the best solution anyway.”
Then he offered to contact all the other investors before any of them got as bolshie as Zurkeulen. He’d found out with which banks the money was deposited and was convinced he could persuade the eight men to bide their time until the dust had settled.
“But we can’t get at the money,” she said.
“No, but I imagine Hardenberg can. And after his experiences with Zurkeulen, I’m sure I can get him to see what’s in his best interest.”
She was grateful to him for taking her mind off the man down in the pool, if only for a few minutes. “Why didn’t you give Wolfgang the letters or the laptop?”
Dieter interrupted her with a soft laugh. “The letters have long since been burned to ashes, the rest as well. As for the laptop - no one would have let that out of their hands, except to give it to an accomplice. I didn’t want to come under suspicion of being involved in the fraud if you’d been found out.”
He couldn’t rule out that still being a possibility, he said, but he felt there was somewhat less risk now that she’d even dealt with Jacques.
But at what cost! The thought of what Michael must be going through at that moment hurt terribly. She waited half an hour before she ventured down and stood there, six feet from the edge. He was halfway down the pool, thrashing the water with long strokes. When he reached the end, he saw her and panted, “I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it.”
She didn’t know what to say. That she was sorry, that she loved him? Nadia would presumably have done that, but she wasn’t Nadia. She knew from her own experience the agony of feeling betrayed - even if her marriage hadn’t been perfect. Perhaps the hurt went even deeper then, because you were suddenly forced to face up to the fact that what you’d been holding on to was an illusion.
He levered himself out of the pool and said, “I need something to eat. Let’s go to Demetros’s.”
“No, let’s stay here,” she begged. “I’ll make us something.”
“Don’t bother. I have to get out of here before I go out of my mind.”
Perhaps he was right. With other people around they’d be forced to keep themselves under control. And perhaps once he could stand back from it a little… After a brief hesitation, she nodded. On the stairs he asked, “Where’s the money? Can I see it?”
There was no reason not to let him have a look at the contents of the briefcase. He made no comment on the fact that it was beside the safe instead of in it. After he’d stared at the neat bundles of banknotes for a few seconds, he wanted to know if she found it difficult to hand the briefcase over to Zurkeulen.
“No,” she said.
With a scornful laugh he went into the dressing room and put on a shirt and trousers. He brought the mink jacket for her. He hadn’t filled his car and since the Alfa was still parked in the street, they took that. He drove. Hardly had they got away from the houses than he asked, “Whose child is it?”
“Yours,” she assured him. “Really. You must believe me.”
Presumably Jacques had given him a different version. Michael just nodded, his jaw clenched, and asked, “Does Alina know you’re pregnant?” When she shook her head, he went on, “Then you should tell her as soon as possible. Perhaps the prospect of becoming a grandmother will make her amenable to a reconciliation.”
For a second her brain seemed to freeze. Ignorance comes out sooner or later. As Dieter had predicted. Michael was calm, much calmer than he ought to have been. All the feelings that must have followed his realization seemed to have been washed away in the water of the swimming pool. But now he knew she wasn’t Nadia, there was no doubt about that. He spoke in a monotonous voice that made her quiver with fear.
He listed the differences, starting with minor ones. Everything could have been explained, had been in most cases. Her difficulties in the pool - she’d hit her head when he pushed her in. That she hardly spoke a word of English in Paris and no French at all - Pamela had been determined to improve her German. That she hadn’t taken the clothes hanger off the hook with the jacket in the cloakroom - she’d been afraid Zurkeulen might kill him and Andrea; Ramon wouldn’t have hesitated if a patrol car had driven up outside. That she hadn’t put the briefcase with the money in the safe - it wasn’t worth it because she had to hand it over to Zurkeulen the next day. And she had known about Arosa. But she didn’t know her own mother’s first name.
Jacques Niedenhoff had never split up with Alina, that was Nadia’s father. And Nadia had always called her mother by her first name. Alina had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and had never had much sympathy for people who endeavoured to make as much money as possible. It was just about acceptable for men, but when a daughter tried to tread in her father’s footsteps, that was it for Alina.
