Lovers and Liars Trilogy (149 page)

He gave another small frown; he looked, Gini thought, like someone planning some normal daily routine, faintly irritated when perceiving some potential minor hitch.

“Are you smart?” he asked. He released the safety catch on the gun with a small click. Gini stared at the gun; she swallowed.

“I’m not rash, if that’s what you mean…”

“Fine. Then don’t do anything dumb—will you? I mean—don’t start screaming or trying to run away. When I give you the keys, start the engine and drive—drive really well. Otherwise, I’ll fire. Then Madame Duval won’t be troubled by her angina anymore.”

The old woman seemed to catch the sound of her own name. Some color had returned to her face, and for the first time, she looked up. She lifted her blue-white eyes and smiled. Gini helped her to rise; Madame Duval began to murmur. Crossing the lobby at a snail’s pace, she told her dear Christophe that he was a good, kind boy to be so patient.

As they reached the sidewalk, Gini looked along the street. It was deserted. Her hands had begun to shake. She opened the driver’s door and slid into the seat. She looked at the seat, then the floor by the pedals, and gave a low moan.

Star and Madame Duval settled themselves behind her. The old woman took out a rosary. Gini, who did not dare to look around, could hear the click of the beads. Her mouth was dry with fear; as she had climbed into the car she had noticed something: there was a sticky brownish substance splashed on the leather of the seat; there was a pool of it, still wet, by her feet.

“Yeah. It’s blood.” Star had leaned forward. He was just touching the barrel of the gun against the back of her neck. “You know how many people I’ve killed this morning? Three. The third was the chauffeur. It’s his blood on the seat. His body’s in the trunk right now. Start the engine, drive to the end of this boulevard, then make a right.”

Gini wondered if she could flood the engine. She depressed the accelerator hard, and pumped, before she turned the ignition key. Star laughed.

“That won’t work. Not with a Mercedes. You ever drive one before? They’re the best. My father likes the best. Mercedes. Rolls-Royces. He has four—did you know that?”

The engine purred into life. Gini hesitated, then pulled out carefully and drove along the boulevard. Behind her, the rosary beads continued to click.

“She’s not praying for you. Or me,” Star said in a conversational way. “She’s praying for my mother. My mother’s dead. She died very suddenly Monday afternoon. Took too many little pills, I think. That’s what Mathilde says. She was writing a letter to me, and she’d taken three of her special little pills—which was a pretty dumb thing to do, of course. So she never finished the letter. She collapsed. Went into convulsions. It took a while, Mathilde says. Not too pretty. But then, I guess death never is.”

When Gini did not reply, he seemed irritated. Glancing up into the rearview mirror, she saw him frown again.

“My mother was a very famous woman,” he said in an insistent tone. “World famous. You’ll know her name. Maria Cazarès.” He paused. “Make a left at the next intersection. Who are you? Police—some kind of police? A private eye? Did Mina’s father hire you, maybe?”

“No. I’m a journalist,” Gini said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I’ve—been investigating Mina’s disappearance.” Where was little Mina now, she thought wildly. What had he done with her?

“Oh, yeah? And Cassandra’s death? Too bad about that. I saw it in the paper. Mina doesn’t know, of course,” he said. “A journalist. That’s nice. You write for American papers?”

“Sometimes. But I live in London. So I work for a British newspaper there. The
Correspondent.”

“Oh, I know that paper!” He sounded pleased. “That’s an important paper, right? Like the
Times
?”

“Yes. You could say that.”

“Hey. That’s good. Make a right here.” He was smiling at her now, in the rearview mirror. His smile made Gini’s blood run cold. “You know, just for a minute back there in the lobby—I was puzzled. Because the cards told me to expect the unexpected, like I said—but they said it would be something good, something useful…” He frowned again. “You know the real reason I didn’t shoot you back there? Nothing to do with the driving. I lied a little then. It was because I was waiting. I mean, obviously, you were the surprise—and at first it didn’t seem too positive. It looked like you might really fuck up all my plans. But I trusted the cards, you see? And I was right to trust the cards. Because you’re an accident, sure, but you’re also exactly what I need. Slow up. Make a left here.”

