GINI SLEPT FOR THREE hours. She woke at six, and at once rose. She drew back the curtains; outside it was still dark. She washed and pulled on some clothes quickly, then padded down the stairs.
In the kitchen the dogs greeted her, whimpering, and thumping their tails. No one else was up, not even the children; the whole house was quiet. She boiled some water on the peculiar Aga stove that Charlotte swore by, and made herself some instant coffee. Her hands were unsteady, and her heart was beating very fast. It was now three days since she had last spoken to Pascal. It was six-thirty here, seven-thirty in Sarajevo.
She padded through to Max’s study, which he had said she should use, closed the door, and stared at the telephones. In this room Max had installed all the hi-tech paraphernalia of the modern world. There was a Macintosh, a plain-paper fax machine, a laptop which he used when traveling, and two separate phone lines. Both phones had answering machines, and Pascal had both numbers. Max must have switched them to answer mode before he went to bed; two unwinking red lights met her gaze. During the night no one had called for Max, or for her.
She sat down and began punching in the number. She got through to the hotel on the third try. It rang for a long time. She could see the hotel lobby as she waited, see the press of journalists and TV crews and cameramen who would already be assembling there at this hour. She could see the stairs, and the elevators that rarely worked; she could see the room she and Pascal had shared. It was ugly, brown and orange; it had a 1970s picture window with antiblast tape on the glass.
“Lie beside me. Let me hold you,” Pascal had said the day they returned from the hospital in Mostar. She had done as he bid. She lay in his arms, trembling. Tomorrow she would have to file her account of this particular incident. She could hear words in her head, and they all sounded hollow. She stared across the room at the window. Outside, the light was failing. She was beyond exhaustion, also afraid to close her eyes.
“Tell me what you saw. Tell me what you thought.” Pascal stroked her hair very gently. It was still long, still uncut. He pushed it back from her face and made her turn toward him. “Darling, you have to do that. If you shut it away inside yourself, you’ll never be free of it. Gini, please believe me. I know.”
“You know what I saw.” She found it hard to shape the words. “You saw it too.”
“No.” He took her hand quietly in his. “In that situation, no two people see exactly the same thing.”
She allowed herself to look at him then. She could see the fatigue in his much-loved face; she could see regret and resignation but also strength in his eyes. Whatever I have seen, she thought, he has seen worse—many, many times.
“Gini, it isn’t a cure, I’m not saying that.” His hand tightened around hers. “There is no cure. You know that. You live with me. Once that door’s unlocked, you can never close it again. There’s a divide, Gini, between people who’ve been through that doorway and those who have not. I warned you of this before.”
“I know you did.”
“But for us there’s no divide.” He drew her toward him. “Gini, don’t create one. Tell me, darling. Let me see what you saw.”
So Gini tried. She tracked it, that former municipal building, on the outskirts of Mostar, a place surrounded by the shells of buildings, a place that had, for the past two months, housed the city’s improvised hospital wards.
They had been in the long room reserved for the seriously injured. At one end were the soldiers, at the other, civilians. There were only a few children in this ward, and Gini, entering it, had been relieved. She had been interviewing a nurse, then one of the local doctors, who had been up all night operating on patients without benefit of anesthetic. She was joined by one of the volunteer doctors, a Frenchman Pascal knew from Médecins sans Frontières. With him had come a much-needed supply of painkillers and antibiotics. Gini helped him unpack these, then allowed him to lead her over to the end bed. He introduced her to the ten-year-old boy who lay there, for whom he had brought a chocolate bar. Both the boy’s parents had been killed two weeks before. The boy’s leg had been amputated at the knee; his right arm had sustained a minor shrapnel wound. By his bed crouched his seven-year-old sister, who refused to be parted from him. She was physically unhurt, but had spoken to no one except her brother for fourteen days.
Gini sat by the boy and talked to him, the French doctor translating. The pain and compassion she felt were so deep, they felt as eloquent as any language. The conversation faltered to an end; she hoped, passionately hoped, that this boy, with his thin face and dark, watchful eyes, would understand the concern for him she felt, even if that concern was useless and could bring him no ease.
Throughout the conversation the boy’s sister never once raised her head. She shivered continually; she clutched her brother’s hand. The doctor, seeing Gini’s expression, intervened. He said a few words, then drew her back down the length of the ward, and into a corridor beyond. In the distance, somewhere, as always, guns boomed. The doctor was thin, bearded, about five years younger than she was. He looked at her closely.
“How long have you been here?”
“Three months. Nearly four.”
“Then listen to me. That boy will survive. So will his sister. Now that we have penicillin, his wound will heal.”
Gini looked back over her shoulder. Pascal, his face grim, was moving toward the boy’s end of the ward. She said: “Survive? He has no parents. No home. He’s ten years old. You saw his eyes.”
She covered her face with her hands. The young doctor continued to watch her quietly.
“Nonetheless. He’ll survive. You cannot get emotionally involved—you do realize that, don’t you?” He hesitated. “I never ask their circumstances. I prefer not to know their names. I just make sure they get bandages, medication, because otherwise, they’ll die. That’s my function. Your function—”
“Mine?” Gini jerked up to look at him. She was crying, and no longer cared who saw the tears. “My function? What in God’s name is my function? I feel useless—worse than useless. I feel like a voyeur.”
“That’s predictable. It will pass.” He glanced away, some sound outside catching his attention. There was the noise of running footsteps, a shout, then quiet. Moving away from the window, the doctor took her arm.
“You have a function,” he said. “Ask Pascal. You elicit sympathy. Indignation.” He gave her a cool glance. “Then people write checks. Politicians feel pressured. And over here”—he glanced around again, frowning—“we get the mercy flights. The relief doctors. The supplies. That’s your function. To write. So do it. Describe this godforsaken place. Make people see it. Describe that child.”
“It’s not enough.” Gini began to turn away. “It’s inadequate. You know that.”
“You have a better suggestion? Can you nurse? You have a medical degree?”