It was Nadia’s unbridled pursuit of money that had led to the breakup of her parents’ marriage because Alina blamed it on her husband. Michael told her that because it was something she couldn’t know. He assumed she’d got her information about his wife from Hardenberg or by snooping round the house. Nadia would certainly never have said a word about her parents, it was not for nothing that she’d burned almost everything that might remind her of them: her school reports, her certificates, her whole past. He had managed to salvage one single photograph album and hidden it among his old things in the loft.
Michael knew the touching letter to Jacques, mon chéri only too well. He’d been the one who’d been in the house when it had been returned from Geneva. Not because Jacques had refused to accept it, but simply because he was no longer staying in the hotel where Nadia had sent it. And Nadia hadn’t been asking Jacques for a reconciliation but for mediation. She wanted him to put in a good word for her with her father, whom she loved dearly. Jacques had done so, though unfortunately in vain.
As he’d already told her, Nadia’s catastrophe had ushered in a terrible time for him. Only it hadn’t been just the alcohol and the scenes Nadia had made in the lab, it was the realization that he could only play second fiddle in Nadia’s life. The first fiddle, however, was not Jacques Niedenhoff. It was Nadia’s father. Michael had imagined he had been promoted to first fiddle when, after his father-in-law had broken off all contact, Nadia had marched into the lab and threatened to feed Beatrice Palewi to the mice if she so much as touched him ever again.
At that point, he gave a laugh, though it came out more as a sob. Nadia had definitely been in love with him, he said. In her own way she had even been deeply in love with him. And she’d been unfaithful, if at all, perhaps once, with Wolfgang. In the summer he’d come across the two of them in a slightly compromising situation. Nadia had presumably relished the idea of getting her hands on a man who could be dangerous to her or to Hardenberg and twisting him round her little finger. But an affair with Jacques Niedenhoff?
Nadia had given him several nasty surprises, which was why his suspicions hadn’t been immediately aroused when she’d started to act out the farce with Jacques. An affair with Jacques would have been a bit much, but he couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility. Even Jacques’s vehement denials could be seen as fitting in. It would have been more than simple adultery. Jacques Niedenhoff was Nadia’s cousin. That was why he’d got so worked up and made such a fuss: “If she should take it into her head to tell Aunt Alina this nonsense!”
She was trembling all over and couldn’t reply when he asked, “Did you kill her?”
She couldn’t even shake her head, only stare at him in horror. He gave a hollow laugh. “No. You left that to those swine and moved in with me. What did you think you’d achieve by that? Or was it Hardenberg’s suggestion? Did he think there was inc
riminating evidence against him in the house? Nadia had frequently downloaded files from him, was he afraid she might have got hold of the wrong files?”
At least she’d got her voice back, if only a hoarse whisper. “No. That wasn’t the way it was. I was here before that.”
“What?” He cleared his throat. “Since when have I had the pleasure then?”
“Since the twenty-eighth of November,” she whispered, “And twice before that, once in…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“My God!” he exclaimed. Then, more vehemently, “Nonsense! The twenty-eighth was a Thursday. I know that because we had a lot of bother in the lab. She rang…” He broke off and bit his lip.
“I rang the lab,” she whispered. She couldn’t tell whether he’d heard and understood.
He shook his head, again and again, at the same time making short, harsh sounds. When, after a few seconds, he went on again, she realized that he couldn’t believe her because he didn’t want to believe her. For him Nadia had died because he’d upbraided her so scathingly that Thursday night and been so nasty to her early on the morning of the twenty-ninth. Because on the thirtieth, the Saturday, he’d driven off to Munich in the morning. He spent minutes wallowing in self-reproach. All the things he’d reproached her with in the bathroom that morning no longer seemed true, nothing more than a toy that could be taken out of the drawer when required. All that counted now was that he hadn’t been there when Nadia had truly needed him.
He had his own idea of what had happened. Wolfgang had told him that the presumed Susanne Lasko had been killed at some time on the Saturday night. And on that Saturday night Nadia had been at Lilo’s party, where she’d collapsed and been seen safely home by Jo - only to then be lured into a trap by her or Hardenberg. After she’d been killed they’d planted the false papers on her. And she’d taken up residence in the house.
But then she’d found she couldn’t get on the computer, so she’d decided to clear off again. If he hadn’t returned unexpectedly from Munich on the Sunday she’d have been miles away with Nadia’s papers and Zurkeulen’s money. And he would never have found out the truth about what had happened to his wife.
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