Gini could scarcely hold the steering wheel. She knew she was sweating with tension and hoped he could not see that. She could still feel the barrel of the gun on the back of her neck. He was moving the barrel up and down in a kind of caress. Gini was very afraid of guns. In Bosnia and elsewhere she had seen at close quarters what modern weapons could do. She tried to make her voice calm.

“Why am I what you need?” she said.

“Why?” He sounded astonished. “You can’t guess? Because you can write my story, of course. You can
explain.
I’ll give you an exclusive if you like. You can syndicate it—worldwide. That’s what happens, right?”

“Yes. That does happen. On big stories. Occasionally.”

“Oh, this will be a very big story.” He sighed. “When this story breaks, I’m going to be famous. A celebrity. People will know my name, here, right across Europe, in America. You’re going to help make me a star.”

Gini was beginning to understand. She could see where he was taking her now, in every sense. They were now just off the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré; she could see the famous
hôtel particulier
that was the Cazarès headquarters. She could see the building immediately adjacent to its courtyard, where the collection would be shown. She could see the satellite dishes, the TV crews, the crowd of fashionably dressed people waiting for admittance, milling back and forth on the sidewalk. She hesitated, then said quietly, “A star? Star is one of the names you use, isn’t it? Sometimes you call yourself Star?”

“That’s right. You can call me that if you like—you know, when we’re just talking, when you interview me. But when you write the story up, you have to use my real name, the name on my birth certificate: Christophe Rivière. Slow—slow down. Make a right. Stop in front of those mews gates.”

Gini did as he commanded. She looked at the tall iron gates with the name
Cazarès
on a brass plaque attached to them. Beyond the gates was a narrow courtyard, and a line of twenty garages that once would have been stables and carriage houses for the great house behind which they were set. Star lifted a small electronic device, and the gates opened. He told her to drive to the end garage, where, with the same device, he opened a steel plate door. She drove in, stopped, and switched off the engine.

The lockup was small. There was just room for Star to help Madame Duval out. He drew the old woman to one side of the entrance and instantly returned.

Gini was sitting very still, staring in front of her. She knew what he was going to do. He was going to lock the doors. He was going to close and lock the doors and leave her here with a dead man in the trunk.

“Please,” she began in a low voice as he returned to her open window. “Please don’t lock me in here.”

“It won’t be for long,” he said in reassuring tones. “I’ll come back for you. Give me the car keys. Right, now, listen. There’s no car phone—I ripped it out. You can’t move the car. The doors are two-inch steel plate—high spec. No one’s going to hear you if you shout or hammer on the doors, because the other Cazarès cars are all out, lined up in the rue St. Honoré, waiting to collect the big names when the show is over. So no one’s coming back here for an hour and a half, at least—except me, of course. I won’t be long. Just wait until I do what I have to do. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, something I’ve been planning for a long time. Over a year now. Ever since I realized…”

He hesitated for the first time. The barrel of the gun wavered fractionally. Gini saw an expression of anxiety come into his beautiful eyes.

“And if I’m a bit stressed out then—don’t let that frighten you, okay? It’s just something that happens to me. I get this headache, right in back behind my eyes. I’ll show you what to do. You just have to kind of stroke me. Then it goes away. Also, I have some pills, some special pills. I might take one of them, maybe—to celebrate, you know?” He smiled. “I might give you one. We’ll see. Now—you have a watch? I’ll be back around eleven-twenty, eleven-thirty at the latest. What’s your name?”

“Genevieve. People call me Gini. Star—please…” Gini wondered if she threw the door open very quickly, whether it would take him by surprise; knock the gun from his hand. She was afraid to risk it; the gun was two inches from her face. “Look—why don’t you let me come with you? I’d write a better story that way.”

He looked uncertain, and for a moment Gini thought her suggestion had worked. Then he shook his head. In the same low, terrifyingly reasonable voice, he explained.

“No, I can’t do that,” he said. “At Cazarès, they have these people on the doors, front and back. Really heavy security. I can get in with Mathilde, that’s all fixed. But they wouldn’t let you in, Gini. They don’t know you, you see? Eleven-twenty—okay? Time means everything to free men.”

