WHEN THEY REACHED OXFORD, it was bitterly cold, and dampness pervaded the air. A low, thin mist was rising from the river, and as darkness fell, the mist thickened. By the time they took up their position in Paradise Square, it had formed wisps and patches of a yellowish hue. It made the light from the few streetlamps a haze; it would clear momentarily, then descend again, obscuring their view.
This area of the city, although close to the colleges, was rundown. Nearby were the pens and yards of the cattle market, and to the north, just beyond the square, the high walls of Oxford prison. It was shabby and dispiriting and almost deserted. Few cars and no pedestrians passed.
Most of the houses here were used as small offices; they were closed now and dark. The only source of light and cheer were the steamed-up windows of the Paradise Café, just across from where they stood on the far side of the square.
At three minutes to six, Pascal gave her an encouraging glance, took her arm, and drew her across to the restaurant. It was small. The menu in the window showed it served primarily Greek Cypriot food. Inside there were two waiters and groups of students. Gini shivered. She looked to the right, then to the left. No one approached. The minutes ticked by.
She could sense Pascal’s tension in every line of his body as she huddled against him for warmth. A chocolate-bar wrapper blew along the sidewalk in front of them, making a scuffling sound. The mist drifted; it felt clammy against her skin. At six-fifteen Pascal began to show the signs of impatience she had known were inevitable. He swore.
“I’ve had enough. Don’t tell me this is another damn wild-goose chase.”
“Wait, Pascal. Give it time.”
“It’s goddamn freezing here.” He turned to look through the café windows. “You think he could be inside?”
“He might be in the room at the back, I guess.” She peered through the glass. She could not see well through the steam and condensation, but all the customers looked far too young. “Come on, Pascal.” She squeezed his arm. “Think of something else. Stop counting seconds. That always makes it worse. Tell me some more of those famous facts of yours. You’ve been thinking of them all afternoon, I could tell.”
Pascal gave her an amused glance; she felt some of his tension subside. He turned back to peer through the window.
“Oh, very well. Learn to control this impatience of mine, yes? Fine. Well. I can tell you his postings—they’re interesting. Three tours of duty in Northern Ireland, two stints in Germany. A spell in the Middle East. He served in Oman….”
“Yes, I did,” said a quiet voice behind them. “In 1978. Would you both get in the car?”
Pascal swore, and Gini swung around. The man who spoke had materialized silently from behind them. As before, he was wearing a black track suit and black running shoes. This time, the hood of the track suit was down.
The car he had indicated was parked across the square, a black, mud-splattered Range Rover. Gini had noticed it, and it had been empty, as they passed.
“We can’t talk here,” McMullen said. “I haven’t much time. Would you get in the car?”
It was McMullen. As he spoke, he turned slightly and lamplight gleamed palely against his fair hair. For an instant, she glimpsed his features. His face was stronger and more determined than it had appeared in the photograph. She felt Pascal hesitate; she turned and walked across to the car.
She sat in the rear, Pascal in the front. McMullen negotiated Oxford’s complex one-way system at speed.
He said, as they were leaving the outskirts of the city, “It’ll take about fifteen minutes to get there. It’s not far.”
After that he did not speak, and Pascal did not prompt him. Gini guessed that, as she was, Pascal was concentrating on their route. In the dark, moving rapidly along a succession of winding unlit country roads, this was not an easy task. Gini edged toward the window. At the next junction, when McMullen was forced to slow down, she caught one quick glimpse of a sign in the headlights. She just had time to read the name of the next village. It was enough. She kept her eyes on the route. She thought: Of course—Oxford, Oxfordshire. The place where John Hawthorne has his country home. The manor house he had bought had been extensively photographed; she had checked its precise location when they’d begun this story. Unless she was very much mistaken, it was his entrance gates they had just passed, and his estate wall now beside the road to their immediate left.
Wherever McMullen intended to take them, she was certain it would not be far.
She was correct. They followed the high stone wall that bordered the Hawthorne property for two miles, turned sharply right, then left onto a steep, rutted track. The going was rough, but the Range Rover’s four-wheel drive coped with it easily. Three miles, she estimated, the track continuing to rise the whole way, and curving to the left. When McMullen stopped the car, they were in a clearing flanked by woods on three sides. In front of them was a small building, its windows unlit. To their left, and clear of the trees, the ground fell away in a deep bowl.
They climbed out of the car, and Gini moved toward the space in the trees, Pascal close behind her. McMullen stood watching them both.
“There’s no moon yet,” Gini said slowly. “But I’m sure the view is spectacular from here. You must overlook John Hawthorne’s land. Can you see his house, as well?”
“I can see the south terrace, with binoculars. Yes.” McMullen spoke evenly. He unlocked a door behind them, waited until they were all inside and the door was closed behind them, then switched on the light.
They were standing in a small, sparsely furnished living room. It seemed to be the only ground-floor room, except for a lean-to kitchen at the back. An estate cottage once, Gini guessed, built to house a gamekeeper or forestry staff from one of the properties bordering Hawthorne’s. There was a stone floor, a bare table, a few sticks of cheap furniture, a pile of newspapers in the corner. The windows were boarded up, and it was bitterly cold. McMullen crossed the room and lit a paraffin heater.
“I’m sorry—it’s spartan,” he said. “I like living that way.”
“You’re living here now?” Gini said quickly.
McMullen sat back on his haunches. His face took on a guarded expression. He adjusted the flame of the heater.
“I stay here occasionally. From time to time.”
“Your London apartment isn’t spartan,” Pascal said, watching him closely. “Quite the opposite.”
McMullen gave a dour smile; he straightened. “No. But then, I’m very rarely there.” He paused. “When exactly did you obtain entry there?”
“A week ago.”
McMullen gave a small, quick nod, as if this satisfied him in some way. “And Venice? You must have gone there.”
“Last Sunday.”
The question was put evenly; Pascal gave it an even reply. He volunteered nothing further. McMullen noted this, Gini saw, and appeared to approve. There was a brief silence. She watched the two men assessing each other, feeling their way.
“I intended originally to meet you in Venice.” McMullen spoke suddenly. “That plan had to be changed. The reports of Appleyard’s death there were in the papers yesterday. They don’t make it clear when he died.”
He kept his eyes on Pascal, who replied, still evenly, “Judging from the state of his body when we saw it, around ten days before.”
“I see.” There was a pause. “And the other man with him?”
“He had died more recently. One or two days before.”
“Fine.” McMullen showed not a trace of emotion. He continued to ignore Gini, as if she were not even in the room.
“Fine?” she said now, sharply. “It wasn’t fine! It was unnecessarily cruel.”
“So I understand from the reports.” McMullen spoke crisply. He turned to look at her for the first time. It was a brief, cool inspection. He at once turned back to Pascal.
