Harm's Way (21 page)

‘Still …' There was a note of concern in Christian's voice.

‘I think she was going mad with worry,' Stephen continued, ‘and knowing her, she was probably sick of discussing it with us too. I bet she thought she was boring us with it all.'

‘I'm going to bed.'

Stephen and Christian looked at me with surprise.

‘I'm sure it'll all be fine,' I added in a softer tone. ‘She'd probably laugh if she knew how much we were worrying. And I think we should all try to get some sleep.'

Wrapping myself in Beth's sheets, I was dismayed to find them freshly washed, without even the subtlest hint of her. Climbing back out of bed, I tiptoed over to her dressing table, pulled out the ground-glass stopper of her perfume and inhaled it deeply before dabbing it on my temples, wrists and neck. Her face cream caught my eye, and I gazed in wonderment at the mysterious and expensive-looking tubes and phials that I still had to try. With my fingers tightly wrapped around my mobile phone and the harmony of her scents surrounding me, I succumbed to the dulling effects of sleep.

‘Anna! Anna, wake up.'

It was Christian, his face distorted with shadows, standing over me, holding something in his right hand.

‘What is it?'

‘It's Beth's phone.'

I sat up and rubbed my eyes, trying to fathom what this meant, and why I was lying in Beth's bed.

‘I couldn't sleep – that boiler's too noisy – so I tried to shift one of the sofa pillows and found this down the back of it.'

I was finding it hard to care about the sofa or Beth's phone, but I moved across the bed to allow Christian to sit down.

‘So what does that mean?'

‘I don't know. It certainly explains why there's been no reply. But why wouldn't she take her phone?' I shrugged.

‘Maybe she just forgot. Or she looked for it and couldn't find it because it had fallen down the back of the sofa. It doesn't explain a whole lot.'

Christian switched it on and we both waited impatiently for the pointless swivelling motif to fill the screen and disappear. Forty-two messages. Scrolling down I saw my own name a dozen times, interspersed with Ruth's, Stephen's, a woman from Beth's work and Christian's. Noting with distaste that one of his messages began ‘My darling …' I looked up at him and wondered whether all this concern for Beth could be eradicated, temporarily at least, by a different impulse. At first allowing himself to be pulled in towards me, he sprang away sharply with the look of someone who has bitten into something impossibly sour.

‘What the …? Are you wearing her perfume?'

A few feet away Stephen slept on, and somewhere in Ireland, Beth was, no doubt, finally nearing home.

I awoke confused and ashamed, with the relevance of Christian's nocturnal visit beginning to dawn on me, in all its confused significance. I looked at the clock, wondering if it
was still too early to call Ruth. By the haunted look on Stephen's face as I wandered into the kitchen I could see that he already had, and I knew that the news was not good.

‘She's not there yet. How can she not have got there? It shouldn't take this long, Anna, whichever way you look at it.'

‘Why? Who have you spoken to?'

‘Ruth and Beth's aunt. They're at Beth's father's house at the moment. I hung up when they started arguing on the end of the phone. Ruth thinks the old man's talking rubbish. Apparently he's been asking Beth to come and visit him for ages, and she'd promised to come, but said it would have to be sometime next month because work was too busy until then. But then Beth's aunt says she was there when he had this conversation with her on the phone – says he was perfectly compos mentis at the time.'

I sat down sluggishly, longing for the lucidity a strong coffee would bring and reaching instinctively in my mind for Beth to sort us out.

‘But she might have changed her mind, Stephen. Don't you think? I mean, that night, when I came over here – the last time I saw her – I've never seen her in that kind of state before. I know it always upsets her when she speaks to her father, but that night I could tell that she was really taking it hard. And anyway, it's the only explanation.'

‘But it's not, Anna, that's what I'm saying. You know it's not. It's just that we don't want to think about the others.'

I looked up, silently imploring him not to carry on.

‘We can't delay it any longer. Unless we know for sure that she's gone back to Ireland, we've got to call the police.'

‘He's right. We shouldn't have waited this long.'

