Bristol House (19 page)

“Jesus bloody Christ. What—never mind. Don’t try and tell me now.”

“
Never, never an honest word . . . that was when I ruled the world . . .
”

He tossed his bag onto a nearby sofa and leaned down and picked her up. “It’s okay,” he murmured, holding her close, pressing his cheek against her hair. Coldplay still sang in the background: “
Be my mirror, my sword and shield . . .
” “I’m here,” he whispered. “Everything’s fine.”

***

Sun was coming through the window.

Annie did not know where she was.

Yes, she did. She was in Geoff’s bedroom, the one room in the house with walls. There was a picture on the nightstand, positioned so it would be the first thing you saw when you opened your eyes: Geoff standing behind a woman, his arms around her waist, her hands clasped over his. She was almost as tall as he and every bit as good to look at. The remarkable Emma.

Annie tried to brush the cobwebs from her mind. It did not work. She had no idea how she’d come to be in Geoff Harris’s bed. A few seconds later common sense asserted itself. She turned her head, expecting to find him lying beside her. He wasn’t there. She was alone and wearing the gray T-shirt, not the satin pajamas she’d laid out when she changed the sheets at Bristol—

Oh God. The rush of memory was so intense, she broke into a sweat.

The bedroom door opened. “Morning tea,” Geoff said. “One of our more civilized English customs.” He held a steaming mug. “Breakfast is under way. The bathroom’s through there”—he nodded toward a door on the right—“and I’ve left a robe for you.”

“Geoff, last night I saw—”

“Not now.” He leaned down and kissed her, lightly, just enough to stop her words. “Let’s get some food into you first. Then you can tell me everything.”

“Okay. But Geoff . . . I don’t remember . . . did we . . .” She made a gesture that took in the bed.

He chuckled. “We did not. And when we do, I promise you’ll remember.”

When, not if. She smiled for what felt like the first time in days.

***

“I don’t think,” he said, “this is an occasion for muesli and yogurt. A proper British breakfast is called for. Stick-to-your-ribs food.”

His movements were deft and practiced, pans moving across the stove in differing constellations as the meal came together. And what he made, despite what he’d said, was not your typical fry-up from the local caff, as Brit-speak had it. Instead, it was a delicate omelet rolled around a filling of sautéed mushrooms, and on the side cherry tomatoes cooked briefly in olive oil. He’d been away for a week yet somehow managed to produce fresh eggs and vegetables. Annie watched the magic happen from a stool at the kitchen counter, wrapped in the sumptuous robe he’d provided, thick white terry cloth that was as smooth and soft as velvet. With a monogram of course. “What’s the
M
for?” she asked.

He looked puzzled.

“The
M
in the monogram.” She’d checked the initials carefully, thinking for one panicky moment he’d given her a robe that had belonged to his dead wife. “The monogram says
G.M.H
.”

“Michel.” He pronounced it with a soft rather than hard
ch.
“No
a.
German form.”

“But you spell Geoffrey the English way.”

“Yes, thank God. I was named for Maggie’s father. He was Gottfried, but my dad wasn’t having it. Apparently they reached one of their rare accommodations. White toast or brown?”

“Brown, please.” As in what she knew as whole wheat.

“I tried to get croissants, but the good ones were already gone. Only the packaged sort left. Not worth buying.”

The mystery of the fresh food was solved. He’d gone out to shop while she slept. Annie glanced at the digital clock on the oven control panel. It was nearly one. She was astonished. “I had no idea it was so late.”

“Anything you need to cancel or apologize for?”

She shook her head.

“Nor have I. Eat up.” He slid a couple of plates of food across the counter and poured coffee. Cafetière for both of them, because, he said, you had to be a Mediterranean type to drink espresso for breakfast. Then he came to sit beside her.

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Geoffrey Michel—German spelling and pronunciation—Harris and his perfect life. Far too good for Annie no-middle-name Kendall. She got the food down, but she couldn’t taste it.

“Let’s go somewhere more comfortable,” he said when their plates were empty.