“I’ll say this once to get the obvious question out of the way. I did not kill them. I met Appleyard only once, in October last year. I never even heard of his friend. If Appleyard had done as I told him, and stayed out of all this, he would still be alive. He meddled, and as a result of that, he died.”
“That seems harsh,” Gini said quickly, stung by his tone.
“Very possibly. There’s no point in pretending I feel any great sympathy. I disliked the man.”
“You used him,” Gini said in a quieter tone. “You also used Lorna Munro. Did you know she was dead too?”
There was a brief silence. McMullen looked from her to Pascal.
“Is that true?”
“Yes, it is.” Pascal paused. “She was killed within a few minutes of speaking to me. In Paris. She was knocked down by a Mercedes.”
“Deliberately?”
“Oh, yes. I witnessed it.”
For the first time, McMullen betrayed some emotion. There was a momentary concern in his face, then his mouth tightened.
“Yes, well. I regret that. Obviously I regret it. However, perhaps it proves to you what is at stake here, and exactly what I have been up against. Hawthorne tried to have me killed in December. It was then of course”—his voice became dry—“it was then it became urgent to disappear.”
“You know Hawthorne was behind the attempt?” Pascal said levelly. “What method did he use?”
McMullen gave him a cool, assessing glance. “The man he employed was that henchman of his and his father’s. Frank Romero. I think we can deduce he was acting on instructions, don’t you? And the method was an obvious one, given I was in London then. It was at the Bank tube station, in the rush hour. Romero attempted to push me under an oncoming train.” He stopped. Neither Pascal nor Gini spoke. McMullen gave a small shrug. “I’ve had training. He failed. Since then…I’ve had to be careful. Otherwise I would have found more direct ways of contacting you. And I would have done so before now.”
He stopped abruptly. He gave them both another of those blue measuring looks.
“I’m sorry. We should stop fencing around. I realize now I’ve overlooked something very obvious. You’re journalists, and I’m not used to dealing with journalists. I’m assuming that when I tell you the truth, you’ll believe me. I should know better. It’s a mistake I’ve made before.”
He hesitated then for the first time, and Gini realized that beneath his crisp questions and curt replies, McMullen was as tense as strung wire. He gave a sigh, and glanced around the grim, cold room.
“I’d set great store by this meeting,” he continued, his tone now much less calm. “When I finally was able to meet you—what I should say, and do. I hadn’t expected suspicion, or hostility. My mistake. Christ…” He turned away with a sudden violent gesture. “Christ! I should have known.”
The alteration in his demeanor had been very rapid: one minute, calm control; the next, strong emotion, which Gini could see he was fighting to subdue. She and Pascal exchanged looks. She made a quick covert calming gesture of the hand, and Pascal nodded.
“Look,” he said to McMullen in a more neutral tone. “You must understand. The allegations you’ve made are very serious. If they became public, they’d destroy a man’s whole life and career. We’re not hostile to you, we’re trying to find out the truth, that’s all.” He paused. “Listen, it’s very cold in here. Gini’s freezing, and so am I. Could we have some tea, something warm to drink? Then we could sit down and go through this carefully from beginning to end.”
McMullen looked at Pascal, then nodded. “Very well.” He glanced down at his watch. “But we must be quick. I don’t have a great deal of time.”
He made his way out to the kitchen at the back. After a brief exchange of glances, Pascal followed him out there, and leaned in the doorway, blocking McMullen’s view back into this room. Gini, who had known Pascal wanted to case the place as soon as he mentioned tea, began to move swiftly around the room. It told her a little, but not as much as she had hoped. The pile of newspapers dated back six months: some were local, some national. Flicking quickly through them, she saw that several were open at reports of John Hawthorne’s public activities, meetings and parties he had attended, or speeches he gave. The previous August, Hawthorne’s Oxfordshire gardens had been opened to the public to benefit a hospital charity: The page reporting this event, with photographs of the gardens, had been cut out from that week’s issue of the Oxford Mail.
In the corner of the room, near the door to the kitchen, was a green rucksack that might have been army issue. It was laced tightly closed. Near the empty fireplace, on a shelf, was a half-full bottle of whisky and glasses. There was an ashtray with some unfiltered cigarette stubs in it. Next to that were two yellowing paperback novels, one by Frederick Forsyth, the other by Graham Greene. Nothing else: no pictures, no carpets, just furniture that looked as if it might have been abandoned with the house. The hiss of the heater, and the heavy oily smell of burning paraffin. Spartan, indeed.
There was one other door in the room. This she opened silently, easing up the latch, any noise she made drowned by the hiss of the gas stove in the kitchen beyond. It led, as she had expected, to a narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs. One room on the ground floor, and one above, presumably where McMullen slept.
She edged back to the warmth of the paraffin heater. How odd that McMullen should have chosen to bring them here, she thought. This was a place for a stakeout. But if McMullen actually was staking out Hawthorne, this was surely the last thing he would want them to know.
When Pascal and McMullen returned, McMullen’s manner seemed to have thawed. He looked more at ease now, as if he had warmed to Pascal, if not to her. She watched him as he adjusted the heater, then moved to a chair. He was several inches shorter than Pascal, with a slight but strong build. From his economy of movement, and his posture, she would have guessed at an army connection even had she not known his background. His training was evident in the way he spoke as well, and as he began speaking now, that impression deepened. He gave no sign of the brief emotion he had showed earlier. He began as if this were a military briefing that needed to be conducted with economy and speed.
He drew out a packet of strong, unfiltered cigarettes and lit one. He leaned forward.
“I’ll make a suggestion. As I said, I’m not used to talking to journalists. If you agree, I’ll tell you my side of this story, and we’ll keep the questions until the end. It will save time. Then if you have questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. Do you agree?”
The question was addressed to Pascal, who nodded.
McMullen drew on his cigarette. He watched its smoke curl upward from his hand. After a pause, he began speaking again.
“First, the essential background. You may or may not know: I have been a close friend of Lise Hawthorne’s for many years. We first met shortly before I joined the army, in 1972. This was long before her marriage, obviously. I spent a summer in Virginia with the Grenville family. At the time, I was recovering from an illness. The Grenvilles were old friends of my mother’s, and distant cousins of Lise’s. I needed a spell of rest and recuperation, at least my mother thought I did, and the Grenvilles very kindly took me in.” He paused. “Lise was seventeen then. It was her debutante year. That photograph in my apartment—the one I used—was taken then. Lise and I liked one another immediately. We became, and remained, close friends.”
He glanced at Pascal.
“I should say this now. I want you to be perfectly clear. When I say friends, I mean friends. Lise and I have never been lovers. You understand?” Pascal said nothing; he nodded. McMullen went on.
