The Traitor's Story (13 page)

Chapter Seventeen

It was just after seven when he had the taxi drop him at the end of the street. Fresh snow had fallen during the night, and the dawn light was muted by the blanket of cloud that still hung low and uniform over the city.

The house, as he’d expected, was shut up and full of sleep. He’d guessed all eight of their fellow diners probably didn’t live there, and he saw now that one had dropped a beer bottle as they’d left—it had landed in the snow on the step and been partially covered by the fresh fall, left looking like some ancient, fossilized artifact.

Finn looked at the lock, refreshing his memory of the methods for opening various simple mechanisms. But the first method was successful as often as not, and so it was this time—he tried the door and found it open.

Stepping inside, he half expected the stale early morning atmosphere that followed any student party, but he guessed none of them smoked, and the only smell here was coffee. It was as if the place was on the market and they were expecting prospective buyers.

The coffee smelled fresh enough that he wondered if some
one was already in the kitchen. He didn’t wait to find out, moving
quickly up the stairs, across the landing, stopping for a second outside the door before knocking. There was no reply and he knocked again, a little harder.

He heard Tilberg call out some sleepy response, then stepped inside and reached up to find the light switch as he closed the door behind him. Light flooded into the room, which was large and strewn with clothes and various student staples. The double mattress, like student places the world over, was on the floor.

Hailey was almost completely hidden under the duvet on the far side of the bed. Tilberg was sitting up, reaching for his watch, trying to adjust his vision to the sudden light. Then he saw Finn, realizing it was no one he knew, and he tensed and spoke angrily in Swedish and looked ready to jump out of bed.

Finn raised his hand and said calmly, “I wouldn’t do that.”

Tilberg responded to something in Finn’s voice, easing back onto his elbow, briefly confused as to what his next move should be. He still sounded outraged as he said, “What are you doing, man? This is a private house—I’m calling the police.”

He reached for his phone but stopped when Finn said, “No, you don’t want to call the police.”

Suddenly, Hailey’s head emerged from the duvet, staring at Finn in horror as she said, “Oh God!” She fell back onto the pillow, pulling the duvet back over her face, repeating, “Oh God, oh God!”

Tilberg turned to look at her, staring at the relief of her face beneath the duvet as he said, “Hailey, what’s up?” She was silent, but even under the covers it was clear that she was shaking her head.

“Hailey and I know each other, that’s what’s up.”

Tilberg didn’t get it and said, “What difference does that make? You know, man, you just can’t come into someone’s bedroom like this, and who let you into the house?”

“Anders, stop,” came Hailey’s muffled voice.

Finn hesitated, wondering if it was better to leave her to do the
telling, but he guessed it was like removing a Band-Aid—and the very fact that she was hiding her face suggested she was desperate to avoid doing it herself.

“My name’s Finn Harrington. I’m here because Hailey’s parents asked me to find her and bring her home.”

“Oh God.” It was Tilberg this time, hit by dread at the thought of what those words meant. He sat up and covered his face with his hands.

“Hailey’s fifteen years old, Mr. Tilberg.”

Tilberg let his hands slip down his face, and looked visibly sick with worry as he said, “I had no idea, I . . .”

“It’s okay, they’re aware that you were tricked. They don’t want any fuss and they don’t want to take this any further. They just want
their daughter back.” Tilberg nodded, looking absurdly grateful, or perhaps not so absurdly given how this might have panned out for him. “I’ll wait in the kitchen.”

Finn left, closing the door behind him, and he heard nothing from the room as he descended the stairs and found his way to the kitchen by following the drug-like smell of coffee.

There was a girl sitting at the kitchen table in what looked like running gear, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. It took him a moment to place her as the first girl who’d come down the restaurant stairs the night before, her appearance transformed in these clothes. She looked remarkably fresh.

The girl looked at him, confused but unthreatened as she said,
“
Hej!
”

“Hello. Anders knows I’m here.”

“Okay. Coffee?”

“I’d love some, thank you.”

She got up and filled a mug for him. He thanked her as he took it, and sat across the table from where she’d been sitting.