He had closed the doors before she was out of the car. As she reached them, she heard a lock and bolts engage. The garage was now pitch black. She felt in the dark for the outline of the car, and her hand rested on what she knew was the trunk. She froze, listening. She could hear movement, she was sure she could hear movement from inside that trunk. A shifting, stealthy sound. She backed away with a moan of fear. Then she flung herself at the doors and pulled at them. They did not budge an inch. From the car came a trickling sound.

Gini crouched down close to the doors. She could hear Star leading Madame Duval away. He was telling her, with an impatient edge to his voice, to hurry just a little. She wouldn’t want to be late, would she, he suggested, for her dear Maria’s great day?

Gini waited. She heard the footsteps depart. She knew what she had to do, but it took minutes to steel herself. She had to open the trunk of the car; she had to do that.

Eventually, with shaking hands, she did so. As the trunk opened, a courtesy light came on and she could see inside the compartment clearly. She immediately wished it had not. She gave a stifled cry and jerked back. The thing in the trunk moved. She pressed her hands over her mouth. It was very hard not to scream, and even harder not to slam the lid shut.

“W
HAT’S GOING ON?” MARKOV
said, swinging around and trying to peer through the press of people crowding them from the rear.

Lindsay had tight hold of his arm. They had nearly reached the entrance doors to the great salon where Cazarès’s last collection would be shown. All around them was the decorum of classical architecture—the lovely roofs, windows, and entablature of seventeenth-century design at its most graceful; all around them was chaos—the thrustings and yellings and hysteria of the crowd. Up ahead Lindsay could see dark-suited executives and muscular security men. In front of them and behind them was an angry surge of humanity, hell-bent on getting through the doors. Ahead of her now she could glimpse three celebrated fashion editors; the head buyer for Bloomingdale’s; a French film star, long a patron of Cazarès and famed for her enigmatic beauty and chic; a rock star of international renown, together with his fifth wife, then a herd of indeterminate shoulders and heads and backs and waving arms. White invitation cards flashed. It never ceased to amaze her that everyone, famous or unknown, powerful or humble, rich or poor, elderly or young, was put through this. Markov said that all the couturiers cultivated these fights for admittance, fostered the panic, and intentionally humiliated those they sought to impress. “They want the adrenaline pumping,” he said. “And the fear—that you could be the Queen of England and you
still
might not get in. They want us all down on our knees, Lindy, pleading to be one of the Elect. That way our critical faculties get shafted before we’re inside the door. They’ve abrogated our power. It stinks.”

Lindsay agreed with this, yet she still resigned herself to the process. She had now been trapped in this manipulated hysteria for the past thirty-five minutes. Her body was sore with being pummeled and pushed. Her head already ached. She could hardly breathe—and when she got inside the salon and finally made it to the sanctum of the front row, she still wouldn’t be able to breathe, for heat and bodies and scent. But she wouldn’t mind. Her own status would have been confirmed by precisely the same people who had been humiliating her and everyone else—and that she valued, or always had in the past. Now, thinking of comments Rowland McGuire had made on this process, she despised herself.

Even so, she could feel the panic rising, the sensation that the frantic crowd behind might at any moment trample her underfoot. Just let me get
in,
let me get seated, she thought.

“Well, what do you know? It’s the fuzz.” Markov was still craning his neck. He removed his dark glasses briefly in order to obtain a better look. “Storm troopers yet. It’s the GIGN, Lindy—look.”

Lindsay risked the briefest glance around and was astonished. Through the gaps in the swelling crowd behind her she could see the familiar and menacing black vans pulling up, blocking the street beyond the courtyard. Arguments had broken out; attempts were being made to move the clustering Cazarès Mercedes and the TV crew trucks. A siren whooped, then stopped. The black doors at the back of the GIGN vans were opening, disgorging helmeted black-garbed men. Someone behind her gave her a violent shove.

Lindsay almost fell, then recovered her balance. She clung to Markov.

“What on earth… I thought they used them only for riots—antiterrorist stuff?”

“Don’t argue with them, that’s for sure.” Markov gave a little smile. “Seriously bad news.
Not
renowned for their sense of humor. And positively bristling with arms. Quite delectable though—don’t you think, Lindy? All that black leather? Those wicked fascist boots?”