Lovers and Liars Trilogy (25 page)

A man was standing on her doorstep, an extremely handsome man, an utterly gorgeous man, just the kind she liked. He was tall, with black hair worn rather long: designer stubble, long legs, narrow hips, tight black jeans, a black sweater, a black leather jacket. He looked moody and dangerous, like a French movie star. He looked like the kind of man who made love magnificently, then smoked a Gauloise in bed. He looked like trouble with a capital T—and he was ringing her doorbell. She increased her pace rapidly. Things were definitely, but definitely, looking up.

She arrived at her doorstep out of breath. The man looked down at her. He had wonderful smoky gray eyes, and an astonishing smile. When he spoke, the accent was the kind that made her knees weak.

“You must be Katherine,” he said. “I’m a friend of your brother, James.”

Kate didn’t give a damn who he was. He could have been James’s sworn enemy for all she cared.

“My name’s François,” Pascal said. “François Leduc.”

“Oh, of
course…
” The name meant nothing to Kate. She gave him a radiant smile. “James is always talking about you. God, this rain! Come in, come in and have a drink.”

“So, François,” Kate McMullen said. “There’s vodka and then there’s vodka. Is vodka all right?”

Pascal inclined his head politely.
“Merveilleux,”
he said. He looked around him. The drawing room was dated, cluttered, and not very clean. There were dirty glasses everywhere. Paisley shawls were draped across the sofa, scripts were piled on the coffee table, the room smelled of joss sticks or possibly marijuana.
Chelsea,
he thought,
circa 1968.

He was surprised to find himself inside it so easily, but Katherine McMullen seemed unconcerned. She was rummaging around for clean glasses: a tall woman, slightly overweight, once attractive perhaps, but now in her mid-forties and aging badly. She had long, thick hair, heavily hennaed and tied around with a hippie-ish scarf. A great many bangles on her arms; she was wearing too much makeup and a voluminous multilayered dress. Over this she wore an embroidered Afghan coat; it was a getup some twenty years out of date, and Katherine McMullen very nearly carried it off. She gave a grand gesture of the hand—chipped nail polish—and waved the vodka bottle.

“Sit down, sit down. Oh, Christ, I’m out of tonic. D’you mind it straight?”

Pascal said straight would be fine. He said, “Thank you, Katherine.”

“Kate,” she cried dramatically, removing her coat. “Please. Kate.”

“I am not inconveniencing you, I hope?”

“
Christ,
no. Quite the contrary. I’ve had a bitch of a day. I was auditioning. I need cheering up.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. James told me you were an actress.”

“For this TV ad. This stupid, pathetic, feeble detergent ad. Two tarts in a kitchen. That’s what they call them, those ads. And this little creep from the agency, five feet nothing, covered in pimples, aged approximately
fifteen,
can you imagine, he says I don’t look right. He says I have the wrong accent. The wrong accent!” She made a violent gesture.

“So I told him—listen, darling, any accent you need, I can do. I’m an actress, remember? You want Scots, I’ll do you Scots. I can do Irish, I can do Liverpool, London, Manchester. I can do American. I can do Australian. If you really twist my arm, I can do you bloody Welsh.”

She plonked a very full glass of neat vodka down on the table in front of him. Pascal smiled encouragingly, waited for her to sit down, then sat down himself.

Interesting, he thought, the question of accents in this case: an English voice on the telephone to ICD, then an American delivering the parcels. It was something he must mention to Gini, Kate McMullen’s boast.

“You must forgive me,” he said with studied politeness as she reached for a cigarette. “Turning up on your doorstep like this. But I was hoping to see James while I was in London, and I thought perhaps you could point me in his direction. I’ve tried several friends. None of them seemed to know where he was.”

“Oh, James…” She gave him a slightly sullen look, as if this explanation bored her. “Wouldn’t we all like to know? I’m entirely pissed off with him, actually. He swore blind to me that he’d try to get back for Christmas. We always go home to the aged parents then—you know how it is. Well, bloody James never turned up. Guess who had to help stuff the turkey, and walk the damn dogs? Shropshire in December is not exactly my idea of fun.”

“Swore blind?” Pascal leaned forward to light her cigarette. “You’ve seen him recently, then?”

“Seen him? You must be joking. No such luck. I haven’t seen James since last summer. He’s far too busy to bother with me. Always rushing around, doing God knows what. No, he telephoned. Said he was going off skiing with some bloody boring friend of his. And
that
wasn’t even true either, because I ran into the bloody boring friend at a party two nights later, and he hadn’t even
heard
from James, for months.”