Christian was standing in the doorway wearing only his jeans. I looked from him to the cup of coffee that sat tantalisingly on the table before Stephen. Reaching across for it seemed like an act of great significance. Raising it to my lips I closed my eyes and took a gulp. It was very perfumed, very strong, and when I opened them again, the weight of our two days of torpor lifted, and it was time to act.

In films people always know exactly whom to go to, what number to call, how to explain their situation, as though all their lives they'd been lying in wait for the moment when some tragedy would prompt them to march into their local police station and announce a crime. Looking very young, and holding the receiver like an object so technologically enhanced that its exact use was questionable, Stephen turned to Christian.

‘Who do we call here? I've forgotten. I mean, it's not 999, is it?'

‘We should call the local commissariat first,' said Christian authoritatively. ‘Where do you keep the
pages jaunes?'

The gigantic tome, lying untouched in its plastic wrapping, was found on the floor of the broom cupboard.

‘Do we want general enquiries or emergencies?' Stephen said.

‘Just call any damn number and get it over with,' I snapped, feeling the blood pound in my ears.

‘Christian, you do it, you're French and you'll be able to explain things better than anyone else.'

As Christian tapped out the number I watched the side of his mouth twitch. Beth wasn't even here, and yet her absence was all-consuming. He paced in and out of the sitting room as
he made the call, while Stephen and I sat facing one another, our elbows at right-angles to the table. The silence was broken only by intermittent
‘oui's
from the next room, as though Christian was being asked a series of very straightforward questions, without being allowed to go into detail. Finally he re-emerged.

‘Right. They're coming over in half an hour to ask us some questions.' And, looking with slight disgust at the coffee pot: ‘Do you have anything stronger?'

‘There's some brandy up there. In that cupboard.'

A stool shrieked across the tiled floor and Stephen left the room. Christian and I sat in silence, knees almost touching, until he reached over and ran the side of his thumb across my bottom lip. The gesture made sense to me, like the answer to a question I hadn't realised I'd asked, and I wondered whether everything might still be all right.

Nearly an hour later, the doorbell rang and I heard the stupid shuffle of Stephen's Prixunic slippers against the hall carpet and his monotone: ‘
Bonjour. Entrez
.' The taller of the two introduced himself as Inspector Verbier. His colleague had a face and name too bland to describe or remember. He gazed blinkingly at his partner, as if born only for the purpose of complementing another human being. Inspector Verbier made up for his colleague's nonentity. A broad man in his forties with skin that should always be tanned but wasn't, he emanated a kind of slovenly sexuality. His lips were soft, feminine in their perfect delineation, and when he spoke, they parted to reveal a row of tiny yellowing milk teeth – the fangs of a sadistic schoolboy.

Declining Stephen's offer of coffee he placed himself unpleasantly near me by the table, while his blank-faced
companion surveyed the ceilings and walls of the flat, as if for clues.

‘So how long has …' He flicked through pages of a notebook with a thick-ended thumb in search of a name. ‘… has Madame Murphy been missing?'

‘Well, we're still not really sure she is missing,' I began, shocked by the seriousness of his language, ‘and it's Mademoiselle.'

‘Anna, can you let me deal with this, please?' Stephen cut in. ‘We're really worried about her. She disappeared the evening before last, and although there
is
a possibility that she has gone to see her sick father in Ireland, it would be very out of character for her to do so without telling us. She also left her phone behind, which is unlike her.'

Stephen went on to explain at length the build-up to Beth's disappearance, including her state of mind the last time he had seen her. The inspector, I noticed, was not writing anything down but leaving the blank man to take the necessary details.

‘And you're the boyfriend?' he suddenly interjected. It wasn't a question, but a rebuke.

‘No. This is Beth's boyfriend.' Stephen pointed at Christian who was leaning against the wall with his head bowed.

All eyes were suddenly turned so accusingly on Christian that for a moment he looked guilty, even to me. Hot panic rose in my chest like nausea.

‘And you work where?'

‘I'm the manager of L'Écume, in Bastille.'

The inspector turned and gave his colleague a questioning look.

‘That the place you and I went last month?'

The man nodded.

‘They do a good steak there,' he told Christian magnanimously.

‘Thank you.'