He continued speaking, Gini thought for a fraction of a second after that, though she could not hear his words. Swinging back toward him, she saw his face change as the air went dark. Something warm, moving fast, brushed her skin, broke them apart, picked them up as if they were weightless, and tossed them to the ground. There was a long, slow, wallowing sound, then that deep, sucking exhalation she had come to fear. She could hear the crush of masonry falling, then silence, then running footsteps, then screams.
Thirty seconds? Sixty seconds? She groped her way across the corridor, crawled to the entrance to the ward. Dust billowed, curled into her throat and eyes, then slowly began to thin and settle. One section of the ward was missing. The three beds at the far end of it were missing. The boy she had been with not five minutes earlier was gone, and so was his sister. For one long, silent moment of stupefaction and agony, she thought: and so is Pascal.
She helped to clear that fallen masonry, clawing at the powdery stone; she knew enough by now to know there was very little hope, and Pascal, safe, uninjured, working beside her, also knew this. When it was clear to them both that no miracle had occurred, he rose, drew her to her feet, and led her away.
Lying on that bed in the hotel room, back in Sarajevo, she tried to spell this out to him. She wanted to say: why? Why did the two doctors survive, and the nurse, and the other patients, and you and I? Why could that boy not have been spared, the boy and his sister? In the end, that was all she could say: one last, long, impotent why.
Pascal waited until she had finished speaking. His arms tightened around her. He wiped the tears from her cheeks and kissed her closed eyes.
“Why? Because it’s random,” he said at last, quietly. “Because it’s always random and arbitrary. An old woman will be spared, a young child will die. A soldier who raped two women the previous day will survive, and some innocent bystander will not. Gini, don’t try to find shape and meaning in this. There is none.”
“There’s no God.” With a sudden furious gesture she rose from the bed and turned away. “No God. Cannot be. I see that now.”
“Not one that I would want to worship. No.” Pascal watched her in silence. She began to weep bitterly, burying her face in her hands.
“I want that boy back,” Pascal heard her say. She choked on her words. “I want—that doctor said he’d survive. Pascal…” She raised her face and swung around to look at him. “How can you bear this? How can you? How can you look at these things, year after year? I thought—if I steeled myself—I could—” She broke off and bent her head. “I can’t—I think… I can’t hope anymore.”
At that, Pascal rose and again took her in his arms. He waited until the storm of weeping ceased, and she grew calmer.
“I love you,” he said, lifting her face to his.
“I love you, and I know that you love me. That boy—was loved. You will remember him. I will remember him. Isn’t there some hope there?”
His voice, and his face, were grave. Gini, looking up, met the steadiness of his gaze. Unbidden and unexpected, and for the first time in weeks, a physical longing for him stabbed up through her body. It was like a cut from a knife, and it made her ashamed. Fighting it, she rested her face against his chest and listened to the beat of his heart.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Pascal said, and he was right: he did know a great deal of what she was thinking, though not perhaps all. “It’s so fragile—yes? And love is no protection. Death could always be around the next corner, not five minutes away?”
“Yes. That. And—”
“No justice.” He kissed her bent head, then sighed. “Oh, Gini, don’t you see? This is what I was trying to warn you about. I knew this would happen to you. And it’s the hardest thing of all….”
The number was still ringing in Sarajevo. They picked up finally on the twentieth ring. She was lucky this time, for often she obtained one of the desk clerks who spoke poor English. This time it was the nineteen-year-old, the one who prided himself on his grasp of idiom, acquired from years of watching American gangster films.
He said Pascal had checked out; he’d returned that morning at four and left again half an hour later. For two hours the previous evening he had been trying to reach her, but the lines had been bad again. But he had received some of her messages, it seemed, and he would call her, without fail, in the next twenty-four hours.
Gini’s hands were shaking. She replaced the receiver and buried her face in her hands. She knew what that message really meant, and why it had been made to sound reassuring. It meant Pascal had some lead. It meant he had set off somewhere more dangerous than Sarajevo, before light came. There was usually a lull in military activities in the early morning; there was less likelihood of snipers, or of a sudden bombardment, in the few hours before dawn.
She could feel the fear mounting, this terrible disabling panic that always seemed to attack her when she was least prepared. She made herself get up and leave the room. She made herself be active. Returning to the kitchen, she washed the few dishes Charlotte had left in the sink, then pulled on a coat and took the dogs for a short run.
She walked around the garden, and the orchard, her footsteps leaving prints in the frosted grass. She looked up at the fields and the bare hills beyond, and tried to tell herself that this state of mind and state of heart would pass. The random would not occur. Pascal would be safe, and soon, surely soon, he would return. They might even come here, as Charlotte had suggested. They could walk in the hills in the warmth of a summer evening. Just a few months, and this landscape would be transformed. The trees would be in leaf; there would be flowers in bloom. She would love Pascal, and he would love her, and they would be able to talk or be silent, and once again they would both be secure.
Except… She turned back to the house and let herself into the silent kitchen. She sat down at the table and stared unseeingly at the wall. Except: she would rather not have remembered, but she could not forget the conversation with Helen, Pascal’s ex-wife, that had taken place in London shortly before Christmas, four weeks before.
She had met Helen, a thin, brisk, dark-haired Englishwoman, on two occasions before that, both with Pascal. This conversation, over a lunch that had been Helen’s suggestion, had been the first the two women had ever had alone.
Helen had remarried earlier that year. Her new husband, whom she referred to as her good, safe Englishman, was a widower with three teenage children away at boarding school. He had inherited and ran a successful textile manufacturing company that had recently taken over a French silk-weaving business with headquarters in Paris and factories in Lyon. The modernization of this once-famous company now took up much of his time, Helen explained. As a result, she and Ralph had decided to postpone their search for the perfect English country house, and were going to spend the next six months at Ralph’s Paris apartment; this plan had benefits for everyone concerned.
