Lovers and Liars (57 page)

There was a silence. She turned away, and Pascal could see her t to regain control. Quietly, he bent and replaced the papers eir envelope. Then he put his arms around her. The one thing

intended to avoid now, at all costs, was any conflict about her er. He had made that mistake once, twelve years before, and did not intend to make it again.

Fine,’ he said quietly. ‘Then let’s take it from there. If McMullen s deluded all those years ago about Hawthorne - and how he n came to be interested in those events I can’t imagine - then an be deluded again. Or deliberately smearing Hawthorne for e reason. Either way … I

`YesT She turned back to him with new hope in her face. ‘Either way, it helps us when we finally meet him. Which I ct to do very soon.’

‘TomorTow?’ ‘I think so. Let’s wait and see. Gini . He broke off, and ked down into her face. ‘You do know how much I love UT

*.“Yes. I do.’

‘Then come to bed.’

t nine the next morning, Gini and Pascal were in the last of a uence of taxi-cabs which they had used to transport themselves short distance downhill from Hampstead to St John’s Wood.

t Pascal’s request, the taxi cruised first one way up a street near enue Road, then another. Several of the large houses in this et had ‘To Let’ signboards outside, to which Pascal paid close ention.

F The taxi-driver dropped them off near the Wellington army

barracks. It was then nine-twenty. Minutes later, Pascal and Gini were in the company of an estate agent, viewing one of the houses they had passed earlier. It was a miniature St John’s Wood palace, fully furnished and in very bad taste. Pascal looked at Gini, and repressed a smile. They had been upstairs, and were now back in the drawing-room.

‘Decision time, darling,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

Gini gave him a sidelong glance. She fingered the curtain-ring on her wedding finger, crossed to the rear window and looked out. Beyond the ruched pink silk blinds she could see a terrace with

bright white rococo garden chairs. There was a large built-in barbecue, a stretch of lawn, an unlikely white statue, and a fence, Beyond the fence, fifty feet away, were the white stucco walls, the Gothic porch and windows of the assignation house to which Lise Hawthorne had directed them. It was, as Pascal had quietly pointed out to her before they set foot in the agent’s office, the perfect place for him to use that coming Sunday. The perfect place for photographs. From the rear windows the driveway and the Gothic porch were clearly visible. From here, anyone entering or leaving Hawthorne’s house was in direct view.

‘Darling, I’m not sure,’ she replied in a dry voice. ‘It’s nice, but it’s a bit overlooked at the back.’

Pascal gave her a repressive glance. He turned back to the agent, who was not looking hopeful, and who was avoiding the moment when he would have to mention the rent. ‘I’m afraid my wife’s a bit hard to please/ Pascal said. ‘We must have looked at fifty houses this last week. This might be possible but we’d have to clear up all the formalities quickly. I’d want to be in here by Saturday morning. It’s Thursday now. If that could be arranged … ‘

He left the sentence unfinished, and the agent blinked. This particular house had been vacant for eighteen months. The area was over-loaded with better houses than this, at a much more realistic rent. He began to talk, and talk fast.

‘Well, of course, I’m sure that could be arranged. As you can see . he waved a vague hand at oceans of pink brocade, ‘the house comes very comprehensively equipped. Three months’ rent in advance, naturally, and we would have to check references, of course, but that’s just a formality. I can personally arrange for all the services to be switched back on, gas, electricity, telephone–!

‘Banker’s draft/ Pascal said. ‘This morning. And I foresee no problem with references. What is the exact rentT

.,., The agent swallowed. He fixed his eyes on the pink blinds, and ..kamed the figure. He waited for the expostulations, the cries of

s elief. None came. Both husband and wife were now at the dow, looking out at the garden at the back.

-The agent studied this young couple, who had arrived at his ce on foot. The woman, whom he judged attractive, was casudressed. Her husband was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans. Ffis hair was long by the agent’s standards … The t gave a little sigh. Once upon a time he had been able to ss his clients’ income bracket from their dress. These days, he had learned from bitter experience, it did not do to rely such signals: the ones who looked like down-and-outs often

rned out to work in movies or rock music, and to be annoyingly . Rock music, in this case, he decided. Too much money and sense. They returned to his office, where a deal was swiftly ck. He ushered the couple to the door, all smiles. There, ous still, and a little envious, he asked, ‘Rock music, would It be? I feel I know the face … ‘

The Frenchman gave a modest gesture. He smiled. He said, ow did you guess?’