“It was and is a very deep friendship, however. I have always admired Lise. She is one of the few—the very few—genuinely good people I have ever known. She has shown me great kindness in the past, and I would do almost anything to return that kindness. Lise knew that. The opportunity finally came last summer.”
Gini glanced at Pascal as he said this, and McMullen, who was sharp-eyed, noticed at once.
“I should also make one other thing clear,” he continued. “You may well feel I’m biased against Lise’s husbands—and perhaps I am. I don’t believe that bias clouds my judgment, though you may. For what it’s worth, I have never liked John Hawthorne, and I advised Lise against marrying him. I think he is a dangerous, cold, arrogant man—very like his father, in fact. I think he is manipulative, motivated by self-interest and ambition—a man utterly without principles, a politician of the worst sort. He is also highly intelligent, and gifted, which makes his behavior far worse in my view. Lise used to claim”—he hesitated fractionally—“that I was mistaken. She would admit some of his faults—the arrogance, for instance—but she would say there were mitigating factors, his upbringing and such. At the time she married him, she was passionately in love with him. At that time, I knew a great deal more about her future husband than Lise realized, and I had to decide whether to tell her what I knew, or remain silent. In the end, I decided to stay silent. Lise was so persuasive on his behalf, so full of his virtues, it seemed cruel to speak out. In the first place, she would have refused to believe me. In the second, it would have brought our friendship to an end.” He paused, looking away from them.
“I convinced myself that Lise could be right, that Hawthorne might have changed. So I said nothing. I very much regret that now.”
There was a brief silence. McMullen extinguished his cigarette. He looked at Pascal.
“I’ll come back to my reasons for distrusting Hawthorne later. I should like to leave those to the end. After all”—his voice became embittered—“I know why you’re here. I know why Nicholas Jenkins was so keen on this story in the first place. I may be unused to dealing with journalists, but even I know how fast they react to a hint of sexual scandal, to the idea of an eminent man leading a secret sexual life. Am I wrong?”
The question was sharply put. Gini said nothing, and allowed Pascal to reply. The bitterness in McMullen’s tone interested her. It was as if, with a certain contempt, he was deciding to tell them what he believed they wanted to hear.
“No, you’re not entirely wrong,” Pascal replied in even tones. “I wouldn’t say it was the only kind of story to which reporters reacted swiftly, but never mind that now. We can come back to that later, as you say. Go on.”
“Very well.” McMullen leaned back in his chair and began to speak more rapidly. “During the years of her marriage I saw Lise less often than before. I was in the army, she was in America, I had frequent postings abroad. We used to write to each other from time to time. About four years ago, after I left the army, I met her in Italy briefly, where she was staying, without her husband, with friends. I saw her on a few other occasions over the next three years, when she and Hawthorne were visiting London. I had dinner with them—and I noticed nothing amiss. Once Hawthorne was first posted here, I saw them more frequently. Lise invited me to various embassy dinners and parties, that kind of thing. I would meet Hawthorne, exchange a few words. He was always perfectly civil. Then, last July, I was invited for a long weekend at their country house here. And that was when I finally realized something was terribly wrong.
“I could see straight away that Lise was under strain. It was some weeks since I’d last seen her, and in that short time, it was as if she had wasted away. She’d become painfully thin, she scarcely ate, she seemed nervous around her husband, she had these sudden inexplicable changes of mood. It was very difficult to spend any time alone with her. The house was full of other guests; Hawthorne himself was there. On the second day, I managed to get her away. We went for a long walk in the grounds. Miles and miles. It started raining. Lise began crying. It was terrible. Finally, she broke down. She told me everything.” He broke off suddenly. His face had darkened, and he gave an angry gesture.
“What you have to understand is this. His treatment of Lise may have worsened, but it’s been going on for years. A chain of other women, mistresses, secretaries. He slept with another woman the night before their marriage. He was faithful to his new wife for precisely five days. Lise knows that not because anyone gossiped, but because he chose to tell her. He’s been systematically stripping Lise of any confidence she ever had, telling her she was stupid, inept, comparing her to the other women he had affairs with, boasting about his one-night stands—”
Again that violent emotion had surfaced. Gini watched as McMullen fought to get it back under control. He lit another cigarette, his hand shaking a little as he lifted the match, then abruptly he rose to his feet.
“I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me. I need a drink—and I hate to drink alone. You’ll join me?”
The question, Gini noted, was directed solely at Pascal.
“Yes, we will,” Pascal said, and McMullen checked himself.
“I’m being rude,” he said, addressing Gini this time. “I apologize. It wasn’t intentional. I don’t find it easy to discuss any of these things, particularly in front of a woman.”
He poured three measures of whisky, added water. He handed their glasses to Gini and to Pascal, and then sat down. He glanced at his watch again.
Pascal said, “Just how worried are you about the time? We do need to get this clear, you know.”
“Of course. It’s all right,” McMullen said hastily. “I’m coming to the point where you will already have quite a lot of information.” This time he made an effort to include Gini in his next question.
“You know there were rumors circulating in Washington before they came over here? You know that Appleyard finally picked up on those rumors?”
“Yes,” Gini said. “We do.”
“Fine.” He gave a curt nod. “What you may not know is who started those rumors. It was John Hawthorne himself. It was part of a long campaign to undermine Lise.”
He stopped to light another cigarette, then continued. “For years, the first six years of their marriage, Hawthorne believed his dominance over Lise was so strong that no matter what he did, he could get away with it. He knew Lise was too devout a Catholic ever to contemplate divorce. He knew how much she loved her children. He believed he could rely on that, and on her pride. Then there was a change. Around four years ago, Adam, their younger son, became ill.”
He paused, still trying to fight down emotion. “He nearly died. I think something snapped in Lise then. She might have gone on enduring it all, the humiliations, the cruelty, the boasts—but after Adam’s illness, she finally saw that she had to protect her children from this man. She began to see at last—at least this is what she tells me—that Hawthorne’s influence on his children could ultimately be as harmful to them as his father’s had been to him. So she gave Hawthorne an ultimatum. Either he changed his ways, or she would leave him and live apart with her children. She didn’t threaten him with exposure—nothing like that. Just separation. And Hawthorne swore to her he would change.”
McMullen gave them both a cold glance.
“You can imagine how long that lasted. A few months. Hawthorne was panicked into resigning from the Senate—I think because he feared scandal, and for the first time in his life he was genuinely afraid of what Lise might do. But being a reformed man didn’t suit him at all. He was drinking heavily; there were violent quarrels with Lise. Then he stopped the drinking and took up with the women again. Only there was this new variation, an added twist. The mistresses and one-night stands weren’t enough anymore. That’s when the monthly appointments with the blondes began. But he covered himself. He began on a new strategy. That’s when the rumors about Lise’s mental health began to circulate too….