Gini listened to all this numbly. Helen described the interior decorating she had embarked on in Paris. Not a stupid woman, she made no comment about Gini’s lack of animation, or on her appearance, which Gini knew was unimpressive, although she had tried very hard.
“It means, of course,” Helen went on, “that Marianne will be able to stay on for another six months at her French school. She’s been a little difficult about the move to England. I told Ralph—she adores him already, I knew she would—we don’t want to bombard her with too much change. To stay on in her old school, with her friends, just for a while… All in all it seemed the most practical plan. Pascal thought it was sensible too…”
“Oh.” Gini looked up. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, well. He and I discussed it briefly. Before the two of you left for Yugoslavia… Bosnia. Whatever one’s supposed to call it now. I expect he just forgot to mention it. You must both have had other things on your mind.”
She looked closely at Gini, who did not reply. She gestured to the waiter to bring more coffee.
“Do you mind if I speak frankly?” she said in an abrupt way, then hesitated. “This isn’t very easy to broach. I want you to know, what I’m going to say isn’t motivated by ill feeling or jealousy. It might have been once, but not now.”
“No, please. I understand.”
“I was married to Pascal for five years. We lived together before that. It may not have been a successful marriage, but I do know Pascal. I know him very well.”
Gini said nothing. She fixed her eyes on the chic scarlet cashmere sweater Helen was wearing; on the single string of pearls. Helen was around forty. She looked a decade younger, radiant, in charge of her life, on top of the world.
“Do you intend always working together, alongside each other? That might be one solution, I suppose.”
“No, we don’t,” Gini replied. “Not always, obviously. We had thought—when we can…”
“I don’t like the term workaholic,” Helen went on. “The word’s overused. It implies an addiction, obviously—but I never felt Pascal was addicted to his work. That would suggest passivity, a lack of willpower on his part—and no one would ever accuse Pascal of that, least of all me.” She gave a tight smile. “I’m sorry. I used to be a translator, as you know. I’m fussy about words.”
She paused thoughtfully, then frowned.
“I always thought Pascal was dedicated to his work, in an intense, almost priestly way. As if it were his vocation—you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. And it costs him a great deal.”
“Perhaps.” Helen pushed this suggestion aside. “For my part, I found that very hard to live with. Not at first, maybe. There was a certain glamour, you know. Pascal was becoming famous. I liked the drama of it all, sending letters off to remote places, trying to get a call through to some war zone. I gave several interviews, did you know that?” Her eyes flicked toward Gini’s. “People were intrigued by how it felt to be his wife. How I coped…” She made a face. “Of course Pascal didn’t approve. He was furious when I showed him the pictures. He always refused interviews. He’s never been interested in being a celebrity. Fame never interested him at all.”
Gini said nothing. She wished Helen had never mentioned war zones in that particular way. She could feel Bosnia very close, just the other side of this restaurant wall; another few minutes and she’d start to hear its sounds; all that desolation and pain would come swooping back to her. This was not normal, she told herself. She had to regain perspective. She forced herself to pay close attention to Helen’s words.
“Even before Marianne was born,” she went on, “there were difficulties. Pascal was away for months at a time. I had to go to parties, dinners, on my own. Of course, I’ve always been very independent, I didn’t really mind…” She gave a small frown.
“Perhaps, if Pascal had earned more money than he did then, it might have been better. We could have had a larger apartment. I could have entertained. It’s awfully easy to get left out, you know, if one’s a woman living alone. I did say to Pascal, he could have earned more—it would have been so easy. Advertising agencies were clamoring to use him. I used to tease him; I’d say, surely you can fit them in, darling, before the next war…”
She laughed, and glanced at Gini.
“I can see. You don’t approve. Maybe you’re more high-minded than I was. I really couldn’t see that it would do the least harm. Anyway, that’s beside the point. On the whole, we managed very well. It was different once Marianne was born.”
She paused, and her face became set.
“I had to manage, Gini, I had to manage entirely alone. Of course, our marriage was a little shaky by then. Even so, if Marianne was ill, if there was any problem at home, small or large, I had to cope with it. Ninety percent of the time Pascal was away. He was on a plane, in an airport, in some damn flea-bitten hotel in the back of beyond, where the switchboard didn’t work half the time, and if it did work, Pascal was never there… I coped. Not always very well. Sometimes, when he got back from Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, wherever, I’d try to explain. He’d never tell me what he’d been through in those places. He wouldn’t talk about it at all. And I didn’t really want to know. I mean, whatever horror he’d been through—there was nothing I could do. Of course, I knew it wasn’t tactful to start complaining about my little problems. I knew they’d seem petty to him. But I couldn’t stop myself. There’d be scenes, tears, pleas, recriminations, on my part. None of it made the slightest difference. He’d calm me down, then go off and catch the next plane.”
She paused, looking closely at Gini. “After a while it made me angry. Really terribly angry. I felt this fury all the time. If he’d had another woman, I think I could have coped better; at least that would have been commonplace, predictable. But my rival wasn’t a woman, it was his work. From my point of view”—her mouth tightened—“it became unacceptable. An absentee husband is one thing. An absentee father is another. Pascal adored Marianne, of course. When he was actually there, he was wonderful with her. But he simply couldn’t understand that devotion wasn’t enough. Has he changed, would you say?”
The question was sudden. Gini flushed scarlet.
“It’s very hard for him, obviously,” she began. “He’s trying to balance the things that matter most to him. Even in Sarajevo he thought about Marianne all the time. He wrote constantly, he telephoned. When he gets back, he—”
“That wasn’t really what I meant, as I think you know,” Helen said. “I wasn’t thinking of Marianne. I was thinking of you.”
Gini lowered her gaze. “We don’t have children,” she said in a quiet voice. “So it’s different for me.”
“Of course.” Helen looked at her, her expression doubtful. “Anyway, it’s not my business. I don’t want to interfere. Do you know when he’s coming back from Sarajevo?”
“No, not exactly. The situation changes every day. But soon. In a couple of weeks, probably.”