Half an hour later, the agent’s telephone rang. On picking it he heard a man’s voice, an American voice, ‘Is Mr Lamartine with you, by any chanceT

The agent explained that Mr Lamartine had just left.

‘Oh. I was hoping to reach him there. This is his assistant … e said he’d call me if he decided to take the house so I could ed things up at the bank. I guess it slipped his mind. He has stack of meetings all morning, too … ‘

‘Well, he has decided,’ the agent replied. ‘I have the details ere. I’m just processing the paperwork now.’

The assistant, who sounded efficient, then took all the rest of e details. ‘Thanks for your help/ the American said.

ey were back in the safe Hampstead cottage by eleven. ‘One hour to go, then we telephone/ Gini said.

Pascal nodded. Gini could see that he too was tense. ‘I’ll make me coffee,’ he said. ‘I need to think.’

‘Can you not think without the caffeine, PascalT She smiled. ‘Sure I can. But I think a whole lot better with it. I’m going make a list. Every actual fact we know about McMullen. No ours, no suppositions, just the facts.’

He disappeared downstairs to the kitchen. Gini heard the whirr

of the coffee-grinder. She sat down at the table in the sittingroom of the cottage, and made sure she had the telephone close. She took off her watch and put it next to the telephone; she watched the second-hand sweep.

On the way back to this cottage, she had stopped off at a bookshop in Hampstead, hoping to purchase the same three books, if not the same editions, as she had seen in McMullen’s flat. She laid her purchases out on the table in front of her. She had been able to find Paradise Lost, and she put her own copy next to the identical edition found in Venice; next to that she put Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Cafg, and finally her last purchase. The Oxford Book of Modern Verse had not been in stock, but as an afterthought, she had bought a large British road atlas. In the back of it was a section with street plans for thirty major cities, Oxford among them. She took out the piece of paper with those numbers, found inside the frame of Lise Hawthorne’s photograph, and the Uccello postcard from ‘Jacob’. There was no time now to consult Mary’s friend: she would make one last attempt at decoding this herself.

The page-word ploy did not seem to work, even with one component missing; one of the problems with this puzzle, she realized, was that there were so few numbers. The final message must be surely very short. She sat for a while with paper and pencil, making little headway. She flipped the pages of McMullen’s copy of Milton’s poem, until she found the place Pascal had said was marked. She could remember working on this poem at school. She could even remember, though vaguely, this particular passage. It came from Book One, and described the state of mind of Satan, after his fall from grace:

For now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him

Satan, by that point in the poem, had been expelled from paradise, and she could remember the description of his great fall. But this did not help her either. Feeling defeated, she bent over the road atlas, and traced the lines of Oxford’s famous streets. Here was McMullen’s college, Christ Church; here was the High Street, and the Carfax intersection and St Giles … And then she saw it, away to the south and west, on the edge of the central area of the city dominated by the colleges: Paradise Square, and Paradise Street.

Suddenly she understood McMullen’s message: it did not refer to pages, but to book titles, and the reason it was brief was that it

ryas an address, a brief address. Quickly she drew a page toward ber, and began to write. As Pascal returned to the room with the Acoffee, she held up the page triumphantly.

‘I’ve done it/ she said. ‘Look, Pascal. He did leave a message for in his apartment. He did refer me back to it on that postcard. was much simpler than I thought! The number “Y at the top, fers to the three titles; the next line down, 6/2/6, refers to the

ber of words in each of the three titles. And the final line,

1/6, gives you the order of words to extract from the titles. Oxford -Paradise Cafe … you seeT

‘Pascal looked at the paper and frowned. ‘If you think that’s ple, I certainly don’t. We don’t know there’s any such place ay.’

‘There’s a Paradise Square. There’s a Paradise Street. I’ll bet u anything you like that in one or the other there’s a ParaCaf6 as well. Watch … ‘

She picked up the telephone and dialled directory enquiries. She de one further short call; when she put the telephone down, e had a smile on her face.