“I’m Camilla.”

“I’m Finn. How do you do?” He reached across and shook her hand.

“I’m sorry, would you like something to eat?” She herself only had coffee, and he guessed she was running carb-free.

“No, I’m fine, thanks. Are you going for a run?”

She nodded, like someone admitting to a secret vice. He wished he could offer to go with her. The thought of setting out in that fresh snow, the cold air burning his lungs, blood prickling beneath his skin, it all held infinitely more appeal than the endurance test he had ahead of him.

Camilla finished her coffee, washed the mug and said, “Okay, nice to meet you, Phil.”

“Likewise,” he said, not bothering to correct her.

She left and there was a brief influx of cold air from the front door, then the house became silent again. He sipped at his coffee—not quite as good as the aroma had suggested, but still welcome. Through the silence, he picked up movement on the floor above, and one hushed voice—Tilberg’s. There were pauses, too, filled by Hailey’s responses, he imagined, though he couldn’t hear her.

Someone went to the bathroom, then back to the room at the front. There was no conversation this time, no movement, a stillness that lasted a minute and seemed so potent that Finn found himself holding his breath. Finally, a door opened and closed, there were soft footsteps on the stairs, and Tilberg came into the kitchen wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

He looked grim-faced, and nodded at Finn as if they were both caught up in the same tragic situation. Finn had his own small collection of miniature tragedies to live with, but this wasn’t one of them. He nodded back all the same.

“She’s taking a shower, getting her stuff together.”

“Of course. Camilla made coffee.”

“Thanks.” Tilberg got himself some coffee, and sat where Camilla had been until a few minutes before. He looked down at the coffee, then up at Finn, his eyes verging on pleading as he said, “I had no idea, I swear.”

Finn shrugged. “It’s nothing to me, but for what it’s worth, maybe you should have been more careful, looked for the signs—they were there.” Tilberg looked confused. “I saw your Facebook page, Anders. You have a lot of friends on there who are also at Uppsala University—does Hailey have any other friends at the University of Geneva?”

“But she explained that. She was having trouble making friends there—that’s one of the reasons she came to visit.” It was interesting to hear him speak, as if he still wanted to believe that her story was true.

“Any Facebook friends from back home in America?” He didn’t wait for an answer this time. “Look, I’m just saying you should have been more careful. I don’t know what the law is here, but in some countries you’d be in a whole load of trouble right now, and it wouldn’t matter that she’d lied to you.”

“Actually, it’s legal here, but she just told me she only became fifteen last month. You know, she talked about coming here before Christmas, and then it would have been . . .” He shook his head, briefly repeating the gesture of covering his face with his hands, sighing through them and then saying, “I completely believed her.”

“Well, if no law was broken and her parents don’t want to take it further anyway, I’d just put it down to experience. And maybe choose your next girlfriend from among your fellow students. You know, I just had coffee with a very attractive young lady.”

Tilberg laughed, as if the suggestion of Camilla as a girlfriend was clearly a joke, then looked downcast again as he said, “I should have known it was too good to be true.”

Finn had nothing more for him, so he waited a couple of beats and said, “This is a pretty nice house by student standards.”

Tilberg looked thrown for a second, but looked around the kitchen and said, “Oh, yes, it belongs to my family.” He smiled. “And on the subject of family, the attractive lady you had coffee with is Camilla Tilberg, my cousin.”

That explained the bemused response to Finn’s comment.

“And is that legal here?”

Tilberg laughed properly, then looked curious. “Did you say your name was Harrington? Are you any relative of Charles Harrington, the historian?”

If nothing else, this trip had done wonders for Finn’s ego as a writer.

“I am Charles Harrington—Finn is just what people call me.”

Tilberg looked amazed, the whole situation forgotten as he said, “I read your book on the Black Death. It was really great. I’m a history student.”

“Thanks. I didn’t think my books would be considered academic enough to appear on university reading lists.”

“No, they’re not. I read it for myself. Actually, I bought it in London when I was there, in Foyles. But I really enjoyed it.”

“I appreciate that.”