“Well, he’ll be back for Marianne’s birthday in January. That we can count upon,” Helen said, a slight edge in her voice. “There’s a fixed date anyway.”
“He’ll be home before that,” Gini said quickly. “He’ll come back for Christmas, I know.”
Helen said nothing. Looking at her face, Gini could tell she doubted the accuracy of that prediction—and of course, as it turned out, Helen was proved right. Pascal had not returned for Christmas. Indeed, his ex-wife knew him well.
“I’ll get the bill.” Helen had turned to wave at the waiter. “No. My treat. I insist. I’ll hope to see you again soon. Perhaps in Paris, for Marianne’s birthday? I’d like you to meet Ralph. I always think that these things are much simpler if they’re handled openly. There’s no reason why we can’t all be friends now.” She hesitated, and then to Gini’s great surprise reached across the table and pressed her hand.
“I like you, Gini. I didn’t expect to, but I do. I hope you know—Pascal deserves some happiness in his life. God knows he never found it with me. When I last saw him—he did seem so altered, so much better in every way. No bitterness, no anger—I could see how good you’ve been for him, and I was glad. It’s just—”
“What?”
“My dear, you don’t look terribly well, you know.”
“I’m fine. I picked up some bug in Sarajevo. I’m fine now.”
“Good.” Helen smiled. “Well, tell Pascal to take care of you. Don’t let him get too obsessive—after all, you are supposed to be living together now! Crack the whip a little, Gini, the next time he calls. It may not have worked in my case, but I’m sure it would in yours.” She rose. “I must go. I’m catching the four o’clock Paris flight. Ralph is meeting me, so I mustn’t miss it.” She gave Gini a tiny conspiratorial glance. “I have a plane to catch now.”
Gini returned to her apartment. She could not like Helen, and she was unsure if she could trust her, but she had heard very genuine feeling break through her pointed words. For an hour, two hours, Gini paced up and down. The telephone did not ring. Eventually, giving in to temptation, she went into the bathroom and used the pregnancy testing kit she had purchased earlier that day. It was simple enough: if you were pregnant, the strip turned pink; if you were not pregnant, it turned blue.
It took fifteen minutes to react. She sat there, watching it. She wondered what Pascal would say if he knew the truth, if she told him that she wanted it to turn pink, wanted it with her whole soul. What would he say if she confessed that the desire to have his child had taken hold of her the day of that hospital shelling, and that the desire, still acute, was with her still?
She covered her face with her hands. She had no need to imagine a reaction to an emotion she did not intend to admit: she knew what the reaction would be. She had seen it in that brown and orange hotel room, when she had explained that she had just missed her period; concern, then anxiety, then something very close to despair.
“You are still taking the pill? I don’t understand.”
“Yes. I am. I think it’s just overwork. Tiredness.”
“Gini, are you sure? You couldn’t have missed a day or two by accident?”
“No. I checked. Don’t worry, it’s just the stress—it’s happened to me before.”
He tried to embrace her then; he began insisting she see a doctor for a checkup. When she had done so, and it was confirmed that she was not pregnant, Gini found herself unable to meet his eyes. She was afraid to see the relief in them. She stared at the ground.
“Suppose I had been,” she said in a low voice. “What then, Pascal?”
“Darling, I don’t know…” He put his arms around her. “We’re only halfway through our time here. This was something you so much wanted to do—this work. Your career matters very much to you. You said you didn’t want children. A mistake like that, coming at a time when we’re both working all hours, always on the move, in danger to some extent—”
“A mistake?”
“Well, it would have been a mistake in one sense, darling, you know that. This is something we’ve never considered—the last thing we’d planned, coming now, in the midst of all this mayhem.”
Gini turned away wordlessly. She could hear the anxiety in his voice; she thought she could detect an undertone of impatience, imperfectly concealed.
He was right, she told herself; his reaction was sensible, pragmatic, responsible. She thought: he does not want another child; he does not want a child with me.
The pain was very great. Despite the pain, and the rationality of his arguments, the desire remained. She still wanted his baby, and she continued to clutch at the hope that she might be pregnant long after leaving Bosnia. She knew, of course, when that desire began. She could date it to the day, the hour. After Mostar. She had watched too many children die; now her body dictated—she wanted to feel a child grow within her; she wanted Pascal to watch this child be born.
The fifteen minutes had eventually passed. In that bathroom she had looked at a test-tube device, at a sample strip that reminded her of school chemistry lessons, years before. Its verdict filled her with desolation: as both feared and expected, the strip was turning blue.
Charlotte was the first of the family to surface. She came down to the kitchen yawning, wrapped in a deep blue woolen dressing gown, complaining she had been awakened by sirens.
Gini averted her face from the swell of her stomach; Charlotte, fussing over the dogs, did not notice her reddened eyes.
“I don’t understand.” She waved a scrap of paper. “Max left me a note—he didn’t want to wake me, and I was dead to the world. But there’s been some kind of accident. He and Rowland had the police out last night, after we went to bed. But why aren’t they back? Where can they be? Why haven’t they called?”
“I’ll make some tea.” Gini rose. “Don’t worry, Charlotte. There’s probably some simple explanation. It can’t be too serious. Max would have awakened you if it were.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He’s protective. Of me—and this daughter of ours here.” She patted her stomach. “She’s kicking away now. Here…” She held out her hand. “Feel, Gini. Isn’t it extraordinary? So small, and all that power?”
Gini allowed her hand to be taken. She rested her palm on the curve of Charlotte’s belly. Its hardness astonished her. At first she felt nothing, then she sensed a tremor, then movement. There was a bumping beneath her hand, as if tiny hands or feet resented this confinement and pushed against the womb’s walls. Then there was stillness, then movement again, rippling out beneath her fingertips in one long, fluent curve.
“She’s turned over.” Charlotte smiled. “Now she’ll sleep. That’s the usual routine.”