“It was clever of him, you have to admit that.” McMullen looked at them closely. “Lise was genuinely very near to breakdown then. Hawthorne told her, if she tried to leave him, he would get custody of the children. He would claim she was an unfit mother, mentally unstable. Both he and his father had a long interview with her, and they spelled it out very clearly. They showed her a list of witnesses who’d take the stand against her—servants, maids, secretaries, friends. Some of those Hawthorne and his father could bribe, others they simply leaned on—and they had years of experience in doing that. Hawthorne’s father’s proudest boast was that there was no one he couldn’t buy.
“Beyond that specific threat,” McMullen continued, “the scheme was an effective one. Hawthorne was protecting himself in advance. If, in future, Lise ever did speak out against him, whether in a custody battle or just to friends, few people would believe her. Anything she said would be dismissed as paranoid, as deluded. And of course, the saddest thing of all was that the more he pressured her in this way, the worse her health became. I personally believe that he and his father planned it that way: They were trying actually to drive her insane. After all, from John Hawthorne’s own point of view, better an unstable wife in a mental institution than a smashed-up presidential career. That way Hawthorne got everyone’s vote of sympathy—a sick wife could be turned to his advantage, do you see?”
“Up to a point.” Gini leaned forward. “Except by then, Hawthorne’s career was on hold. He’d resigned from the Senate. It was before he took up the post here.”
“Hawthorne’s career has never been on hold,” McMullen replied sharply. “You have to understand that. It’s fundamental to the man. He may have decided it was wise to take a backseat for a while, until he’d dealt with the question of Lise. He may have decided it was better to get her away from friends and relations in America, yes. But he has never abandoned his central ambition—and neither has his father. You can be quite certain that his father has been involved in all this, every step of the way. If Hawthorne ever did hesitate as to the wisdom of committing his wife, the mother of his sons, to a mental institution, you can be sure the father would be there at his shoulder, saying go right ahead, it’s the best way.”
“Is that what you think?” Pascal asked. “You seriously think Hawthorne intended to have his wife committed?”
“I don’t think it. I know. He threatened her with it several times. He’s already selected the hospital. It’s called Henley Grange. It’s private and it’s twenty miles outside London. Hawthorne gave them a sweetener—a donation of fifty thousand dollars, last year.”
“How do you know that?”
“Lise saw the canceled check. Moreover, a doctor affiliated with Henley Grange has been treating Lise since last autumn. Hawthorne called him in personally. And you know when he did that? Two days after I first spoke to Appleyard. Which was about two days after Hawthorne started tapping my phone.”
He leaned forward, his face now strained and intent. “Do you see? You have to understand the timing here. Last July, when Lise told me her story, I was appalled. I couldn’t believe that any man would act in that way—ritualizing his sexual encounters, then forcing his wife to listen to descriptions of them month after month. If anyone other than Lise had told me that story, I might not have believed it. But it was Lise—and Lise never lies. And, as it happened, it echoed other things I’d heard about Hawthorne long before. Hawthorne was always a sadist. He was a sadist as a very young man.”
He broke off, hesitated, then looked at Pascal. “I want you to understand how desperate I was. That July, I tried so hard to persuade Lise to act, but she wouldn’t, she was too afraid. I could see why Hawthorne was undermining her with that rumor campaign, and I was certain it would intensify. I was right. Last September the rumors finally filtered down to a journalist who was prepared to use them—Appleyard. That’s when he started calling up Lise’s doctors in London. When her doctors informed Lise, she knew she had to fight back, and fight back hard. That’s when she and I began to plan. We were careful, but not careful enough. I think Hawthorne probably suspected that she had spoken to me in the summer. I’m sure that’s when he began his surveillance using Romero and others. There are three of them in London now who used to work for Hawthorne’s father. Check them out sometime.”
He took a deep swallow of his whisky, which seemed to steady him. “Anyway. As soon as Hawthorne realized what was happening, that he was actually under threat of exposure, he acted fast. He had us both watched all the time. He made that donation, he called in those doctors, and they filled Lise up with Christ knows what—stimulants, sedatives, tranquilizers. Injections before breakfast, lunch, and dinner, injections every night before bed. Pills, capsules; nurses in constant attendance. It was terrifying. I managed to get Lise to see a doctor I knew—”
“Ah, yes,” Pascal said evenly. “The one your sister recommended. It was mentioned on the tape you gave Jenkins.”
“Was it? I don’t recall. He took blood tests. I wanted proof of what they were doing to Lise. He was horrified. I have his name and number—I knew you’d need it. It’s here.” He took a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and passed it across. Pascal glanced at it then put it away without comment.
“Go on,” he said.
“Obviously”—McMullen’s manner became more hesitant now—“it affected Lise’s behavior, that cocktail of drugs. I could see it affecting her as the weeks went by. It made her forgetful. Sometimes I’d talk to her, and she’d be nervous, febrile, very strung out, talking too fast. At other times I could hardly get through to her at all. I would manage to meet her, and”—his face contracted—“it would be like talking to an automaton. As if she were in a trance. I can’t tell you how appalling that was. But there was nothing I could do. I had to wait. We had to be able to prove Hawthorne actually met those women every month, the way he said he did. I thought, maybe, if we could just trace one of those women, persuade her to talk, pay her to talk if necessary, that would be enough. But Nicholas Jenkins wouldn’t agree. He said if we could get that testimony, fine—but it wasn’t enough. If it came to a court case, and it could, that kind of witness was too unreliable; call girls always went down badly with juries. The lawyers at the News wouldn’t even pass the story for publication on that basis. There would have to be more. The meetings had to be documented, photographed—” He paused, and looked at Pascal. “That’s when he suggested using you.”
“Really?” Pascal gave him a long, measured look. “It was Jenkins who originally suggested my name?”
“I think so.” McMullen gave a quick, dismissive gesture. “I forget now exactly who mentioned you first. I knew of your work, in any case. When I was in the army, I’d seen your war photographs. I’d admired them. I knew very vaguely of the kind of work you did now….”
He broke off. Pascal said nothing more. Gini watched McMullen closely. He had, she thought, just told his first lie. Up until then she had been convinced that everything he said he deeply believed to be true. Yet he lied about something minor, almost irrelevant. Why?
McMullen looked at his watch again. He rose to his feet, adjusted the heater, replaced the whisky bottle on its shelf. He turned back to look at them.
“So,” he said in a new brisk way, “that brings you virtually up-to-date. I was waiting for Lise to discover the address of the house Hawthorne intended to use next time. He said nothing in October, nothing in November. Oh, he discussed the women—what he liked to make them do, how he’d selected them, from where—”
“How did he do that?” Gini asked. She sprang the question, and McMullen fixed her again with that slow blue stare.