“How odd. Maybe he changed his plans—went with another friend.”

“Some other friend?” She gave him a wry look. “You can’t know James too well. James hardly has any friends. Not these days. He’s turning into a bloody recluse.”

“But he did telephone you? When was this?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know—when was it? Before Christmas, obviously, but not very long before, because when he said he was going skiing, I told him he was cutting it a bit fine.” She made a face. “That’s when he swore he’d get back. Said he was going for only a few days. It must have been around December nineteenth, twentieth, something like that. No, the nineteenth, that’s it. I remember, because it was the day my sodding agent actually bought me lunch. When James phoned, I’d just got back….”

She stopped, looking at Pascal in a way that made him feel slightly alarmed. She leaned forward, revealing a considerable amount of cleavage. “More voddie?” she said. “No? Well, I’ll just top mine up a bit.”

“So,” Pascal said as she sashayed back to the drinks table. “He never made it for the Christmas celebrations?”

“No. Nor the New Year. Not even a phone call. Daddy was
not
overpleased. Mummy wept into the pudding and brandy butter. I had a lot of the thankless-child bit. Actually, I think Daddy’s given up on James. When he was in the army, it was okay—but since he left…”

“That’s how I know him,” Pascal said firmly. “Through the army. That’s how we first met. On a NATO exercise…” He did a rapid calculation, then remembered the date on the photograph Jenkins had given them. “Around 1988, something like that…”

He wondered if McMullen’s sister knew that a Frenchman was unlikely to be involved in a NATO exercise, but the anxiety was unnecessary. Clearly, the circumstances under which he had known her brother did not interest her in the least. She was the kind of woman, he began to realize, who became bored when the conversation did not concern herself.

“Oh, really?” she said, pouring vodka. “Well, of course, James left the army around then. Back then, he was still the golden boy, apple of Daddy’s eye, Sword of Honour at Sandhurst, all set to be a general, all that boring bit. Personally, I think it’s all balls—Queen and country, all that antique stuff. Still, James always lapped it up. He’d have been just fine when we still had an empire. Still, enough of him…Tell me about yourself.”

She weaved her way back to the chair opposite. Pascal took a discreet look at his watch. It was almost three, and already dark outside. He would have to speed this up. He took another minute sip of the neat vodka.

“So,” he said. “Do you think James actually did go skiing? If he did, could he still be away? It’s just—”

The return to the subject of her brother did not please her. She gave a shrug. “Oh, God knows. He probably did. Changed his plans at the last moment, went with some other people, joined a chalet party. It’s possible. If he did, he’ll have gone to Italy, that’s for sure. That’s where he usually skis, the Italian Alps. If so, he could be gone weeks. He’s mad about Italy, always was. Especially out of season, when it isn’t crawling with tourists. He could be anywhere—Florence, Venice, Rome, Siena. …Memory lane—James loves that. We spent half our youth trailing round bloody museums in Italy. That’s how we spent our school holidays, staring at sodding paintings, while Daddy researched another book. Shit!”

She had spilled vodka on the front of her dress. She mopped at it ineffectively, then gave Pascal an odd look. “Daddy the art historian. The Titian-bloody-Tintoretto expert. Surely James mentioned that?”

The gear change from amiability to hostility was swift. Pascal, who had encountered heavy drinkers many times and was used to such sudden swerves, made a placatory gesture.

“Of course. The art historian. Yes.”

“So that’s where he probably is.” She made a face. “Either skiing, or sopping up culture. Take your pick. Why should he worry? James got Granny’s trust fund. He doesn’t need to suck up to sickening little ad men. He doesn’t need to work for a living like the rest of us. James is rich.”

“Ah, well, in that case…” Pascal rose to his feet. “I’ll miss him, I guess. I’m not in London long. …”

“You’re not?” She gave him an unfocused look, then laughed. She tossed back another gulp of vodka. “Oh, well. I might have known. Too bad.
Salut.
”

Pascal edged toward the door. There he paused. “I wonder,” he said. “There’s no one else you can think of who might know where he is?”

“Who have you tried?”

“A couple of people.” He mentioned names Jenkins had given him, whom he had called earlier that day. Kate McMullen shrugged again; more vodka spilled.

“Christ. What persistence. That’s about it. Who else? Oh, well, there’s a guy called Nicholas Jenkins, and a loathsome toad he is. He was at school with James. He might still see him. I wouldn’t think so.”