He carried the coffeepot to the table in front of the black leather sofa. His luggage, one of those folded-over garment bags that men somehow managed to pack with enough for a week’s trip, lay in the corner where he’d tossed it the night before. Annie glanced at the airline tag. It was written in English and, below that, in a script she couldn’t read. Presumably Arabic. No, it had to be Hebrew because the English said El Al. So much for flights from Damascus. “You were in Israel?”

“Jerusalem for two days at the end of the trip. Which reminds me.” He hauled the garment bag closer and unzipped one compartment. “I brought you something.”

He handed her a folded scrap of blue tissue paper that, when unwrapped, yielded a delicate crystal heart molded around the thinnest possible gold chain. “An old woman made it. She holds the chain in both hands and blows the glass around it. In a street stall in one of the markets.”

There was a large lump in her throat, maybe because she was still so shaky inside. “Thank you,” she murmured while trying to put it on. She fumbled, maybe because she was still shaky outside as well.

“Let me.” Geoff fastened the necklace in place. “I chose gold, not silver, so it wouldn’t clash with your bracelet.”

The lovely Emma had trained him well.

“Suits you,” he said when she’d turned to face him. “I thought it would.”

“Do you mean suits me because it’s glass and fragile?” She wanted to bite her tongue.

“No,” he said. “Suits you because it’s beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she repeated. “For thinking of me. And for choosing something so lovely. I didn’t know you were going to Jerusalem.”

“Last-minute decision. I’ll tell you about it later. First . . . are you ready to talk about what happened last night?”

“Yes, I think so.”

But when she tried to speak, the words wouldn’t come, only the remembered terror. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Opened it a second time. Nothing came out. Geoff sat quietly and watched her. The perfect interviewer.

“I was asleep and I heard footsteps and I woke up,” she said finally. “He was walking up and down the hall.”

“The monk, I presume.”

Annie shook her head. “No. I’m not afraid of the monk.”

“Then who . . . ?” And when she didn’t answer: “Annie, did whoever it was come into your bedroom?”

She shook her head. “No. The door was open, but he didn’t come in.”

“Then where did you see him?”

“Standing in the door of the dining room. I was trying to get away, and—”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure . . .” Annie pressed her fingers to her temples.

He waited a few moments more and, when she still didn’t speak, got up and went to his desk and came back with some pencils and a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. “Draw what you saw.”

Three minutes later they were both staring at the sketch she’d made. A man was standing in the doorway of what was obviously the dining room at number eight Bristol House. He wore a knit hat pulled down over his forehead and a zip-front jacket, maybe fleece, with one detail she hadn’t known she’d seen until she drew it, a zipper pull in the shape of the letter
z.
Jeans and sneakers as well. Nothing distinctive about either.

“Well, you’re right,” Geoff said. “He’s certainly not a monk, Carthusian or otherwise.”

“I knew it from the first,” Annie said. “That it wasn’t the monk, I mean. I knew it was something that meant me no good.”

Geoff was still looking at the sketch. “Something about this guy is familiar,” he said.

“Familiar how?”

“I don’t know. Not important. Half of Britain has exactly the same jeans and jacket.”

“And wears a ski hat in May?”

“Absolutely. De rigueur for breaking and entering. Listen, the way you’ve drawn him—he doesn’t have a face.”

“I don’t remember what he looked like.” She made a few more pencil marks on the paper. “His features won’t come,” she said.

“Never mind. But there’s something else. He doesn’t look as if he’s in hot pursuit.”

“Of me?”

“Or anything else. He didn’t chase you down the hall?”

Annie shook her head. “I went out the office door. So he could have gone out the front door and cut me off before I could reach the stairs, or—I forgot.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer, simply began to sketch furiously. “In the outside corridor,” she said, holding out the drawing so he could see it, “I ran past the elevator and down the stairs. The door to the elevator was in this position.” In her picture both the door and the metal accordion gate were open. “The thing is older than Methuselah. I only take it if I’ve got a ton of bundles. But if you don’t shut it carefully when you get out, no one else can call it. There’s only one other flat on my floor. Mrs. Walton said her neighbor was elderly and seldom went out. I’ve never seen her. I didn’t use the elevator anytime yesterday.”

“An ordinary thief,” Geoff said, speaking softly and without much conviction, “who uses the lift, not the stairs, and walks up and down the hall enough times to get you to wake up and run out.”