“She?” Gini withdrew her hand. Envy, and a longing so intense it stifled her, gripped her heart. She turned quickly away to the stove.
“I believe Rowland.” Charlotte gave a low laugh. “I know he was teasing me, but I still trust him. Rowland’s so odd—he might well have magic powers.”
She stopped speaking abruptly and swung around.
Gini, turning, heard the sound of pounding footsteps, a voice calling frantically. A woman was running across the terrace outside. Without knocking, she flung open the kitchen door. It was only when she began speaking, and Gini heard her accent, that she realized this white-faced, disheveled woman was the smart, overdressed Susan Landis, whom she had met and disliked the night before.
“Please,” she said. “Oh, God, Charlotte—please, you’ve got to help me. I’ve been calling and calling—I just went up to the manor. There’s police everywhere…”
She swayed, grasped a chair back, and made a choking sound.
“Please help me. Something terrible has happened. Cassandra’s dead—and Mina’s disappeared. She’s such a good girl—she’s only fifteen. Charlotte—please. I can’t make the police understand. Mina’s gone!”
At nine-thirty Rowland was sitting in a small interview room in the main Cheltenham police station. The room was tiny and smelled of stale nicotine. He had been sitting there since six-thirty that morning. He had not eaten, washed, shaved, or slept. Max, who had driven him there, was in the interview room next door. It was he who had made the preliminary identification of Cassandra Morley’s body. Now, presumably, he was doing what Rowland had been doing for the past three hours, going over the events of the night before.
Rowland had given a statement, been questioned on the statement. What time, when, how: why had he been up there, alone, at that time of night? Why had he moved the body?
“Because I didn’t know she was dead,” Rowland had replied. “She was lying awkwardly. I checked for neck and spinal injuries, then I moved her. Then—”
“Are you a doctor? You have medical qualifications?”
“No. But I’ve had some paramedical training.”
“You have? Why?”
“Look, I climb. In Scotland. I’ve climbed in the Alps. I know how to check for those kinds of injuries. It was automatic to do that. I suppose—I was also looking for other obvious signs… a head wound—I don’t know.”
“Did you attempt resuscitation?”
“No. There was no pulse—”
“You’re sure?”
“For God’s sake!” Rowland lost his temper. “Rigor mortis had set in. It was—what? Minus five degrees? By the time I found her, she’d been dead several hours.”
And so it went on. An interview with one officer, then a second. The gradual and unpleasant realization that because of the circumstances, because he was a man, he might not be believed. Eventually their interviewing tactics changed and their tone became less hostile—presumably because they had received an interim medical report, and Max had corroborated his story. But Rowland was left with a sick sense of their distrust. He felt guilty by gender, a feeling he had never experienced before.
The statement was taken down, revised, amplified, then taken away to be typed. From outside the interview room came constant noise. Some of the travelers from the barn were being brought in, presumably questioned, perhaps busted for possession: Rowland had no way of knowing, and no one was likely to inform him. Around nine someone brought him tea he didn’t want, and half an hour later the more senior detective returned. He was a middle-aged man who had already mentioned the fact that he had two teenage daughters. He looked as weary and sickened as Rowland felt. Passing his hand across his face, he sat down and gave Rowland the statement to sign.
“One thing.” He indicated its first paragraph. “Your emergency call is logged at two-eleven A.M. What time was it when you got back to the body?”
“Around two-thirty. Maybe two thirty-five.”
“And you noticed the music had stopped—when?”
“Maybe five minutes later. I’m not sure. I wasn’t really thinking about it, not to begin with. Is it important?”
“It helps.” He gave a sigh. “By the time our cars got up to that barn, the travelers were already packing up. The ringleaders had already left—or so the others claim. Usually those affairs go on all night. I’d like to know why they broke up early, that’s all.”
“There are ringleaders, then?”
“Oh, sure. The travelers will feed you any amount of crap. Claim they were just following ley lines, took tarot readings, make out they just all happened to congregate in that one place at one time. In this case, a girl’s dead. So they’re prepared to be that bit more cooperative. Nothing to get excited about. They know who the suppliers are—but they won’t name names.”
“Was it drugs?” Rowland looked at him. “Is that what killed her?”
“We’ll have to wait for the autopsy report, obviously. It’s probable, I’d say. We’ve had stuff flooding into the area recently—Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, amphetamines. People think rural areas are safe. They think drugs are a big-city problem. They’re wrong. I try to explain to my daughters—they listen. Then they laugh the second I leave the room. You have children?”
“No.”
“Wait until you do. It’s as easy to score around here as it would be in London. Pubs, clubs, discos, parties, raves—grass, Ecstasy, over the course of an evening, it’s cheaper than beer. Sometimes they’re buying garbage, sometimes they’re getting something very pure. It’s a kind of Russian roulette, and the kids like that. Adds to the thrill, maybe. Who knows?” He tapped the statement. “If you’re happy with it, sign. I expect you’d like to get out of here.”
Rowland signed.
“This is the second death of this kind in four weeks,” the man went on as Rowland rose. “The last one was a girl too. It was just before Christmas. She was Dutch, a runaway. She was fourteen years old, good family, plenty of money, no problems there. She hadn’t been home in nine months. Her parents identified the body Christmas Day. It wasn’t the best Christmas I’ve ever known.”
“She was Dutch?” Rowland said. “From where?”
“Amsterdam, I believe. Needle tracks on both arms. The amphetamines she’d taken didn’t mix too well with the heroin. And the heroin was unusually pure. The dealers introduce high purity consignments from time to time—when they need new clients, and need to hook them fast.”
He opened the door. “Thank you for your help. Your friend should be through soon. You can wait out there.”
Rowland returned to the lobby. He felt angry and dispirited and on edge. He had been too late to save Cassandra Morley, and the information he had given was unlikely to be of great assistance. He sat down beneath a poster warning of the perils of drunk driving, and resigned himself to waiting for Max.