“I thought you might have discovered that. By now.”
“Possibly. But I’d like to know your version.”
“He used agencies, and contacts of his own. He had them send round photographs. At least, that’s what he told Lise. Neither she nor I know if that is true. He showed her some pictures once, of some of the girls. He asked her to select one of them for him.” His voice was ice cold. “That was fairly typical of the way he operated. He hit Lise when she refused.”
“Did he often do that?” Pascal asked coolly. “Was physical violence often used?”
McMullen flushed scarlet. “Yes, it damned well was. Do I have to spell out what he’s put Lise through? It sickens me even to think of it. If you think I’m going to be cross-examined on that sort of detail…I won’t be. It disgusts me. You understand?”
“It isn’t irrelevant,” Gini said quietly. She glanced at Pascal, who nodded. “Neither of us wants to press you on this. But you have to understand, all this is hearsay. All right, maybe that doctor can confirm that Lise was on a regimen of different drugs. But even that in itself isn’t conclusive. You must see, the central difficulty here is lack of proof. Lise could have administered those drugs herself, quite willingly. We only have Lise’s word for any of this—the former infidelities, Hawthorne’s physical and mental cruelty, even the stories of his sexual encounters.” She paused. “We’ve been working on this for just over a week now, and we’ve put together a lot of evidence. But most of what we have is circumstantial. We still have no absolute proof that Hawthorne actually did make monthly appointments with these blondes.”
There was a long silence. McMullen was very angry, she could see, and fighting to control that anger. He gave her a cold, hostile look.
“I see. You’re calling Lise a liar, in other words?”
“No. I’m not calling anyone a liar. I don’t doubt for a moment the sincerity of what you say. But you must surely see—”
“No, I do not see,” he interrupted, his voice rising. “You’re here to provide the proof, to document those meetings. That’s your damn job, not mine. Lise can do nothing. She’s a virtual prisoner now. I’m a virtual prisoner. I can’t stay in one place for any length of time. I have to keep moving on. I have a few friends to help me—” he broke off. “Like the person you spoke to today. I cannot risk using a telephone. I have to watch my back all the time. …I tried to contact you before—you do realize that, do you? Not the postcard I sent—I actually risked coming to your flat late at night.”
“Three days ago? That was you?”
“Yes. It was. I came to the front of your house. The lights were still on….” He hesitated. “And there was someone else there, moving around at the rear of the house. I could hear them. I had to leave. I’ve tried my damnedest to help you both on this, but there’s a limit to what I can do. For Lise’s sake, I have to stay alive.” His voice had now become heated; Pascal slid his next question in under this angry and indignant tirade.
“In that case,” he said, “why come here, so close to Hawthorne’s country home. Isn’t that a little unwise?”
The question brought McMullen up short. He gave them both a hard look. “I’m careful. This suits my purposes. I have friends nearby. Will you excuse me a moment?” He checked his watch again as he said this, and moved swiftly to the outside door. He went out, without further explanation, and closed it behind him.
In silence, Pascal and Gini looked at each other. She said in a low voice, “Do you believe him, Pascal?”
Pascal glanced toward the door. He was listening intently for sounds outside. He gave a noncommittal gesture. He said very quietly, “I’m not sure.”
“He’s very volatile.”
“Yes. And very tense. But that isn’t surprising, in the circumstances.” He frowned. “I’d like to know why he’s so anxious about the time. What’s he doing out there?”
“God knows. I can’t hear a sound.”
“I can.” Pascal raised a finger to his lips. “He’s just outside the door now.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Play it by ear, Gini. We know one thing. He hasn’t finished. There’s more.”
When McMullen returned to the room, it was at once evident that he had calmed. His manner was now much as it had been when they’d first arrived—brisk, cold, and impersonal. He made no further pretense of including Gini in any of his remarks. He ignored her completely, and addressed himself to Pascal.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There was something I had to check. I’ve had time to think, as well. I realize, I should have shown you this at once, before I began speaking about Lise.”
He crossed the room, bent, and deftly unlaced the army rucksack. From it, he took out a heavy folder. He straightened, and looked directly at Pascal.
“I should have realized,” he continued. “I value discipline. I’m so used to military discipline that I can forget there are other kinds as well. Journalists have their own disciplines. You have them. I’ve seen the results in your case—and as I said, I admire them. I saw the pictures you took in the Falklands War, and you captured what it was like out there.” He paused, and gave an ironic gesture. “You’re very good at photographing hells….”
Pascal gave him a sharp glance. “You served in the Falklands? With the Parachute Regiment?”
“I’m sure you’ll have already checked that. Not with the Parachute Regiment. No.”
His jaw clenched, and they could both see that any further probings into McMullen’s military career would go unanswered. He opened the folder. “Because you’re very good at that,” he continued, “I’d like you to look at these pictures. They were taken in Vietnam twenty-five years ago. Before your time.”
He moved across to the table and began taking a series of black and white photographs from the folder. He laid them neatly down on the table, like playing cards, with as little emotion as if he had been dealing cards. Pascal moved across. Gini half rose, hesitated, then sat down again in her chair. Both men now had their backs to her.
“The name of this village was My Nuc,” McMullen continued in the same flat, efficient tone. “This is what was left of it after John Hawthorne’s platoon withdrew. Before they arrived, fifty people lived in that village. All of them noncombatants. Most of them were women and children. There were some elderly men. This gives you an indication.”
He continued to slap down pictures on the table. “One middle-aged woman and one twelve-year-old boy escaped and survived. The other forty-eight were all killed. The village huts were burned. Even the babies were killed. This girl here…” He put down another picture.
“She was the sister of the woman who escaped. Before they did that to her”—he pointed down at the picture—“she was raped fifteen times. Every man in the platoon took his turn. The sergeant was Frank Romero. He found a novel way of holding her down. He drove those pegs through her ankles and her hands. John Hawthorne stood next to her and watched. He was the senior officer there, he was in command, so I imagine he could have gone first, had he wanted to do so. He didn’t He chose to go last. When it was over, she was half dead anyway. You see how dusty the soil is? Well, that’s what they used next. They filled her nose and her mouth with sand. Then they finished her off with a shot in the back of the neck. While they did that, John Hawthorne watched, the whole time.”
McMullen moved off a little way. Pascal continued to stare at the photographs. Gini did not move.