“Then doesn’t chase me,” she said quietly.

“Stupid bastard,” Geoff said, putting his hand below her chin to tilt her face up for a kiss.

***

“Annie, this is my friend the geek genius, Clarence Colbert.”

“Genius, yes. Geek, no. Geeks aren’t cool, whereas I, my man, am the epitome of coolness. Thoroughly chilled.” And to Annie, “Pleased to meet you. Call me Clary.”

He had dark chocolate skin, with liquid brown eyes, and spoke in a smooth, mid-Atlantic sort of unaccented English that belied what Geoff had earlier told her was a Caribbean boyhood. Followed, according to Clary, by a number of years in New Orleans, where he had met and married an Englishwoman. Which was why he’d spent the last five years working in Britain. “The Clary Colbert Story,” he finished up. “Soon not to be appearing anywhere.”

“Thank you so much for coming,” Annie said. “I really appreciate it.”

“Anything for my main man here.” Clary nodded in Geoff’s direction. “Maybe get him to stop pretending to write a book and return to jawing at our fearless leaders.”

“Won’t be so good for you when I do,” Geoff said. “You’ll have to get some real work done.”

“Plenty of work without you, man. They’re still putting stuff on the air, and Franklin’s still busting my balls.”

“Rob Franklin,” Annie said. Because she remembered that Jennifer’s husband had been Geoff’s producer before Geoff took time off, and she knew Clary Colbert had been part of the production team of Geoff’s show. Which was how it happened that Clary was now sitting in Mrs. Walton’s dining room looking at Annie’s laptop. Neither she nor Geoff had touched it since they entered the apartment a couple of hours before. She’d started to, but Geoff stopped her and said he knew who to call to check it out. “I know Rob’s wife, Jennifer Franklin,” Annie said. “We’ve been working together.”

“Jennifer’s okay,” Clary said. “You work at the museum?”

“Not exactly. I’m an architectural historian. Over here doing a special project. Some of the documents I’m interested in are at the museum.”

“Right,” Colbert said. “The old picture of the three monks I worked on. Definitely museum-type stuff. Got it. So what’s happening here?”

“Annie’s renting this flat while she’s in London,” Geoff said. “Someone broke in last night. She heard him and managed to run out and come to my place. We came back a while ago, and absolutely nothing seems to have been taken or disturbed. Her wallet was in a tote bag in the lounge—not touched. The only thing Annie thinks isn’t exactly how she left it is her laptop.”

“It may have been moved,” she said. “Just a little.” She always left it on the small side table, between a pair of brass candlesticks. Her instinct for artistic balance meant she invariably centered it, automatically, without thinking about it. Now it was a little bit closer to the candlestick on the right. Enough so she’d noticed first thing.

“And neither of you have touched it?”

“Not since before I went to bed last night,” Annie said.

“What time was that?”

“Early. Around ten. I heard footsteps at four a.m. That’s what woke me up.”

“You call the police?” Colbert asked.

Annie shook her head.

“Not a good idea,” Geoff said. “Annie’s working for a New York outfit that would take a dim view of any publicity. And since nothing’s missing . . .” He shrugged.

They had not seriously entertained the idea of calling the police. The story had too many wrinkles, too much they couldn’t explain. And as Geoff had said, nothing was missing.
They’ll think I imagined the whole thing.
She had said that, but not the rest of it, not that back home she had a rap sheet. She’d been drunk and disorderly a few times, and once she’d been picked up for soliciting. She hadn’t been, the cop just wanted . . . Maybe the London police could get at stuff like that. Maybe Geoff would see it all, nasty and degrading and spelled out.

“All the same,” Colbert said, “I shouldn’t touch any evidence without gloves.” He nodded toward the laptop. “In case later the cops get involved. Forensics. You know.”

“Clary,” Geoff said, “really wants to go back to the States and work on something like
24.
”

“Not like them,” Colbert said. “Too commercial. Maybe some version of
CSI.
”

“Ah,” Geoff said, “that fine example of thoughtful, highbrow drama.”

“I can give you gloves,” Annie said. She went into the bedroom and came back with a pair of white cotton archivist’s gloves. “Not a fashion statement,” she explained. “Standard equipment for anyone who regularly handles old documents.”