There was no sign now of the travelers. The lobby was deserted except for the constable on duty at the desk, and a plump, belligerent young man with a South London accent who was wearing an expensive suit and a loud shirt: the two were having an altercation that had clearly begun some time before.
As Rowland entered, the man raised his voice.
“Look,” he said. “Can I get this through your head? I’m here to report a stolen vehicle, not answer damn stupid sodding questions. It’s a top-of-the-range five series BMW. Silver. Leather upholstery. Alloy wheels. We’re talking almost thirty thousand quid…”
“I have those details. I have the registration number. Are you the owner of the vehicle, sir?”
“No. I’m not. For crying out loud. My name’s Mitchell—you’ve got that? You can spell that okay? The car belongs to a lady friend of mine. I just had it for the weekend. Is that a crime now? Anything else you’d like to know? My blood group, maybe? My mother’s birth date? I mean, if that’s what it takes to get some action around here—”
“Was the car locked when you left it, sir?”
“Yes. No. Look—I’m not sure. I already told you…”
“You’re not sure? Had you been drinking, sir?”
“No. I goddamn well hadn’t been drinking. What is this? I already told you. I was driving back to London, from here, and—and I got taken short. I needed to take a leak. L-e-a-k—you’ve got that?”
The constable made a note of this information, his face impassive. Rowland listened with closer attention. This was a war of attrition, and he knew who would win.
“So I get out to take a quick piss, okay?” Mitchell went on. “I’ve driven off the main road. I’m on this track, in the middle of nowhere. Up ahead of me is this barn. I can see lights, hear music—so I think I’ll check it out, see what’s going on. What do I find? The place is crawling with hippies. I take one look—I’ve left the car maybe two, three minutes—and what do I find when I get back? The sodding car’s gone. So I do the obvious. I go back. I ask around. I make some inquiries—like have any of you deadbeats seen a thirty-thousand-quid BMW recently? I get nowhere. There’s all these bleeding kids milling around. I give up, start walking back down the track, and what do I find? They’ve pinched my sodding wallet as well. No money. No plastic. Put it this way—it didn’t improve my mood. So, what I’d like to know now is—are you going to report this vehicle as stolen, or piss around—”
The constable made a note. He said: “Time, sir? This would have been when exactly?”
Rowland, watching with keen interest now, knew the question was not idle. Mitchell sensed it as well. His manner at once became evasive.
“Time? I’m not sure. Midnight—maybe a bit before.”
“It’s past nine now, sir.”
“So?”
“Why didn’t you report the matter earlier?”
“Because I was stuck miles up some sodding track, in the dark. Because I had to damn well walk miles, because when I got here, when I finally got here, a whole lot of jerks kept me hanging around—”
Mitchell stopped. During this last peroration, the constable had picked up a telephone and said a few words. Replacing the receiver, he emerged from behind his counter and took Mitchell by the arm.
“If you’d come through here. One of the detective sergeants would like a word.”
Mitchell began protesting loudly. Rowland saw him eye the door, as if wondering whether to bolt for it. Clearly, he thought better of it. He disappeared into an adjoining room. Through the closed door his voice could be heard for a while, blustering. Then he fell silent. Rowland thought: they’re telling him about the girl.
He leaned back against the wall and stared dully at the posters. Mitchell had been lying, that was obvious. He wondered whether he would prove to know anything useful, but his mind would not fix on that question, or any other. He felt a deepening black despondency, and he knew where this would lead his thoughts next if he did not guard against it: back to Washington, D.C., to a street near Dupont Circle, and to a different kind of drug killing that had happened six years before.
He passed his hand across his face and tried to force his thoughts elsewhere. Some five minutes later Max emerged. He looked gray-skinned and exhausted. Pulling on an old Barbour shooting jacket, he took Rowland by the arm.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Come on, Rowland. I need to think. I need some air.”
Max’s first action, when they returned to his Land Rover, was to try to call Charlotte on his car phone. Both numbers were busy. He tried several times, then gave up.
“Let’s get home.” He glanced at Rowland. “Look, would you mind driving? I’m feeling—I feel like hell.”
When they were in the car, neither spoke for a while. Max lit a cigarette.
“You don’t mind?”
“No. I don’t mind. In fact, you can give me one.”
“You don’t smoke. You haven’t smoked for years.”
“Come on, Max. Just give me one, okay?”
Rowland drew on the cigarette, which Max gave him without further comment. Instantly, the nicotine steadied him; it was as familiar, and welcome, as it had ever been before.
“The thing is,” Max began in an abrupt way a few miles farther on, “I’ve never seen a dead body before. Not even a stranger’s, let alone someone so young, someone I knew. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
“No. And it’s not unusual now.” Rowland kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Your parents are still alive. So are Charlotte’s. Besides—these days death gets tidied away. It takes place in a hospital, behind a screen. Don’t feel guilty, Max. What are you supposed to do? Take it in your stride?”
“I’ve led a sheltered life,” Max replied. “I suppose that’s what I’m saying. Just now… I rather despise myself for that. You wouldn’t understand. It doesn’t apply to you.”
Rowland said nothing. He was thinking of his father, then of his mother dealing with her death as grimly as she had dealt with her life, in a North London hospital cancer ward. He thought of the two climbing accidents he had witnessed in the Cairngorms, of the drug murders he had covered in Washington. He did not think, would not allow himself to think, of a summer’s day in the chill of a Washington police morgue. If you could just make the identification, Mr. McGuire. She’s… you’re prepared?
“Do you know what they told me?” Max still had his eyes on the road. “They said they’ve had drugs flooding into this area recently.”
“They told me that as well.”
“Jesus Christ, Rowland. Ten years from now, it could be my children buying that stuff. Ten years? It’s even less—Alex is eight. Cassandra was just sixteen years old.”
“I know.”
“When we bought this place, we thought—” Max gestured angrily at passing fields. “We thought, bring them up in the country, keep them away from London. Give them an old-fashioned upbringing—dogs, walks, a village school, fresh air… We thought it was safe. We thought—I suppose we thought values were different here.”