“I know you’ll have witnessed similar obscenities,” McMullen continued, his voice still flat and quiet. “They happen, in war. When they happen, there are disciplinary systems designed to deal with them. But in this case, no disciplinary action was taken. There was no court-martial, nothing. But that’s not surprising, because no accusations were ever made. Hawthorne’s platoon was finally air-lifted out from a place three miles away. Those actually there were the only people who knew what had taken place at My Nuc—and as long as they remained silent, they were safe. If any evidence was ever discovered on the ground, it could always be blamed on the Vietcong. Originally, there were forty men in that platoon, together with one journalist. But they’d been cut off, and under heavy fire for days. By the time they moved in on My Nuc, the journalist was still alive, and so were fifteen other men, including Hawthorne and Romero. The last two are still alive, obviously, and the journalist is too. But would you like to know what happened to those thirteen others? I’ll tell you. Five of them were subsequently killed in action. That left eight. All eight returned to America in due course, and within a short time of their return, every one of them died. Some of them survived a few months back home, and a couple of them survived for over a year. But they all died eventually. An automobile accident in Louisiana, an overdose in Washington State, one died in a shooting incident in a gas station, another from a faulty blood transfusion, one drowned. Not one single one of them died from natural causes. They died in California, Missouri, New Jersey…you can check. All their details are in this file.”
He put the folder down on the table next to Pascal.
“What does that suggest to you? That Hawthorne and Romero both lived—and the rest all died? It suggests to me that Hawthorne and his ever-protective father lived up to their reputations for efficiency, and that John Hawthorne reaped the benefit. That I cannot prove. But this”—he gestured to the photographs—“this can be proved. Hawthorne’s was the only unit in that area at the time. And the woman and the boy who escaped would testify. They saw this happen. They are still both alive.”
Pascal heard emotion begin to break through in McMullen’s voice. He continued to look down at the pictures, which indeed were similar to others he had seen in the past, and to others which he himself had once taken: They were close, very close, to the images that rose up in his dreams. He felt a profound pity for McMullen then, to have nursed and pursued this all these years.
He looked across at him. “Tell me,” Pascal said quietly. “What is your connection with this?” He gestured to the pictures. “You can’t have been more than twenty when this happened, and you can’t have been in Vietnam.”
It was not the most honest of questions, given the information he already had, but McMullen seemed unaware of that. He was gazing away across the room.
“It was 1968. I was eighteen,” he said. “That year I was in Paris first, then Oxford. The raid on My Nuc actually happened while I was at Oxford. My first term.”
“And your connection? There must be one?” Pascal said gently.
McMullen’s mouth tightened. He jerked his face away. “I knew the woman in those photographs. The woman Romero killed. I had never met her sister—the one who escaped. But I was able to make contact with her, later, in later years.”
“Would you like to tell me how you knew the woman here?”
“No. I wouldn’t. I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”
“All right. Then would you like to tell me who took these photographs?”
“His name is in that file. He is Vietnamese, obviously. It was his job to document that kind of atrocity. His unit arrived there two days after Hawthorne’s platoon pulled out. He’s still alive also. He now lives in Ho Chi Minh City.”
“There were other witnesses?”
“To the aftermath? Yes. Their names are also there.”
“Have you made any attempt before to make this allegation public?”
“Yes. I have. I wrote to several American senators, toward the end of the war. When the war was over, I made one further attempt. I approached a newspaper.”
“And you weren’t believed?”
“No. They didn’t even make any investigation, except of the most cursory kind. They told me the pictures came from a suspect source—the former enemy, in other words. Hawthorne was a congressman by then. No. I wasn’t believed.”
“Anyone else?” It was Gini who spoke now. She rose. “Why didn’t you make contact with the journalist who was cut off with that platoon? He was a living witness, after all….”
“I did make contact with him.” McMullen met her gaze with a cold blue stare. “I wrote to your father three times. You can ask him. He replied once, to the final letter. He informed me I was wrong. The next time I wrote, the reply came via his lawyers. I didn’t write again.”
There was a silence. Pascal quietly began to gather up the pictures and return them to their envelope. Gini continued to look straight at McMullen.
“Why did you never mention this aspect of the story to Jenkins?”
“Because I knew what would happen if I did. I’d be dismissed as a lunatic, the way I was before. Who gives a damn about something that happened twenty-five years ago in some little village on the other side of the world?”
“Oh, I see. Whereas if you came to my paper with a sexual scandal about an eminent man, everyone would leap to attention—is that it?”
“Didn’t you?” McMullen replied coldly. “Didn’t Jenkins? Didn’t Appleyard?”
“Did you plan it that way?” Gini’s voice had sharpened, and Pascal swung around.
“Gini…” he began on a warning note, and put a restraining hand on her arm.
“No. Let’s just take a closer look at this…” Gini pushed his hand aside and faced McMullen. “You fed us precisely the kind of story designed to make us sit up and pay attention. It was lurid enough. You then lent credence to that story by organizing that whole parcels fiasco, on which Pascal and I wasted an immense amount of time and as a direct result of which three people died. Why? What was the point of that if it wasn’t just to wind us up further? You deliberately made it look as if Hawthorne might have sent those parcels—”
“Gini.” Pascal moved between her and McMullen. “Not now.”
“This is pointless. And I don’t have the time.” McMullen was already moving away.
Gini thrust herself between him and the door. “Then you can damn well make the time,” she said. “We’ve waited long enough for this meeting. Doesn’t it occur to you that we might like to ask some questions? Or are we just supposed to accept all this because you tell us it’s so? So far, you’ve produced the name of one doctor, and that’s all. You’ve produced photographs that could have been taken anywhere in Southeast Asia at any time—”
“That’s not all I’ve produced.” McMullen had come to a halt in front of her, Pascal just to his side. “You haven’t even looked at the other evidence in there. There are statements, testimonies, eyewitness accounts.” His voice was choked with emotion. “What does it take to convince you people of anything! You’ve witnessed what Hawthorne is. You’ve witnessed three deaths. Do you need any more?”
“Stop this.” Pascal moved swiftly between them. “Can’t you see? You’re both wrong and you’re both right. This achieves nothing—”
“No. Nothing at all,” McMullen interrupted. He attempted to push Pascal to one side, but Pascal held his ground. “I was a fool to believe either of you would help,” McMullen went on, “least of all her.” He gestured angrily at Gini. “You’re like every other damn journalist I’ve ever met. Cynical. Blasé. You wouldn’t recognize the truth if you saw it with your own eyes. I’m wasting my time. We’re leaving. Now.”
“No. We are not leaving.” Pascal moved Gini to one side and stood blocking the door. His voice was suddenly very cold. “You can listen to me first, before we do. It’s not our job to help you publish allegations. It’s our job to discover the truth. And we’ve been trying to do that, for eight days. You have no right to speak to Gini in that way. You know what she’s been through this past week? Obscene phone calls at night, her apartment ransacked, and yesterday, when you had her chasing around the museum—”
“Don’t, Pascal. Leave it. There’s no point.”