“What are you working on now?”

“The Cathars, though I haven’t done much this last week—what with trying to find Hailey and, you know . . .”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be, I’ll get back into it soon enough.” Though not yet, he thought, because finding Hailey wasn’t the end of his search.

There was a shuffling noise on the floor above—what sounded like a backpack being dragged. Tilberg looked ready to get up, but thought better of it and stayed in his seat, and the two of them listened to her progress down the stairs. She left the backpack in the hall and appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Even with the fashionably short hair and the student clothes, she looked very much a schoolgirl to Finn, and he couldn’t understand how the people in Fate or Tilberg and his friends had been fooled by her. And that in turn reminded him of Katerina all those years before, and he realized that some people just wanted to be fooled.

Hailey looked at Tilberg, her eyes a little red, but he stared resolutely at his coffee and she gave up and turned her attention to Finn, meeting his gaze.

“Hello, Finn.”

“Hello, Hailey.” He turned to Tilberg. “Anders, could you call us a taxi?”

“Of course.” He reached into his pocket for his phone, and crossed the kitchen as he searched for a number.

Hailey came across to the table, looking lost. Idly, she picked up Tilberg’s mug and drank some of his coffee, and in that one simple action Finn saw how she’d fooled them all. There was something sophisticated and worldly about it, like a woman who’d seen life, and the best and worst of what it could throw at a person.

She sat down, the third person in that chair, as Tilberg got through and spoke a couple of sentences in Swedish. He stayed where he was, as if afraid to come back to the table, but said, “It’ll be a few minutes.”

“Thanks.” Finn took the letter from his pocket and held it out for Tilberg. “For the sake of formality, a letter from the Portmans authorizing me to escort her home.”

“I don’t need to see that.”

“Maybe not, but I’d rather you looked at it—make it the beginning of your new cautious approach to life.”

Tilberg stepped forward and took the letter but then retreated again, leaning back against one of the kitchen counters. Hailey looked at him, stung by the change in him, as if she considered his behavior unreasonable.

“Have you got everything?” She looked back at Finn, nodding. “I’ll explain later, but I have to ask if you have the USB stick with you, the one you and Jonas made?”

She looked vague for a second, the fabricated reasons for her disappearance long consigned to the back of her mind, but the pieces fell into place and a different confusion surfaced.

“Yeah, but why do you need to know that?”

“It’s not important, but it’s too complex to explain now. I’ll explain later, maybe on the plane.”

She looked put out as she said, “We’re flying home right away?”

“What did you have in mind, a trip to the ice hotel?”

Tilberg handed the letter back, and Hailey looked up at him and said, “Can we stay friends?”

“Hailey, how can we be friends? I don’t even know who you are.”

“How can you say that, after the last few days?”

Tilberg shook his head and sighed heavily, not knowing how to get through to her how betrayed he was feeling. Finn should have felt as if he were intruding by being there, yet in fact, he wanted to tell Hailey that it was completely possible to be intimate whilst remaining strangers—it was an act he’d managed for four years.

Finn heard a car pull up. It didn’t sound the horn, but sat outside with the engine running. He stood up and shook Tilberg’s hand. “I’ll let you say your goodbyes.”

Tilberg looked uncomfortable even at the prospect of being left alone with Hailey again, but accepted it as a necessity and said, “Thanks, I mean . . . well, thanks.”

Finn nodded and said to Hailey, “Don’t take too long.”

He picked up her backpack as he moved through the hall, reminded again of the students he’d seen on the train to Geneva. He told the cab driver where they were headed, told him to wait for another person, and they both sat in silence for a few minutes.

Finn sensed some movement in the house and turned. Hailey was coming out alone, looking upset and angry. He expected her to slam the front door behind her, but she didn’t, just as Debbie Portman had confounded his expectations by not slamming the door when she’d stormed out of his apartment at the beginning of all this.

Hailey got in the car and the driver looked at Finn. He nodded and they set off along the street. She sat motionless, without tears as far as he could tell—he didn’t want to stare at her—and the only words she said were, “Where are we going?”