“Nowhere’s safe now, Max. You know that.”
“There’s too much money around here. Large estates, private schools, second homes. Too many rich children, too many careless parents. Cassandra Morley’s damn mother was never there half the time. Her father swans around Europe with a new wife half his age.”
“Come on, Max. There’s plenty of victims from very different worlds. Visit a few housing projects sometime. Rich, poor—it doesn’t make any difference these days.”
“I know that. Of course I know that—” Max hesitated. He gestured out the window.
“You see that track there? That leads up to that barn. Some of the travelers are still up there, the police said. They’ll keep them there another twenty-four hours. Maybe less, because I gather they’re not being too communicative. I want to cover this story.”
“So do I.”
“I want to get someone up there. You could do it, of course.” Max gave him a speculative glance, except you’re an editor, not a reporter now. You have to get back to London tomorrow night, and we really need someone who could stay down here a couple of days. Someone who could talk to the travelers, talk to Cassandra Morley’s school friends, find out what they know. Someone young, someone whom they might open up to.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Max. I’d say no.”
“Why? She’s a good reporter. She’s on the spot. She’s here right now. You were keen enough to use her yesterday.”
“That was yesterday,” Rowland replied curtly. “This is now. Come on, Max, you’re not blind. You saw her last night. She’s operating on autopilot half the time.”
“She can snap out of it, presumably. Charlotte thinks she has broken up with Pascal.”
“Max, the reasons are irrelevant. She looks ill. She’s like a bloody sleepwalker. I don’t intend to use her on the Lazare story or any other, I’ll tell you that now.”
Max said nothing. He was used to Rowland’s instant prejudices, and to his sometimes precipitate judgments, and on this occasion, felt he might share them. He shrugged.
“Let’s get back to the house anyway. I need to talk to Charlotte. Then we can decide. Right here, then left…”
Rowland accelerated past the manor, where several police cars were parked, and turned into Max’s drive. It was only as they entered the house that he remembered Lindsay, and the argument the previous evening. Today he was due to apologize to her, or grovel, as she had put it. He could hear women’s voices coming from the kitchen: neither apology nor groveling seemed relevant now.
Entering the kitchen, it was at once obvious to him and to Max that something had happened in their absence. The atmosphere was tense. Charlotte was white-faced, Lindsay looked as if she might have been crying. Gini was standing at some distance from the others, her back to the room. When Max and Rowland entered, she did not look around.
Before Max could even begin speaking, Charlotte was in his arms. She began spilling out her story, how Susan Landis had arrived, and then her husband, how the police had finally stirred themselves and made inquiries.
“Max, it’s not just Cassandra,” she finished. “It’s Mina Landis too. She was with Cassandra last night. They both went up to that barn.”
“Mina did? Then where is she now?”
“That’s the point, Max, no one knows. She’s disappeared. She’s not at home, she’s not at the manor, she’s not with the travelers, she’s not at the barn. Robert Landis just telephoned again. Apparently, the travelers are now claiming she left the place last night. In a car. With some man.”
Charlotte was close to tears. Max put his arms around her and drew her quietly aside.
“Darling, don’t,” Rowland heard him say. “You mustn’t. Think of the baby.”
Rowland turned away. The closeness of Max and Charlotte at such moments always moved him, and left him at the same time with a sense of exclusion, of bleakness. It was as if they spoke a private language, a married language, not one he had ever spoken, he thought, not one he was ever likely to learn. He noted that Lindsay, too, turned away at the same moment and began busying herself with the kettle at the stove. One of the dogs whined. Max and Charlotte continued to speak to each other in lowered voices.
Rowland leaned up against the window and stared out across the garden. A clock ticked; he felt a leaden exhaustion. Lindsay was making coffee; Max and Charlotte continued speaking, Max holding her closely to him, then persuading her to sit down. Genevieve Hunter, Rowland thought, looked ill; her face was white with strain. She was now watching Max and Charlotte. Max’s concern for his wife seemed to cause her some unaccountable pain.
“May I say something?” she began abruptly, interrupting Charlotte and speaking in a brusque, ill-judged tone. “We’re all wasting time. In the first place, Robert Landis wants Max to call him. He’s with the police in Cheltenham now.”
“Look, Gini, just leave it, okay?” Lindsay banged down the kettle and swung around. “Don’t let’s have another row. Just let Charlotte explain in her way. Give her time. She’s seven months pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“It would be hard not to notice,” Gini snapped. Charlotte gave her a look of reproach and surprise. Max frowned.
“Look, Gini,” he began quietly. “You don’t quite seem to understand the situation. And remarks like that don’t help. So, if you wouldn’t mind…”
“Fine.” The warning went unheeded; Gini’s mouth tightened. “But all this speculation is pointless. It’s been going on for an hour now—more.”
“Gini, it’s not just speculation.” Charlotte took Max’s hand. “Lindsay and I were just trying to understand what could have happened. Mina could have been abducted. She could be dead too. There’s a hundred possibilities and they’re all horrible.”
“Abducted? That’s not what the witnesses say.” Gini turned back to Max. “Max, will you listen to me? The witnesses who spoke to Landis and the police were specific. Mina wasn’t drugged. She wasn’t unconscious. She wasn’t dragged into some car by some B-movie villain. Unless they’re lying, what happened is very clear.”
She hesitated; Charlotte had begun to cry. Max bent over her, and Rowland, seeing Gini’s face become pinched and obstinate, felt the first strong stirrings of dislike. His hostility was shared by everyone present, and he could see she sensed that. Color came and went in her face. Ignoring the others completely, she addressed herself again to Max—an exclusion that enraged Rowland even more.