“Oh, but there is.” Pascal swung back to look at McMullen, his eyes angry and his face set and pale. “You think someone feels cynical, blasé, do you, when they’re threatened in that way? Sent handcuffs anonymously. Then sent further identical parcels. Parcels that contain a pair of shoes that fits them exactly? Or a black silk stocking? Or has a man on the phone in the middle of the night when the lights have failed, talking filth, describing what she’s wearing at the exact moment he calls? You think Gini takes that in her stride, just dismisses it? Well, think again. And don’t speak to her that way.”
There was silence. McMullen stepped back. He gave a gesture of bewilderment.
“Shoes? Stockings? What phone calls? I don’t understand. What happened while we were at the museum yesterday?”
“Someone broke into my apartment, again.” Gini spoke flatly, and turned away. “I have a cat. I had a cat. They strangled him. Then…they hung him up on a hook on the back of the door. That’s what they did. Someone did. And Pascal’s right. When I found him, I didn’t feel blasé. You know what I felt?” She rounded on McMullen again. “I felt angry. The same way I felt when I walked into that Venice apartment and saw the way two men had been killed. I could have backed off from this damn story anytime I chose. So could Pascal. But neither of us did. Why in hell do you think we’re here now? Because we do want to know the truth. And because neither of us intends to give up until we do.”
McMullen had moved farther off as she spoke, though he listened intently. When she had finished, he hesitated, then turned away. He bent and relaced the rucksack, moved across, and turned off the heater.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a stiff way. “I knew none of that. I had nothing to do with it. I sent the four parcels as an interim measure. A way of giving you a trail, a lead, a way of keeping you both on the story until I could make contact with you. I had no idea what the repercussions would be, and I had no idea then that it would take this long to see you. I’m sorry, but I’ve told you all I know. There’s nothing more I can add. I have no astonishing proofs to produce. I give you my word that everything I’ve told you about John Hawthorne I believe to be true. And now I have no more time. I’ll drive you both back to Oxford. I have to go.”
He spoke in a cold, clipped, final way. It was evident that further argument would be wasted. He moved across to the door, switched off the lights, then opened it. He had parked his car so it faced back down the slope of the track. When they were inside it, he slipped the gears into neutral and allowed the car to coast down to the road without lights. There, he switched them on, and started the engine. Only when they were beyond Hawthorne’s village, and approaching the main road back into Oxford, did he speak again.
“You said you had questions,” he began. “Ask them now.”
Gini was about to speak, but Pascal restrained her with a quick touch of the hand.
“I have a question. When Jenkins first suggested Gini for this story, did you know who her father was?”
“Not at first, no. I noticed the similarity in the name—but it’s a common enough surname. Then, later on”—he glanced back at Gini—“Jenkins mentioned that you had indirect links to the Hawthornes, through your stepmother. He said you were American. Finally he mentioned your father’s name.” He paused. “He was trying to sell me on the idea of using you. I was opposed to the idea of a woman working on it. I’d told him so.”
“And when you realized who Gini was, why didn’t you block the idea? You must have known then that you intended to produce this evidence.” He indicated the folder, which McMullen had handed to him silently as they walked out to the car. “It must have worried you, that connection, surely? You must have known that Gini would react badly to the suggestion that her father was part of a cover-up?”
“Of course it occurred to me. But Jenkins said she never saw her father. He said they were estranged, that they hadn’t been in contact for years. By the time he mentioned all this, events were moving fast. It was mid-December. I had to make a decision quickly. Besides, the writer seemed less important at that stage. What we had to do first was get the photographic proof of Hawthorne’s activities. Once it was proved what kind of man he is, I thought any honest journalist would be prepared to investigate him and his family properly—expose it all, right back to those events in Vietnam. That’s what I believed. Until tonight.” His voice hardened. “Now, of course, I’m beginning to see that I was wrong.”
Gini leaned forward between the two seats.
“In that case,” she said quietly, “I’ll spell one thing out for you. If we ever prove your current allegations about John Hawthorne, if there proves to be any truth in this story about blondes, I won’t stop there, and neither will Pascal. We’ll go back and investigate everything. I’ll take Hawthorne’s past apart. Believe me or not—I don’t give a damn. But this matters to me. Hawthorne is an American politician. I’m an American. Born in the U.S.A. I care.”
McMullen did not answer her. She saw his eyes flick up and fix on her in the rearview mirror. He shifted gears fast, and took them up onto the dual highway into Oxford, a different route, Gini noted, from the one he had taken before. She watched him make these maneuvers. She could just see the side of his face, and his hands gripping the wheel.
“Meantime,” she continued, “there are some questions I want to ask. Concerning the sending of those four original parcels. Let’s assume for the moment that the further two sent were part of a campaign of intimidation. But about those four—”
“Do we have to go over this?” McMullen sounded irritable. “Why? Is it that important? I already told you, it was a stopgap, a ploy. Why don’t you concentrate on Hawthorne? He’s your story, not me.”
“Even so. I don’t understand Appleyard’s exact involvement. Why did you use him to contact Lorna Munro?”
“I had to be careful with Appleyard,” he replied. “I’d tried to get him off the story, but he wouldn’t leave it alone. Once Jenkins was involved, I had to find a way of keeping Appleyard quiet. I hoped to hold him off until Jenkins’s story ran. All he knew was that John Hawthorne had a weakness for blond-haired women. Appleyard thought Lorna Munro would be meeting Hawthorne, and that I’d report to him on Hawthorne’s reaction. He paused. “I think ‘honey-trap’ was his term.”
“I see.” Gini waited, but McMullen said nothing more. “So you decided to use the parcels ploy, as you call it. When exactly?”
“After I left London. I planned it then. I’ve already told you. I can see it was foolish. I regret it now.”
“Did you plan it on your own?”
“Yes, I did. Why?”
“It just seems—feminine in some ways. I wouldn’t expect a man to get the details right as you did. The clothes Lorna Munro wore, for instance…”
“Oh, that was simple. I happened to be visiting my sister earlier that month. I’d glanced at her magazines. I’d seen that issue of Vogue.”
Gini said nothing. Another lie, she thought, more definite this time; his sister had told Pascal she had not seen McMullen since the summer of the previous year. “But it must have been quite difficult to set up, surely,” she pressed on. “To obtain that coat, the necklace, the Chanel suit—”
“It wasn’t that difficult. Not at all.” His eyes flicked again to the rearview mirror. He pulled out into the fast lane. Gini waited.
“In that case,” she said. “Who called Chanel?”
“I’m sorry? Wait just a minute, will you? We’re coming up to the Headington roundabout. The traffic’s heavy here.”