Christian's brittle responses to the police and a smattering of anecdotes Beth had recounted told me he was no stranger to dealing with them. The questions, initially perfunctory, were becoming barbed, Christian's answers increasingly insolent. Both men had returned to the Parisian slang that was their natural lingo, and Stephen, who had been sitting slumped in a chair across the room, looked up, his curiosity aroused by the steep gradient of their tones.

‘And how were you two getting along?'

‘Very well. We always got along very well.'

‘Had you had a fight, or a disagreement of any kind?'

‘No.'

‘Not of any kind? Think carefully.'

‘I think I'd remember. The answer is no,' and then more gently, ‘I've been trying to think of any detail that could help.'

The room was completely still. I could hear the other man scratching his arm with the end of his pen through his oatmeal-coloured corduroy jacket. Elsewhere in the building someone was playing one of Satie's
Gymnopédies
on the piano.

‘So your girlfriend, who I understand is not in the habit of disappearing, just decides to vanish one day?'

‘No, because as we've just said, her father has not been well, and we think she may have gone back to Ireland to see him, only we can't get hold of her.'

Christian was enunciating each word with irritating precision.

‘Ah, yes.'

A hastily scribbled comment in the book.

‘So tell me: why are we here?'

‘Because we thought it was the responsible thing to do.' Stephen's exasperation made him sound petulant. ‘I'm beginning to wonder why we bothered,' he added, sottovoce.

Crushing his attitude with a lazily raised hand, Verbier continued, ‘And you say she may be in Ireland?'

Stephen explained, again in a deliberate manner that was beginning to grate, the fact that Beth's father suffered from Alzheimer's, and that because of the illness he was not a reliable source of information.

‘So you see we have tried to get in touch with her,' I added, ‘but we thought, now that two nights have passed, that we should really let you know so that you can make your own inquiries. Presumably you can find out for sure if she's left the country or not. Can't you?'

‘Yes, Mademoiselle, we are able to do that for you. But may I suggest something?' He scratched a sardonic eyebrow in the manner of someone who was going to do so anyway. ‘I think you should all sit tight, and wait for your friend to call. I have no doubt that she will.'

‘Or,' cut in Stephen once more, ‘she could, of course, be lying dead in a back street somewhere, which is why we've troubled you today.'

For the second time that day, I felt like laughing. I could hear myself recounting the story to Beth; I knew exactly how I would mimic Stephen's now shrill voice, and which of the policemen's attributes I would exaggerate. I could see her now, spluttering through a hand clamped to her mouth,
ashamed at having put us through all this but unable to stop those mirthful eyes from creasing up.

‘I tell you what. Why don't you all keep calling her father, or anyone who lives near her father, until you find out for sure if she's either there or on her way home. That way,' he sighed, looking longingly down the hallway towards the front door, ‘at least we'll know what we're dealing with.'

Mr Void had already snapped shut his notebook, signalling the end of their visit.

Feeling foolish, we remained silent for some time after the door slammed.

‘Well, that told us,' I attempted, embarrassed by my own false jollity.

‘I've got to get to work,' mumbled Christian.

‘I guess I should go too,' I said apologetically to Stephen, minutes after he'd left. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘Well, I suppose I should stay here, to see if she calls, but I'm pretty surprised by how unconcerned the police seemed to be. It's sort of made me think that we might be overreacting, that it could all still be OK. It could, couldn't it?'

The question, the plea, rang in my head throughout the day at the museum, piercing the bass rumble of whispering visitors. Of course it could all still be OK. I was convinced that it would be. And yet it was totally uncharacteristic for Beth to put herself first, to disregard the concerns she knew we would all have about her safety if she disappeared without telling us. Desperately suppressing the sequences of guilt and shame flickering through my head, I gathered up crumbs of evidence from over the past few weeks which might substantiate a positive theory. Her natural gaiety had
been slightly lacking of late, and she had hardly touched a drop of alcohol since we'd returned from Normandy. Normally a devoted listener, a distracted look had come into her eyes while I was telling her a story – even the kind of gossip she would normally have been captivated by. The unthinkable had, naturally, fleetingly crossed my mind: that she might know about Christian and me, but we'd both agreed that it was impossible.