“Max, it’s obvious what happened. A fifteen-year-old girl lied to her parents. She went up to that barn in the certain knowledge that it was the last thing they’d let her do. She probably smoked some grass—she was seen smoking—”
“Her mother says she wouldn’t do that, Gini,” Charlotte began. “Marijuana? I keep telling you—it’s not possible. She didn’t even touch cigarettes. Susan Landis said so.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Gini gave a gesture of exasperation. “And you believe that? Her mother would be the last to know. Max, listen. The witnesses are definite. She left around midnight in a car with a man. All right, they claim they can’t describe the car or the man—but the point is, they say she left with him willingly. Thanks to the lies she told, no one realized she was missing. So whoever was driving that car had a ten-hour start. If Mina’s going to be found, it won’t help to indulge her parents’ fantasies about what a sweet, obedient child she was. Fifteen-year-old girls don’t behave the way their parents hope. If they did, no one would be dead now.” Her voice had risen and her tone had sharpened. Rowland’s temper snapped.
“For God’s sake,” he began in a voice cold with anger. “What in hell’s the matter with you? Other people have feelings, even if you don’t. You don’t sound too damn charitable, you know—”
“Charitable? I’m trying to be realistic.”
“Then think before you speak. A young girl is dead. I found her body. Max and I have been up all damn night. Charlotte’s trying to help. This was someone she and Max knew…”
“I know that. And she’s dead. None of us can help Cassandra Morley now. We’d help Mina Landis more effectively if we didn’t stand here weeping and wasting time.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Rowland gave her a look of contempt. “Why in hell don’t you just keep quiet and stay out of it? Judging from your behavior yesterday, that’s what you usually prefer to do.”
There was a silence. Genevieve Hunter took a step back as if he had hit her. Blood rushed into her face. She looked at him, then looked blindly around the room. Then, bending her head and averting her face, she fumbled for a coat thrown over a chair, picked it up, and pushed past Rowland to the door. Lindsay began to move forward with a low exclamation of distress.
“Gini, wait—where are you going?”
“I’m going for a walk. I need some fresh air.”
The door slammed behind her. There was another, longer, silence. Rowland watched her walk rapidly across the garden and out of sight. Lindsay, with a glance at Charlotte, gave a sigh.
“Rowland, you shouldn’t have said that. Gini hasn’t been well. She didn’t mean—”
“I don’t give a damn. Someone had to say it. Let her go for her walk. If she walks the whole way back to London, I won’t grieve. Max—let me call John Lane. Or Chris Huxley. One of them should be available. If he left London now, he’d be here in an hour and a half.”
“Use the phone in my study. I’ll come with you. I’d better speak to Landis.”
Max followed Rowland from the room. In the kitchen, Charlotte and Lindsay exchanged glances. Lindsay crossed the room and sat down next to her.
“Oh, Lindsay.” Charlotte gave a sigh. “I wish I’d never invited her. That may not be too charitable either. But I do.”
“I don’t blame you. Charlotte, don’t get upset. She’s being impossible, she’s been impossible all morning. This is the worst I’ve ever seen her.”
“She was up at six.” Charlotte gave her a worried glance. “I heard her moving around. Then I went back to sleep. Lindsay, she claimed she’d slept well, but I’m sure she hadn’t. And she’d been trying to call Pascal again.”
“She didn’t get him?”
“No.” Charlotte hesitated, then met Lindsay’s eyes. “Is it over, Lindsay? Has she said anything? I think it is over. As soon as I saw her yesterday, I knew.”
“I’m not sure. It’s what I’m beginning to believe. Why would he stay away so long? First he was staying for two weeks, then it was four. Then he was coming back for Christmas… Charlotte, it was going to be their first Christmas together. She bought a tree, she bought all these presents for him—I can’t tell you how happy she was. Like the old Gini used to be.”
“And then he didn’t come?”
“No.” Lindsay gave her a troubled look. “I didn’t find out until afterward. I assumed he was there as planned. But he wasn’t. She spent the whole Christmas holiday alone.”
“Alone? But what about her stepmother?”
“She’s away. Gini claimed she’d spent the time with some friends I’ve never heard of. I know she was lying. She can’t stand being pitied, Charlotte.”
“I know.” Charlotte shook her head sadly. “Well, Rowland didn’t pity her anyway. Lindsay—I wish he hadn’t said that. I know he was upset, and I know he’d had no sleep, but Rowland can be so harsh.”
“It might do her some good. You never know.” Lindsay frowned, glanced at Charlotte. “You know what she said, when she mentioned fifteen-year-old girls?”
“How they could behave? Yes. I may not want to remember, but I do.”
“Well, there were reasons for that, Charlotte. Very personal reasons. I’m sure she identifies with Mina. Do you know how old she was when she first met Pascal?”
Charlotte did not; and Lindsay then told her. She described their first meeting in Beirut, and their six-week affair. She described the intervention of Gini’s father. She was aware that in telling this story she was breaking Gini’s confidence, and as she came to the end of it felt ashamed.
Charlotte listened quietly and with mounting dismay. “Fifteen?” she said. “She had an affair with Pascal then?”
“She lied to him about her age.” Lindsay sighed. “Now do you understand? It isn’t just that she loves Pascal now. It isn’t just that she’s been living with him this past year. It’s deeper than that, Charlotte. It goes back such a long way.”
“I don’t want to hear any more.”
Charlotte rose, her kind face clouded with unhappiness. She gave a helpless gesture.
“I hate this, Lindsay. Poor Cassandra, and Mina. Gini. Love affairs. Lies. All this anger and misery. Us having dinner last night, and all the time Cassandra was up there, lying in some field. It’s so terrible. So ugly. And it makes me so afraid.”
She began picking up mugs and plates from the table, as if to restore order to the room would be to restore order to the world.
“I’m going to take the boys out,” she said abruptly. “I can’t expect them to play upstairs all day. I’ll take them around to a friend in the village. Then I’m going to see Susan Landis. She shouldn’t be alone.”
“Charlotte…” Lindsay began on a warning note.
“I know. I know.” Charlotte was again close to tears. “But you have a child, Lindsay. You must understand. And I have to do something. I can’t bear it here, Lindsay. It doesn’t feel like home.”