He accelerated onto the Oxford ring road at the roundabout, and then turned off and began weaving his way through a network of back streets toward the center of town. He still had not answered her question. Gini glanced at Pascal, whose silence now she found surprising. His gaze was fixed straight ahead. He gave no indication that he was even listening to this at all.
“Look,” Gini leaned forward again. “I’m sorry to press the point, but I need to know. You see, I…”
“Leave it, Gini,” Pascal turned around. He spoke lightly, but he caught hold of her hand and pressed it hard against his seat back, as if in warning. “Leave it, there isn’t time.” He glanced across at McMullen. “These details concern us,” he went on, addressing him, “because we spent a great deal of time checking them out. I am now sure that Gini and I have been under surveillance from day one. I think our phone calls and conversations have been listened to much of the time. Now, that may explain certain aspects of what’s happened, but it doesn’t explain it all. Why, for instance, if you intended us to follow that parcels trail, did you send a package addressed to Venice, to yourself?”
“I told you. Originally, I hoped to meet you both there. My main desire was to keep you on the story, to keep you occupied, and keep you keen.”
“All right. Then how did Appleyard know about that apartment in Venice? Who gave him the address? He went there before you even sent the parcels.”
“I don’t know.” McMullen seemed glad to have moved away from the question of Lorna Munro’s clothes. He gave every appearance now of trying genuinely to help them. “I never gave him that address, though the apartment is mine. I’ve rented it for years. I can only think that someone tipped Appleyard off, told him he might find me there. He couldn’t trace me in London, he wouldn’t leave the story alone. So he went there—and got himself killed.”
“So who tipped him off? This would have been just after Christmas. John Hawthorne?”
“Not in person, obviously. He would have used one of his men—Frank Romero possibly. The Palazzo Ossorio address was in Lise’s address book—I know that. She’s written to me there in the past. Years ago. Also, I had been in Venice. I went there directly when I left England. Possibly I was followed, or traced. I’m not sure. I knew it was not safe to stay there long. I was there only a day, maybe a day and a half. Then I moved on.”
“Would you like to tell us where?”
“No.”
“In that time—at any point between leaving London and now—were you able to make contact with Lise? You must have been very eager to see her.”
“I was desperate to see her, but it was impossible. No.”
McMullen’s manner had altered the instant Pascal mentioned Lise’s name. He seemed agitated, and his driving became slightly erratic. He almost missed one stop sign; he took a corner too fast. He then slowed, and turned into the heart of Oxford.
“Is that all?” he said. “Are there more of these questions? We’re almost back at Paradise Square now. I’ll drop you there.”
“Yes, there is one,” Pascal said thoughtfully. “You and Lise Hawthorne—you may not like this question. …”
McMullen stiffened. “I’ve already told you,” he began, “Lise and I were never more than friends. If you knew Lise, you would understand. Once she was married—she believes in the marriage vows. No matter what I might have felt, anything other than friendship was ruled out, was out of the question entirely. I…”
“That wasn’t what I was asking, or implying,” Pascal answered quietly. “But you mentioned the question of bias earlier. You don’t have to be a woman’s lover to love her, after all. On that tape of your phone conversation, you address Lise in a way a man doesn’t usually address a friend.”
“I know.”
McMullen gave a sigh. He slowed the car, and turning into the deserted High Street, he drew up outside All Saints’ Church. In the city, the mist was much thicker than in the country beyond. Fog drifted, then cleared. McMullen switched off the engine. There was a silence, and Gini realized that his hands were trembling. He was gripping the wheel more tightly to hide this. His back and shoulders were rigid with tension.
“I love Lise. I have loved her for many years.” McMullen spoke suddenly, in a low voice, his face averted from them both. “The love I feel for her has grown with time, despite our separation. I’ve never told her what I feel—well, I don’t need to, of course. Lise must know. She can hear it in my voice. Read it in my eyes. I’ve only ever loved two women in my life, so, it’s not an inconsiderable thing. But there’s been no…no impropriety, ever. If Lise could divorce, if it weren’t for her religion—but she can’t. That’s out of the question. So if you’re suggesting that I’m using all this as a means of freeing Lise from her husband—anything of that nature—the answer is no. I may hate Hawthorne, but I would never invent lies about him in order to better my own chances with Lise. I have no chances, not while he’s alive. Besides”—he turned to look at Pascal—“although you don’t know me, and have no reason to believe me, I would never harm Hawthorne for personal motives. I’m not that kind of man.”
Here, suddenly, was the McMullen that both Jenkins and McMullen’s sister had described. Gini looked at him intently. It was less naivete, she thought, than a simple, impressive conviction. He spoke with quiet sincerity, and she did not for one second doubt him. Pascal was similarly convinced, she could see that. He looked at McMullen as if, for the first time, he both liked him and felt a kinship with him.
“As to what my motivations are…” McMullen was frowning now, staring into the misty street in front of him. “I’ve asked myself that question many times. I asked it twenty-five years ago, and I still ask it. For the sake of my own self-respect, if nothing else, I had to be sure why I felt it right to expose Hawthorne for what he is. The answer is that I want to protect Lise and her sons. But beyond that, I have this old-fashioned belief in truth. I don’t like to see a man in his position get away with years of lies.”
Leaning behind him as he spoke, he opened the rear door. It was evident the interview was over. McMullen waited until they were both out of the car, then wound down his window.
“I’ve almost forgotten the most important thing of all.” He gave an agitated gesture. “Your leads, if you have them. What you intend to do…”
Gini began to reply, but Pascal interrupted her fast.
“We have the leads we need,” he said. “As far as next Sunday is concerned, we know the details of Hawthorne’s assignation. We know how and where he chose the women concerned. We know the time and place of meeting. I shall take the necessary photographs.”
McMullen seemed surprised. Gini, who was astonished, kept quiet. Pascal could be impressive when he lied.
“You’re sure?” McMullen stared at him. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“Maybe I trusted you less earlier.” Pascal gave a shrug.
McMullen hesitated, then glanced down at the clock on his dashboard. “I have to go. I must go.” He paused. “We may be able to meet again. After Sunday…” An odd, sad expression came into his face. “When this is all over. I hope…I should like you to know how much I owe you. I must have seemed very ungrateful, rude, earlier.”
“That’s all right,” Pascal replied. “When it’s over, we can meet. If thanks are in order, you can thank us then.”
“Then?” McMullen looked at him blankly. The fog drifted between them. Then McMullen recovered. “Ah, then. When it’s over. Yes, of course. I must leave now. Good-bye…”
Without further words, he closed the window, started the engine, and pulled away. They stood, watching his car disappear into the distance. Fog obscured its taillights. The noise of its engine faded. Pascal gave a sigh, and looked at Gini.
“What a strange man,” he said. “What a very, very strange man.”