“Nicholas Jenkins,” Pascal said solemnly.

“Works at the
News.
Oh, and there’s Jeremy Prior-Kent. They went to prep school together, they were at Christ Church together. He’s an asshole too. Makes TV commercials, for Christ’s sake. Not that he’s ever seen fit to cast
me
in one of them, but—”

“I have his name. He’s out of town….” Pascal paused. He gave McMullen’s sister a careful look. Her words were now noticeably slurred: It was worth the risk. “And then, I think he mentioned once, there was a close woman friend, yes? American…”

“What, Lise? The beloved, you mean?” She rose and gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, sure, try Lise Hawthorne. I wish you luck.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Lise Hawthorne is a fucking stupid bitch. In my opinion. But then, I don’t know her very well. I’m allergic to super-sweet women. They screw men up. Try calling her by all means, if you can get past the thirty-five secretaries. She may even know where James is, though for his sake, I hope not.”

“Why do you say that?” Pascal asked, and he knew at once, it was a question too far, one inquiry too much.

Kate McMullen swayed on her feet. She put down her glass with deliberate care, then gave him a narrow-eyed look.

“What is this? Who are you anyway?”

“I told you. I’m a friend of your brother’s. I was in London, so I thought I’d look him up.”

“The fuck you are…What is this? Questions, questions, James this, James that…What’s going on? What the hell is this?”

“Look, I’d better leave, yes?” Pascal opened the door.

“Army. You said you were in the army—you met James on exercise—is that what you said? You don’t look like a soldier to me. You don’t look like an officer. Your hair’s too bloody long. Oh, shit.”

“Nevertheless.” Pascal gave a polite half-bow. “Second Parachute Regiment, Captain Leduc. Since retired, like your brother.”

Kate McMullen was not listening. She lurched forward, then stopped. “That’s what the other one said. Now I come to think of it. He said he was an army friend too. Jesus Christ, is this some kind of joke? Bring on the whole bloody platoon, why don’t you? First an American officer, now a French officer…Who’s next? Christ, send in the Khmer Rouge, send in the Foreign Legion. …What is this? Why’s James so bloody popular all of a sudden?”

Pascal turned back. “An American?” he said. “He was looking for your brother? When was this?”

“Christmas bloody Eve. Just when I was leaving for Shropshire.” She drew in a deep breath, then abruptly sat down. “Oh, fuck it,” she said. “It’s not funny. Just sod off.”

Pascal hesitated. He said, “I regret, but …”

Kate McMullen threw her vodka glass across the room. It missed his head by half an inch. “Piss off.” She gave him a venomous look. “Who cooked this up? It’s a joke, right? At my expense? Well, I don’t fucking well find it funny, I can tell you that. Oh, hang on. I get it. …” She rose unsteadily to her feet. “It’s a
bet.
Between brother officers. Well, fuck you. Who wins? Just tell me that. …”

Pascal began on some reply; Kate McMullen cut him off.

“Don’t bother lying. I can imagine. The winner’s the first one to score, right? You bastards. Wait till James hears about this.”

She broke off, fumbled her way back to the drinks, and slopped more vodka into a glass, then turned around. “Still there? I told you. Piss off. Screw you…” She gave him one last vicious glance. “I preferred the American. He looked like hell but at least he took me out for a drink.”

The traffic was heavy, and the wet air thick with exhaust fumes. Pascal mounted his motorbike and weaved his way between buses and trucks, heading northeast. Stopping at a traffic light as he approached King’s Cross Station, he checked his watch. It was four now. He would be at Gini’s apartment within ten minutes. He had a lot to tell her, he was impatient to see her. By now she would surely be back.

As he reached the station, however, all traffic stopped. Suddenly there were police everywhere; the air was shrill with sirens, lit with flashing blue lights. An accident, another IRA bomb scare or an actual bombing? Pascal felt his heart contract. What if they had bombed an underground station again? What if Gini had taken the tube home?

He peered ahead of him, through the swell of traffic. People were spilling out of the station concourse and being herded along the sidewalks by police. His anxiety redoubled. At the next intersection, inching his way forward, he turned off into a side street. He roared down it—just in time. Glancing back, he saw barricades being set up. He headed north, approaching Islington through a hinterland of decaying back streets. He accelerated, just missed an incautious pedestrian, swerved, swore, and picked up speed again. At four-twenty he reached Gibson Square, and slammed on his brakes.