‘Don’t tell me you’re right?’

‘You bet I’m right. Paradise Caf(-, on the corner of Paradise uare … ‘

‘He doesn’t exactly believe in making things easy, does heT

‘If he made it easy/ Gini retorted, ‘then someone else could have t there before us. As it is, he’d obviously decided it didn’t work hence the meeting in Regent’s Park, and the noon telephone

… ‘ She broke off, and looked down at her watch. ‘Twenty utes to go, Pascal. Did you write your list?’

‘Yes, I did. I put down all the information I obtained on McMullen the Army, where he served and when. Then I put down the things that don Anthony Knowles told you. The fact that

ullen was one of his best history students, that his studies re assisted by his gift for languages - he spoke fluent French d Italian, wasn’t that what Knowles said?’

‘That’s right. The Italian as a result of the time he spent there a child, with his family. The French, from school, I guess. us McMullen spent part of the nine-month gap before going

up to Oxford and leaving school, doing courses at the Sorborme Paris. Knowles mentioned that. He gave it as an example of w dedicated McMullen was.’

‘Fine. So McMullen was a keen student. A hard worker.’ He used. ‘And the dates this took place?’

Gini shrugged. ‘You know the dates, Pascal. We’ve looked at them before. McMullen went up to Christ Church in the Michaelmas term of nineteen sixty-eight, that’s the fall of nineteen sixty-eight. He’d left school at the end of the previous year, after obtaining the scholarship to Oxford. He had a nine-month gap. He moved on to those courses at the Sorbonne … Does this help, PascalT She glanced towards the telephone.

‘Maybe. The spring of nineteen sixty-eight - that was a very significant time for a young man to be taking courses at the Sorbonne. Les 6v6nements, Gini - the protests and the street fighting, that whole outburst of radicalism. That took place in May, nineteen sixty-eight. I wonder if McMullen was drawn into those events, that’s all. I’m trying to understand why a young man who leaves Oxford very suddenly the following year begins writing letters to American politicians about the Vietnam War. That war was a catalyst for his generation, sure. But it still seems so odd .

He turned away, frowning, and began to pace the room. Gini drew the telephone towards her. It was now six minutes to twelve. ‘I don’t think we should think about that now/ she said. ‘It’s

taking us away from the central issue here - and that’s Hawthorne and the appointments with those blondes.’

Pascal gave her a quick glance. He knew why she said that, and he could tell she would resist any aspect of this story which curved back towards that war, and her own father’s past.

‘Maybe/ he said, in a thoughtful tone. ‘Maybe, Gini. But there’s a darkness here, right at the heart of this story. And I want to understand where that darkness begins.’

‘Look, let’s just get to see McMullen and talk to him first.’ ‘Very well.’

Pascal moved away, and sat down. He could sense the sudden tension between them, and it alarmed him. There was an issue between them, he knew; it had always been unresolved and remained unresolved still. It concerned her father’s behaviour in Beirut, and Gini’s willingness to obey him then, the excuses she continued to make for him, even now. For an instant, Pascal saw the figure of Sam Hunter as a continuing barrier between them. Even now, he thought unhappily, he and Gini would never agree about the nature of that man.

And now, just when Pascal had believed him safely distanced, back in Washington, with little day-to-day influence over Gini’s life, Sam returned to haunt them. He emerged from the shadowy recesses of this story they were working on: Hawthorne,

Romero, Hunter, McMullen. All their pasts intersected at one -point: Vietnam. He passed his hand wearily across his brow. It _,was better to say nothing, to wait. Perhaps Gini was right, and -that aspect of this story would prove marginal. He looked at his I

atch. The hands were moving to twelve. ‘Now, Gini. Make the call/ he said.

Gini.did so. It was answered on the first ring by a voice she )recognized. She did not identify herself, and neither did he, but A was Dr Anthony Knowles. He came straight to the point.

‘Thank you for calling/he said. ‘Jacob is anxious to meet you and our friend. He asks whether you know a restaurant here which would be suitable. He says he’s entitled to ask. Do ou know of ne? Don’t mention the name.’ y

‘I do know of one,’ Gini paused, and thought quickly. McMullen’s ues had been more than a trail, she saw, they had also been an titude test.